TheRodFather

14g should be plenty big enough. Downside of going larger is cost, no measurable up side. Graphs don't draw much current. Keep splices out, solder any connections, and use dielectric grease in any plugs. Conductivity losses (corrosion) is the main issue to worry about.

I think you are onto something there.

It happened a couple weeks ago, but I have been busy with work and family so I am only just now getting a chance to get the picture and story up. It started out a day mostly like any other, this particular day I launched the boat and headed to a shelf about midway down lake that I have seen boats parked on many times, although I have not fished it for more than a passing cast or two. I was sitting in about 15ft of water, maybe 100yds off the bank, casting parallel to the bank/shelf that goes from 10 to 20ft deep, throwing a drop shot with a live shad I had caught earlier that morning. I have been so frustrated from about mid summer on, catching one or two in an outing, that I decided to catch some live bait, just to give it a go. I have been trying to focus on fishing deep all this year, but to be honest, like clockwork on every trip, after a couple hours of frustration, I would head to shallower points and coves and would catch one or two, just to keep my spirits up. So there I was, myself and my neighbor on my boat, and another boat with 2 guys 50ft away, sitting on this shelf when I feel a "whump". I slowly real into the weight of the fish, I am using a VMC swingshot (I think its called a swingshot) dropshot hook, the one that swivels and has line ties on both top and bottom. I feel several strong head shakes and figure it is a decent sized fish. Tackle is a 7ft Ethos Nano, with a Shimano Nexave. A fairly inexpensive combo, but one I really like for its sensitivity to price point. 20lb power pro with an 8lb Pline CXX. I keep fighting the fish for what seems like 10 minutes, probably more like 2, but she didn't seem to want to come up. She pulls drag a few times. This lake has a good catfish population and I got to figuring that was what was on the other end. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I got a chance to see her head and back, a Bass! I didn't have the net at the ready since I was figuring I was into a catfish and it wouldn't break my heart if it shook off. That was a mistake! My co angler asked if I wanted the net, I calmly said "yes" (:)), I got her netted and picked her out of the net, it was the biggest bass I have ever caught by several pounds from the look of it. I got her into the livewell and tried to shake off my jitters. I asked the guy in the boat beside me if he had a scale. He did, thankfully! I have never caught anything big enough to where I would want a scale, but I will be buying one now for sure! 7.4 lbs, undeniably my new personal best. After a couple pictures, including one of the scale, I released her and she swam right off. I knew she was big, but I think I was in shock or something because until I got a better look at the pictures of me holding her, later on that day after coming home, I wasn't fully appreciating the size of the fish as I held her. And I definitely didn't long-arm her for the pictures :). After a tough year on the water, dropping a cylinder and rebuilding my outboard myself, this was a delightful way to close out the season. I thank everyone on here for putting up with my noob questions over the years! Tight lines BR.

I have gotten pretty good at not chasing around the surface boiling. It just doesn't seem to produce much of anything but frustration for me. I imagine that when I troll over and throw a bait, the fish are just chuckling at me. Which only aggravates me more So I just stay away from chasing them. I will keep a rod at the ready in case something happens a cast length away though.

Gain adjustments make any difference?

I feel your pain. I blew my outboard late summer, rebuilt it, got skunked for weeks. Then caught my PB 7.4lb on the 4th week. I think I'm going to hand it up for the year before I burn out. Better to end on a positive note

I would think they all fell for a lure or bait once. Some learned, some didn't, just like people. (I like having an excuse for getting skunked, so I'm going with that :))

Thank you for your service!

I'm a plumber. Clean water and sanitary sewer has saved more lives than every doctor combined since the beginning of time. How about you?

Let me guess, whoever picked the contractor went with the lowest bid............. The phrase "you get what you pay for" didn't come to pass by accident.

