Way2slow

If your state has laws against over powering a hull, there's always the posibilty of getting caught. A friend of mine is a policeman in Ohio and guite often volunteers for lake duty. Police there also work on the water checking boats and he said they frequently catch people that change or remove the decals and talks like the fine is pretty hefty when the do get caught, right down to taking the boat because it was used in the commission of a crime, (thought he never knew of anyone having one taken). I lived in Virginia for several years and there were a couple of lakes near me I fished that had a 10 hp limit, I think everbody their ran 15 hp Johnson with 10 hp decals and some even ran the much larger 25 hp motors with decals removed and just the number 10 on them. Fished those lakes for almost six years and never knew or heard of anyone ever even getting checked. So that's the long answer. It's strickly your call on that one, keeping in mind, what might be no problem on one lake or area, can cause you some major problems in another.

For most, fishing season will soon be coming to an end, if this is the case for you, you might want to wait just a little while longer. Cabela's and BPS will be having some great sales on their stock of this years models when the new models come out. I personnaly prefer Lowrance, but like with any brand item, the only brand one person would have, another person wouldn't have it if you gave it to him so don't get hung up on brands. The higher the resolution, the better, color units are easier to read but not necessary, the output power helps give better resolution and seperation (stronger output produces stronger echo/return), especially when you start getting in 30' or deeper water but don't get hung up on thinking you need 1000's of watts, unless you get a color unit and plan to fish deep. Dual freqeuncy units work better when your getting into 50' deep water. Lowrance has some good info on their website that you should read also. Hummingbird and others may also. Study up on them, so you can make an educated assumption of what you want and buy them when they are on year end closeout sales. Buy the one that gives you the most bang for your buck. You don't get the latest and greatest but get very good equipment at reasonable prices. Buy a $150 unit during season, you get a $150 unit, pay $150's for a close out unit and you may get a $275 unit.

You can buy the rod storage system with the tubes but you might not like them. Some use the tubes that go in golf bags, which seem like a good idea a first glance but will cost you rods unless you has some type of sleeve to slide over the rods. The golf bags tubes are shorter than the rod, letting the tips bunch together in the bow and get hund up. Trying to get a rod out when they get hung is difficult and will break the tips off, been there done that more than once. If you try installing tubes that will protect the full lenght of the rod, there may not be enough room in the bow for more than just a few. If you have to slide sleeves over the rods, just to slide them in the golf bag tubes, why waste the money on the tubes, slide the sleeves over the rods and just put them on the rod locker. The rear supports that come with the rod storage system does keep the reels from banging against each other but also limits you to eight - ten rods. I saw one one of the guys on this site post a pic of some mesh sleeves he was making and selling that looked pretty good and were not expensive. When I need more, I'm giving him a call. I would stronly recommend you find his post and contact him if you go with a rod storage system that does not fully protect the rod all the way to the end. Even if you make several wraps around the rod with your line, they tips will still get hung. I took my rod storage systems out that used the golf tubes, I got tired of replacing broken rods plus I usually carry 10 - 15 rods and wanted to use my second rod locker for storage. Have not problem pileing them in one and use sleeves over the rods, I also could care less if my reels get a little banged and worn looking. However, this is not a recommended pratice for your spinning reels, I take them off the rods and properly store them when not using them, bent bails are no fun.

Folks, Heat is generated at the point of resistance. If the wing nuts are getting hot enough to draw a blister, that's the area of resistance. Either they're not making good connection or the cable end has a bad crimp, it's that plain and simple. Like I said, for those who think wing nuts finger tight are just fine and use them, that's great, it's your equipment, just keep burn cream handy for when you grab one just after using the tm, one of these times it's gonna get you. If the whole cable was getting hot from end to end, then the cable is too small for the load. If there was a bad splice or connection somewhere up the cable, then that's where it would be getting hot. If water was boiling out of one cell of the battery, then you could figure the battery has a bad cell. Wet, dirty batteries getting hot is rare since doing away with the lead tie straps, and even then it's on the surface of the battery and you can smell them. If the whole battery was getting hot, then you could figure a possible bad battery or way too much amp draw on the battery. Yes, copper conducts heat, but for enough heat to conduct down the cable to burn his finger at the wing nut, caused by a bad conneciton up the cable, he would have to have a major melt-down with smoke and flames going up there. Don't go chasing around you elbow to get to your appitite.

