Way2slow

Never dealt with one of those but most will have the pitch cast into it with the part number, might be hid under the prop washer. Some aftermarket's have it stamped into the side.

With my old backbone, I sit about 90% of the time. My standing is only when fishing a spinner bait in close cover, flipping/pitching and making extremely long cast chasing schooling fish busting the surface. I don't even keep my butt seat in the boat anymore.

Just depends on how bad you want this particular boat, sounds like a nice one. I think the 9,500 is a little too much and the 5,800 would be a good deal if the boat checks out good. With the end of season getting near and your not scared of loosing the boat, you might be able to negotiate a very good deal, just depends on how eager the owner is to get rid of it. Just be sure to have that motor checked out good, the early Eagles were subject to have problems, one of the main problems is the block cracks where the rec/reg is an lets water into the cylinder. If not caught in time, this will blow that cylinder. Go here, Click on Teck Talk and read the tech bullenten on 60 degree blocks http://www.mar-fab.com/ On that hull, I think the 150 will push it along nicely, hole shot should be ok and top speed in the lower 60's

Wait a little longer when the Lowrances go on year end clearance sales and start watching for their bargains. You can get some pretty good units for $200 then.

Solar panel to maximize time on the water!!!! If the thing was the size of your boat, it would give you some additional run time. For $20, it might charge your cell phone if you left in on it most of the day and it had direct sun. Figure even at 15 amps, which is a fairly slow speed on the TM, that's about 200 watt's your TM is using. What's your solar panel, maybe 15 watts and would be lucky to get that for $20, just don't see that much more runtime in that.

Thier jumping is why I fish for them. I want them to jump and try to coax them to the surface as far out as I can to make them jump. Of cousre, if I loose one, no big deal, didn't cost me a thing in points or money so to answer your question, hold the rod down, even bury the tip in the water and crank like mad. If he's small enough you don't need to net him, when you get to the boat with him and start working him to the surface, as he clears the surface to jump, just keep him coming right on over into the boat. If you have a patner, have him have the net ready so as your swinging him in the boat, he has the net under him. That's when ounces matter, the rest of the time, enjoy their aerobatics.

Not too sure about the lots of good info part but will say what I would do. First off, as old as that battery is and using one of those hot boxes to charge it, you are probably getting close to the end of it's life cycle. If it has caps where you add water, use a hydrometer and check the specific gravity (if you don't have one, NAPA has a good one for about $8, the one with the thermometer in it). A good deep cycle battery will charge up to 1.275, or higher depending on the make, and should be about the same on all cells. Check the gravity 24 hours or more after charging. As for a charger, yes several companies make "Smart" or Intilli chargers that use a logic controlled three step process to charge the battery and go into a float mode to maintain the battery after the charge is complete and are in the $50 - $100 price range. These are much better than that thing you're using now but even with those, all are not created equal. I've never tried but one, it came from Northern Tools and the float voltage was too low to properly maintain a battery so I took it back. Home depot has a Huskey Brand and Schumacker has a line of them also. Again, I never have used these so can't say about their voltages, my chargers are programmable commercial chargers other than my onboard chargers and they are ProMariner PT 300's If you use one like you have, you should put it on a timer that will shut the power off to it after 10 - 12 hours. Once the current drops to minimum, the battery should charge approx another hour and then cut it off, It's should be fully charged then.

Don't use caulk, stick with the 100% silicone. They make a marine grade that's recommended but I've never had a problem with GE Silicone II

Could have been a short. I deleted the rest of my reply after reading your problem a little closer. No doubt about it being a short. When I first read it, I was thinking you meant just the connector was burned off. If the whole wire fried, you've got bigger problems than a loose connecter.

As for map detail, ie contour line intervals, the lakes were surveyed before being flooded. What you find on the paper maps of those lakes if most likely all you're going to find available for any GPS. If they were only initially surveyed at 20' intervals, you won't find a 5' interval map

Other than a Johnson, about the only new two strokes you will find are DFI motors. BRP is still able to make the carburated Johnson because with EPA numbers they are able to get with the e-Tec, they still have a low enough overall production average to produce the dirty carb motors. However the Johnson carbed two stroke is short lived and Johnson will eventually BRP's fourstroke line. As for worrying about a two stroke motor you buy now being obsolete and non supported with parts. I don't think any Johnson, Evinrude, Mercury or Yamaha two stroke you buy today will be non repairable for a long, long, time to come, not gonna say about any of the other brands. As for two strokes in the distant future, I look for the e-Tec to be around many years, Merc and Yamaha might keep their DFI motors going for years also it they can keep on meeting EPA requirements as they get tougher. The rest of the companys have pretty much droped the idea of two strokes and went with the four strokes. I would still take a two stroke any day of the week over a four stroke. They have a much higher power to weight ratio, plus they are much cheaper and easier to maintain