I hear WebMD and Google have some good info too. This is the attitude the contractors in the thread are talking about. I'm not at your home to fight you, I'm here to help. What I know how to do isn't free though. The knowledge about what will work long term, root causes of issues, what products are out there to solve your issue, that all requires experience that the legit tradesman has paid his dues sweating and bleeding to learn. And someday you are going to be too old and need help. Code requirements are invented and revised by insurance companies. You have a flood or fire that was caused by work you did, or work you paid an unlicensed jack leg did. Or worse, somebody dies, in your family or the family of the person you sold the house to. Who do you think insurance is going to come after if somebody gets hurt or property is damaged? They won't be able to find the jack leg because he knows not to give you his real phone number. Homeowners can do anything they want on their home, if it goes bad you could be out waaaaaay more money than I charge to do the work and stand behind it with my insurance. People without a licence (handymen) can do a lot of things, but big stuff needs to be done by a licence holder, or you could end up loosing everything you own. I've seen some dangerous stuff out there. Be safe, youtube is not a replacement for thousands of hours of training and experience.

Yesss! Scientific proof I can lean on when I get skunked! There is compelling evidence that catch and release teaches the fish and we are shooting ourselves in the foot by releasing.

The company I work for runs a business model where the first call of the day is the only one that confirms an arrival time. I get to that call, and do whatever I can do to make that customer happy, if I can sell the work and do it on the spot I do. If I have to push it off and reschedule the repair, I do. For all the other calls, the customer is told to go about their day, and we will call them when a tech is available, giving them time to get back home if they are out or whatever. It seemed weird at first, but the idea is that we devote ourselves to the customer we are at, and are not rushing through to get to the next call. Most companies give the techs 6-10 calls and the customers get a time window of when we will be there. The way we do it there is no pressure to get in and get out. Better care for the customers in my opinion. Customers generally do not have my number, some do, and I will answer if I am not directly in front of another customer. Everything is coordinated through the dispatcher as far as scheduling though.

As someone who relocated and started a totally different career path as a Service Plumber, I can tell you that a lot of times calls come in that take higher priority over previous calls that are already booked. Maybe a family is without water, or without a downstairs toilet and seniors living on the first floor. Is it wrong to get to that call first, over the estimate for a bathroom reno on a third bathroom......? And, at the end of the day, some calls are worth more in revenue than others. Hate to say it, but if I have a customer with a leaking water heater vs a customer with a dripping outside hose faucet, I'm going to the heater call. The job of the Dispatcher is to triage the calls based on customer need and rev potential for the company. That's just business. It takes over 250k to keep a truck and Plumber on the road, including all the overhead, etc, so they can be out there helping people, and have a decent wage and benefits. And people say no to my quotes all the time, 30% of the time to be exact. If some aren't saying no, your prices are too low. Running that call that a customer says no to costs money too. But the same people that need our help, seem to think that everything ought to cost 20 bucks and get done at 4:30 on a Friday night. Cheap contractors can undercut prices of legit licenced companies so badly that a large portion of the population will say no to my prices because they don't care about quality work. And then when the guy walks off the job and leaves a room full of brand new tools in the bathroom that they bid but didn't complete, or the water heater bursts and floods the house. I have to go hand them a quote to do it right, AND they paid out to the jackleg too. I have a family too, and I want to see my kids games and enjoy my time on earth just like anyone else. Not calling back is wrong, no doubt. You get what you pay for though, and if your looking for rock bottom prices, you will almost always get rock bottom service. Just sayin.

No problem, I guess it depends how bad you want it to work. New components can be soldered in if you can figure out what exactly is wrong.

Tough to understand exactly what you are describing. Can you post a schematic of what you are trying to accomplish? The startup issue you are having is likely due to a startup capacitor that is discharging over time, and doesn't have enough oomph to get the motor turning after a period of non running time. The higher the voltage an electric motor is designed to run at, the less current (amps) is used to produce the same power (smaller wire can be used, more efficient, etc). BUT, high amps are needed to get a motor to start moving, thus a capacitor is used to give off a burst of energy for initial startup. 24v is less voltage, but more amps are drawn, thus your TM is able to start, and when you switch to the third batt, the startup amps are not needed, just running amps, which can be quite different from each other. HVAC blower motors work the same way, when the capacitor fails, you can get the blower to spin by bump starting it, and then the electricity takes over and spins it at the proper speed, but it wont restart from stopped. I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to accomplish. Are you running 3 batteries in series, one trolling motor uses all three batts, and a second trolling motor is a 24v, or they are both 36v, and you would like to switch in between the two? What size wire and length are you using, etc. Is this TM used?