Tons of variables are involved in your post. First let me just say a 10hp motor probably will not get any of the boats you have mentioned on plane. A 10 hp motor is more for your 14 ft jons. Even a 15 ft jon would be a load for it if you had two people, a cooler and your gear. Anything more than that and you will only be able to go through the water like a barge. Forget about figuring MPH, it will be well down in the single digets. You could get the boat you like, with the proper size motor on it and use a 10 hp as a kicker motor to push you around those limited hp lakes, but only figure speeds not much greater than you TM, just don't have to worry about the battery going dead before the end of the day.

If you can get to all the screws, you're going to be lucky. Might want to look into just getting three new bowl and three new flange gaskets, pull them off and replace the gasket.

From the way he's talking about it being touchy when shifting, it may have jumped out of gear. Sounds like he needs to check for loss motion and adjust his shift cable and linkage and make sure shift rod going to lower unit is making it's full travel into gear before he starts paying for a rehub. Normally, once a hub spins, it don't get better and go back to working as if it had never spun. Could very well be the hub, but I would check everything else first.

Been there, done that too, there's been many times when I've had total air under boat and motor when running skinney water and have to make a close pass behind another boat but even then it's not a bone jarring landing. I was just refering to a your normal pass down a rought water lake and have room to work boat traffic. I also have one of those tin can bass boat and trust me, I can totally relate to the ride of one. I never run that thing very fast when the water gets choppy.

Many times, you can order replacement connectors for the transducer cable, giving you the abilily to cut one manufactors off and installing someone elses, I've done that many times when a boat had a through hull transducer I didn't want to knock out and install another. You can also cut off a connector and splice a section of cable with a connector from another that will fit your unit, done that many times when there were no replacement connectors available. So, it's very simple to make a transducer connect to any depthfinder you want. You just have to do the research to make sure the transducer you want to use is the same frequency as the unit you want to plug it into. A Lowrance 1240A console mount flasher with a through hull transducer doesn't give many options for adjusting out interferance. It will even pick up the TM unit when its stored on the bow if I get the gain to high

Like Cart7 mentioned, to get a reasonably new (five - six years old) boat or one a little older in real nice conditionm you will spend $5K+. You can pick up older Trackers, Fisher's etc for less, even much less based on age and condition. I have a 86 model 15' Fisher with an 88 model 48 hp Evinrude I'm selling for $1,900. The boat is a good boat but is not in anything near a great conditon, and you see others for even less, but their condition dictates the price. Sometimes, if your'e patient, keep looking and don't just buy the first boat you see in your price range, you can come across some pretty nice boats at some good deals. The main thing is knowing what you want in a boat, hull style, size etc and don't just settle for something different, you won't be happy with it. If you want a 16 - 17' Tracker or similar aluminum bass bass, hold out until you find one like want. After you shop for a while and look at a number of boats, you will get a pretty good feeling for want and what you can expect to pay for it. Then you can adjust your wants/desires or what you plan to pay if necessay.

If the sonars run the same frequency they can share transducers, brand doesn't matter, but not at the same time, there has to be a A-B switch to switch to which ever sonar is wanted to be used. Some brand sonars run 200 khz, some 192 khz and some 400 khz and some offer the 50 khz deep water option. The transducers resonate at the frequency they are built for so at any other frequency they either operate at a reduced effecieny or not at all. As Cart7 mentioned look inside where the bilge pumps are mounted, they may be shooting through the hull. Even with seperate transducers, with both units on, you can still get interference between them. My bow mounted and console mounted Lowrance LCDs do a pretty good job canceling out other signals if another unit is on, but the flasher is totally useless if either of the other sonars on. For the screen you were refering to for showing speed, couse over ground etc requires an optional sensor, it may have just been refering to there was no sensor connected for that option to work.

Nothing wrong with the battery. This is caused by bad connections. You need to clean the cable ends so they are bright and the post and lead around the post until it's bright. Throw the wing nuts away and get you some hex nuts and tightened them with a wrench, if you insist on wing nuts, use pliers to tightenen them, make sure you don't have washers under the cable ends between the ends and battery. Brass nuts and lock washers or silver plated nuts and lock washers work best, if you can find them If you still get heat after doing this, most likely the cable ends have bad crimps and are not making a good connection with the wire inside. You will need to cut them off and get new terminals, crimp and solder them on. You may have to cut several inches of the cable off if it's discolored from the heat so you can get back to clean bright copper. As I've posted before, with the amount of current these motors draw, it only takes a small amount of resistance to generate large amount of heat. Just to give you an example of how easy it is to get one hot. 1 ohm of resistance and 35 amps of current would create enough heat that it would be like trying to hold a 35 watt holigen lamp.

gotta luv it!!!!!! We're talking about a fish here. I open the drain on my livewell when I load the boat on the trailer. Takes about 15 - 20 minutes to get to the house, plug the charger in and get a bucket to put the fish in. By then they are pretty much dead. If not, by the time I scale them, cut a filet off one side and cut the head off, that pretty well finishes them off. I only keep small bass, many are a little to big to fry whole but not big enough to completely filet so I cut only cut a filet off one side, leave the skin on, cut the ribs out and cook the other half with the back bone in it. Cutting the filet's off both sides waste too much meat. I prefer to clean fish that are fully dead and been dead for several minutes, they don't bleed out as bad into the meat like a live fish or freshly killed fish does, giving you much whiter, cleaner looking meat.