Lifting the rod and holding it is just so you maintain contact with the bait. There are tons of variations, sometimes I like to make a couple of extra pumps when lifting the rod, to give the bait a swimming action, but still being sure to maintain contact. You never hop the bait then drop the rod to take up slack. On the fall is where you get 95% of your bites, if you're dropping the rod and loosing contact, you are gonna loose fish because when you take your slack up and figure out you've got a fish on, it's usaually too late, becasue many times he'll spit that thing out quicker than a hot potato. The two critical things fishing plastics, watch the line and maintain contact. For hooksets, it's like they tell inlisted members in the military, "when in doubt - salute", hooksets are free. There will be many times while learning bites that something just felt different. If it's something you've never felt before, set the hook. Eventually you will get a pretty good feel for what is and not bites. I've been fishing plasctics almost 50 years and I'm still saluting. Oh, and I almost always do a double hookset, if I don't feel I got a solid set on the fish, I'll do even do another one or two. Many times the fish is not in position the get one of those rock solid sets that makes the line twang, so, if it's a mushey set, you had better give it another and another until you get a good solid set. Now this is not dropping slack in the line and popping it again, this is just giving it another hard jerk or two. For many years I was like Henry Ford painting his Model T's and A's. Didn't care what color they were painted them just so they were Black when they rolled out the door. Plum, Purple, Junebug, watermellon seed and pumpken seed are what I throw about 95% of the time

For shorter spinner bait cast, learn to do a little under hand roll of the rod tip. This is best done while standing and the rod held downward not more than a foot or so off the water. You don't cast it by bringing the rod back and fourth, you leave six inches or so of free line between the tip and the lure. You just make a quick roll of the rod tip. You release the lure so it's never more than a foot or so off the water and only only inches off the water as it gets over the spot you're casting to. Stop the bait in the air when it reaches your target. Your are actually casting slightly beyound your mark and stopping on your mark. The bait makes a very soft presentation into the water with almost no noise or splash. Many times you will see a big boil where the bass hits it as soon as it hits the water. I can easily roll cast one 40 - 50 feet and still make a noiseless, splashless entry but seldom cast that far when fishing cover, usually 25 - 30 feet max. This is also about the only time I use a pistol grip rod. A 5'6" bait caster rod or short handle 6' trigger rod works best for this type cast. Hossing big fish in cover with a short pistol grip can be a job so if you're catch bigger fish or fishing thick cover, the trigger rod works better. Use the long rods for those long overhand cast when you're not as concerned about splash. Even on the long overhand cast, if you learn to cast just beyound your mark and stop it when it's only inches above the water at your mark, it still makes a very soft presentation.

Shallow bass in general don't like splashes near them, especially over them. That's why many of the old timers tell you to wait until the rings completely clear a top water plug when you cast it before you make it's first movement. If it does spook the bass when it hits, if there's no other commotion, many times they will swim back to see what spooked them. You seemed suprised that Van Damme stresses a quit entry because he's a spinner bait fisherman. A properly cast spinner bait makes almost no splash, barrely even a ripple when it inters the water. If you're busting the water with a spinner bait, you a missing a lot more bites than you're getting. About the only time splash doesn't matter on a spinner is when you're make super long cast to cover a lot of area where there are lots of stickups, weed lines or over grass beds. If working tree tops or pin pointing cast to a certain spot, it had better inter without any spash. Trying to call up deeper water bass, sometimes the more splash the better, especially when they are out pushing shad. As for how far apart to cast, many times we cast to the same spot several times each. Bass don't always hit the first thing they see, sometimes they will get aggrevative and nail hail out of it after it goes by several times.

Rude

Yes, the battery is not fully charged until it reaches 14.4 (ideal) and is held there for about three hours or so. Then the charger should stop charging the battery and drop into the float mode of 13.6 volts. In the float mode, the 13.6 volts is the ideal maintenance voltage that keeps the battery charged while not in use, provided you keep the charger on and connected 24/7. Here's what happens After using the battery and connecting it to the charger, the charger will start off charging at max amperage until it gets enough charge in the battery for the voltage to reach 14.4 volts. It will then hold the 14.4 volts and the current will start dropping as the battery gains more charge until the current has droped to minimum, approx 2 amps or less Once the current reaches minimum, it should continue to charge at the 14.4 volts and minumum current for another hour or so. Basically until it overcharges the battery 2% - 6% ideally. Now the battery is fully charged and it drops into the 13.6 float voltage that maintains full charge on the battery until you are ready to use it again. Now, all these times are strickly guestimations and are totally dependent on the level of discharge and the charging capacity of the charger.