No different than mounting one on a boat. Most of the newer good depth finder will read pretty close to real time for almost as fast as that thing will run (unless you've done like a guy in Jesup GA did and put a Mercury 300X powerhead in it) so keeping up with wnd drift is no problem. You can mount your bracket a little down the top of the console and a skimmer X-ducer on the rear but it will have to be to one side some so it's out of the turbulance of the jet drive. This might create a problem when running wide open. If that section of the hull is lifted out of the water when fully on the pad, it will not work until you slow back down enough for the X-ducer to make contact with the water again. The X-ducer has to maintain contact with the water to work properly. I might suggest for a mount to use the Ram Micro mount. That way you only have a small 1" ball mounted on the console of your jet ski when you don't want to use the depth finder and it only takes about a minute to connect and disconnect. You can get little square covers to cover the hole the cables go through. If you get a Hummingbird model, they come with a quick disconnect mount and the cables are concealed in the mount so all you have to do is pop it on and off. Installation and operation would be no different than a boat, after all, it's just a mini boat that has a bench seat and handle bars. Keep in mind though, that thing has to stay water tight and you will have to make holes to run cables amd installing the mount, be sure to use plenty of silicon to seal any holes and openings created mounthing the thing.

You will probably have to rotate the head 180 degrees to make it work on the stern. I guess it's a hand control and not a foot control since you mentioned the handle so it you mount it on the back, the handle will be sticking out the back of the boat as it is, and yes, you will loose a whole bunch of boat control. Also mounting on the corner of the rear might make the boat push kinda cattie wampus through the water.

Actually, I've got a powerhead to fit that motor I will sell you for $800. If runs good, acutally very good, but has a little skirt tick where it has used pistons in it. Would probably make you a good motor for a couple of seasons until you could find a good used motor or get yours rebuilt. The bad part about this power head is it's has to be run on 91/93 octane makes about 275 HP and you would need to know how to jet carbs to tune it for your boat. Plus shipping would cost about $200, depending on where you are. Oh, and if the VRO went out, it would most likely have more than one bad cylinder, the motor would probably be junk.

If you're not running Bearing Buddies or similar lubers, you should clean, pack and replace seals every year, either when you winterize the boat in the fall or in the spring before you start using it. As for installing bearing buddies, no more skill required than taking the bearing cap off and knocking them on. However, before installing them, you must disassemble the hubs, clean and inspect the bearings, replace any that show signs of pits and their cups, pack them with the same grease you plan to use in the grease gun to keep the lubed with, fill the hub completely with grease so it pushes grease out when you install the outer bearing. Then tap your Bearing Buddies on. I acutally prefer the Red Eyes but that's me. Be sure to pack the bearings and not just rub grease on the outside of them. For the next few trips to the lake, take your grease gun and add enough to make the indicator start to move out before launching the boat. As the air works out you will need to grease regularly for the first few times. After that usually give them and shot every couple of months. After that, I know people that have been running the same bearings for years & years and never had them back apart. I still do mine every two or three years. You should never mix greases, so it's best if you always use the same brand once you have the installed. Also, if the bearings are packed with a heavy bearing grease, it won't let the grease you use in the grease gun go through the outer bearing to get to the inner so your Bearing Buddies do nothing for you.

I think you will find the Lowe crappie does not have a rear deck for a second bass fisherman. The rear seat sits on a walkaround platform in the center of the boat. Lowe also makes that same boat in a bass version.

Depends on "bad" and how bad. You would have to pull the head access the damage. Figure about $3,500 to have a reman'd powerhead droped on. $1,500 to have that one pulled off, bored and new pistons installed, but not much in other new parts. Somebody that know what they're doing can pull the head and intake, go through the intake, pull the bad piston out hone it and put another one in if it' just melted one and only did minor damage to sleeve for a few hundered bucks. These are all based on the the fact the block is good and the motor is rebuildable. If you have a shop repair it, look to spend $2,000 to $4,000

Not to sure what the real question is but My son has one, not sure of the brand but his is a tunnel hull. With a 115 Merc (prop, not jet drive) his runs on plane in less than 3" of water, but I think it takes about 4 1/2 - 6" to float and to get on plane. But as mentioned, they are not cheap. Just going by what he's told me, I've never been it myself.