A Fishtape is pretty much a must and some loss of religion will probably come about before you finish. Just be carefull feeding the fishtape and pulling xducer connector. If it hangs, don't just try tugging it through, you will regret that. Tape up the hooked end on the fishtape before you start feeding it through. Feed the fishtape from under the console to the rear of the boat. Use plenty of black tape to tape the connector to the fishtape so there is a bullet shaped cone in front of the connecter. This will help greatly in getting it to feed back through when you start pulling. It also helps sometimes to have two people, one pulling the fishtape and one feeding the coax.

Well now, as I mention before, I've never used one of those but use the AGM. It does kinda surpise me they have the AGM and Gel in the same mode. They both charge pretty much the same but the recommend float voltage on the AGM is 13.6 volts and on the Gel it's 13.2 volts. They are light because they are a solid state, high frequency units and don't run those big old heavy transformers the old fashion chargers run. They will still charge three times faster than those old transformer things. If yoiu happen to own a digital voltmeter or know someone that would loan you ones for a couple of days, I would be interested in what the voltages are after it hits the 80% and after it has been in float for a few hours. Ideally it would be 14.2 - 14.4 VDC and 13.6 VDC, that would be the perfect setting for your battery.

You will probably find they were made for OMC by MotorGuide. Just OMC had the offset shaft installed on theirs. Still one of the best motors made for going through lilly pads and water with a lot of top cover.

I know I'm just an old dumb country boy that don't know a whole lot so I have one Suggestion. Talk to one of your larger trans rebuild shops. They see more problems a month than most on here will see in a life time. While there, ask if they think it would help to install a shift kit before it does screw up. If they do suggest it, Just make sure it's with a good shop, not everybody does the whole kit installation because theres a couple of things in it that are a pain in the butt to do. Will probably run $150 - $200 for the kit installed. You will probably find they tell you they rebuild three or four of your transmissions a week. See if they mention the TCC regulator valve being a problem. This is one of the main problem childs in it, when it starts messing up, it causes the torque converter to overheat and burn up. However, as menitoned, it's your equipment, you can run it however you please, nobody has to pay the bills but you when it breaks.

If you are running electric only with no cranking battery, yes, you realy should get a seperate battery. When I use a deptfinder in my jon with just a TM, I use one of those $20 lawn mower batteries. Which TM do you have, the one with variable/infinite speed control or one with the set number of speeds. This makes a huge difference. If you have the variable speed, do you have the xducer mounted on very near the TM? If so, unplug the xducer and see if the black screen clears up. There's is also the chance of the problem being radiated and picked up by the xducer cable or the xducer. This is a very common problem with the variable speed TM, the ones with infinite speed control and not the five speed switch. These are also the ones that usually cause the most feedback through the power cable. Lowrance has a whole list of things you will need to go through and try to cure the problem and still may not fully cure it. If you find it is coming through the power cable, you might see if Lowrance offers filters you can buy and you could try some low pass filters from Radio shack made to remove altinator noise from your car radio, but there's the chance you will spend a bunch of money and still not totally cure the problem I have spent hours and hours and doing all kinds of grounding and sheilding just to keep my xducer mounted on the TM from blacking out or causing interterence on my screen.

Stratos and Javelin, hard to get on plane, where'd that come from??? I own a Javelin R20, totally launches out of hole. I've got two Stratos', both have very good hole shot. I have several friends with 201's, none of them have hole shot problems. Now, if you want to consider under powered boats, you can list just about every boat made.

Not exactly!!!! One of these day's you will see a check engine light, the fault code will be P1870 and the transmission will be making hard 1 -2 shifts. The 1998 4L60E is one of the worst transmissions GM made, and they have made some bad ones. Actually, towing is only part of the problem, the transmissions are not very good even when not towing. It would pay you to have a shift kit installed that corrects a couple of the main problems in the valve body that causes early failure. Trust me, I speak from experience, I also happen to own the same truck as yours, been there, done that. Mine lasted 115,000 miles. When I rebuilt it though, I modified it so it can tow 5,000 lbs in overdrive if I wanted to, but it's gets better gas milage when towing in 3. I built my own and still spent $700 valves and other special parts, but it will tow a freight train now. I tow a 20' Javelin, with 225 and dual axle trailer all over the place, in some rather hilly country with no problems now. I guess I should also mention, this response is in reference to the 1500, not the 2500. The 2500 has the 4L80E which is a much heavier transmission, much more suited for towing.

Looks like one of the old merc's that use the locks on the back with the ears that fold down on the nut to keep it from coming off. If so, take a sharp chisel of some you can tap down between the locking tab and the nut to get it away from the nut some, then something not so sharp to tap it on down flat so you can get a socket on it.

Sounds like you've gotten about a personal as you should. I'm at the lake for a little fishing but if someone else don't have a solution, I think I have a manual at the house when I get back home sunday night. I'll see what it shows.