It's not recommended to run your depth finder or any electronics off the TM battery. You're variable speed TM's are operated by a high frequency square-wave signal that the on/off times is what controls the motor speed. This creates the posibility for the signal to feed back into the electronics and damage them. Even though there are suppose be built in filters to prevent this, is still can happen. With the non-varialbe speed, the ones with the 5 or 6 switch positons for speed, you have constant voltage spikes generated everytime you press the foot switch, these can damage your electonics. Again, there are filters built in to prevent this but if your's is one in the thousand that gets damaged, still don't help you much. On my jon boat where I'm only using one TM battery and no cranking battery, I just use a small $20 lawn mower battery to run the depth finder when I'm using one in it. It doesn't take much battery to run one the whole day, even the whole week as far as that goes. Yes, you can run everything off one battery, bunches of people do it but it can come back and bite you in the butt. When it does, you loose. Forgot to mention, these can also damage the electronics in a lot of you new outboards, which can get very expensive.

It will have two lugs coming out the bottom like that but won't have the mounting tabs, may be in a plastic case also. One lug should have a connecting strap on it and bolted directly to the battery and the TM cable bolted to the other lug You should only have the large TM cables connected to the deep cycle TM battery, there should be no other wires going to it. All accessories and everything else should be connnected to the cranking battery. Usually the only two big cables connected to the cranking battery are the battery leads going to the motor and if like most others, one #10 - #12 wire with a inline fuse going to a fuse/breaker panel or main power switch and some smaller wires going to who knows what.

After reading your post again, not sure about the fuse. Was this fuse in line with the TM cables or the power cables feeding the accessories? Don't sound like it was connected to the TM if you said the TM worked when you got it home, so it sounds like the accessory fuse and you may have done something to blow it. If it was connected to the TM cable, that's no where near enough fuse and it probably just blew for too much current running the TM Also if that was the accessory fuse, you need to check to make sure there is no circuit breaker, looks like a small square block connected to one of the battery terminals. Auto reset breakers will reset after the cool down. It may have one and just too small. Another possibility is a bad connection, it takes a lot more current to run the motor under a load than out of the water. A bad connection will show up when loaded while the motor will run just fine out of the water. Could also be a bad motor. Almost any boat dealer should have the circuit breaker.

Ya'll keep refering to the need for speed as the reason for not buying an underpowered boat. One last time, SPEED HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!!!!!!!!. What's speed when the boat won't even get on plane with a load in it. If he ALWAYS fishes buy himself and never carries much of a load in the boat, he might be happy with a 90 on a Stratos 201. Heck, I recently bought a nice 30 hp Johnson for a little of nothing off a guy's 16' glass boat a dealer sold him. He fished by himself on a fairly small lake and thought it worked great for what he wanted for almost two years. Then he started fishing with friend and then the boat would not get on plane with both of them in it. He took it back to the same dealer he bought it from and they wanted almost as much to upgrade the motor as he paid for the boat, and made out like they really didn't want his boat as a trade in on a new one with that little motor. He finally went to another dealer, bought a much bigger used motor, I installed it and gave him a few hundred for his 30. I think most of us are speeking from the experience of having had an underpowered boat and they are absolutely no fun anytime you want a friend or two along, and they are definetly no fun when it comes time to get rid of it. The lions share of the money you saved up front buying it with that little motor is going down the tubes when you try to sell/trade it because most experienced boaters wouldn't have it. Take it back to that same dealer sold it to you (the one that's bragging about what a great package it is right now) and he's gonna give you a rude awakening when he starts telling you the trade in value of your little motored boat. They are setup that way only to get you on the water at the cheapest possible cost and that salesman will brag about what a great rig it is just to get your name on that contract in his hand. As mentioned, you can put a Briggs and Stratton in a car and it will get going and probably run the speed limit on flat roads, just don't take it in the mountains. With a boat it's a little different, it takes lot more power to get it on plane just so you can get going than it does once you get on plane, the heavier the load, more this is so.

RSBreth, That's why we buy these 20' 1,800 pound hulls. We can run 70 mph on moderate chop and through other boat wakes and hardley feel them. I can ride and drink a cup of coffee while you're getting your eyeballs bounced so hard it takes five minutes for everything to settle once you've stopped the boat. Chug Bug As I said before, the Big motor is not for speed, on a fast hull, yes it gives you speed but on most hulls, it's just gives you the ability to get on plane with a load without having to fight and strain when you have a couple of people and a full load in the boat.