I have a 70# 24v Powerdrive, I am using 3 Walmart Everstart batteries. Interestingly, the Everstarts are built by the same company that builds Interstate batteries, which are the gold standard for traditional chemistry batts. I bought all three of them new about 3-4 years ago, right around 100 bucks apiece, and they are all going strong. I use a Noco 3 bank charger, and the cranking battery always goes green (fullly charged) within 8 hours, the deep cycles seem to take longer to get to green, overnight usually. But I have never, and I mean never, come even close to running the batteries down past 50% (as shown by the batt checker on the TM). I have no doubt I could fish for two days on one charge. I built my boat for the susquehanna river (lots of current). Now that I'm in NC on lakes, I have way more TM than I'll ever need. Always keep the batts fully charged, if possible, charge as soon as you get home. This will keep the batteries lasting longer. The TM instructions will help you decide if your wire is sufficient or if you should upgrade. Your breaker may need upsized too.

Interesting, I will try to get in contact with them. Thanks for the tip! I'll see if I can get some pictures up.

This happened to me once. I have a powerdrive, I hit a couple wakes and I could see it starting to go, I cut power in time and nothing got bent. I hasn't happened again, maybe I didn't have it locked in fully. A brace to keep the TH head from bouncing while trailering and running up/down lake is on my short list of fabrication projects. The brace will be a secondary protection from accidental deployment too.

Summer kicked my butt. Keep the faith, try things way out of the norm, you never know. I tend to get caught up in what I "should" be throwing, and I think that handicaps me sometimes. I usually start the day throwing what is appropriate for the seasonal conditions, and if that doesn't work, I'll throw a bait I have a ton of confidence in (ned rig). If that doesn't work, I start throwing everything but the kitchen sink, within reason, I'm not going to throw a frog in open water 30ft deep, etc. For example, I can't catch a fish on a crankbait in the summer (or at all really) to save my life. Topwater in the morning? Nope. I may as well quit watching Youtube all together. I've been skunked so many times this summer I don't want to think about it enough to come up with the number of skunks. I have tried to really work on locating fish this year. And still, lots of skunks. Last weekend I went to a shelf that always has guys parked on it, I have never caught a fish there in 2 years of fishing that lake. I threw a live shad on a dropshot, and 2 casts later, wham, 7.4 pounds, my personal best. The PB certainly helps with motivation, but it's been a rough summer.

Anyone ever see this? I have a 3700 box that sits in the boat compartment with all the other 3700 boxes, and probably 90% of my lipless RES baits are swelled, like the summer heat blew them up. They arent taking on water, but the worst ones show the paint cracking on the spine of the bait. Rattle traps are fine. No other baits are this way, topwaters, jerkbaits, all fine, all stored in same boat hatch. Oddly, the chrome ones are fine, but all the other colors have some degree of swell to them. They still rattle, and seem to swim ok, but I'm sure the action isn't what it's supposed to be. Kind of annoying, my OCD is going to end up replacing a dozen of them.

I have been using the Norman clips with hard baits on the boat. I find that my red eye shads will foul up if I yo yo retrieve too violently though. I have to be real careful to not let the line get slack while the bait is dropping. I think the clips are causing this, but so far I just account for it and it's not a big deal. It's a good trade off for being able to switch bait sizes or colors. Bank fishing, I'm usually not trying as many different baits like I would on the boat because in the boat I have most all techniques covered with their own combo. So I just tie when bank fishing.

When you say hook ups, you mean you felt the weight of the fish and then they got off right? Sounds like a hook, or hook set problem to me. Too light and it won't be up to the barb and he can shake it out. Too hard and the hole is big enough that he can shake it out.

I have a powerdrive with spot lock. I consider spot lock a must have. Power poles would be nice as well, but I can get by with spot lock in shallow water just fine. Well enough to not be able to justify the cost of poles anyway. So I am covered deep 100%, and shallow 90%, I say 90 because in shallow water, the TM can kick up quite a bit of sediment and swirl the water pretty powerfully, which I think could spook the fish. But I just float in slow, and be at a dead stop before spot locking, and try to keep a good distance from what I am casting too. The powerdrive is not one of the ones that could have the livescope mounted on, so that's a bummer. But again, it is cost prohibitive at this point to go to a higher level trolling motor. Especially since the garmin motor doesn't get me the "ultimate" set of features. For me, with my setup (garmin graphs, minnkota powerdrive TM), It breaks down like this: What I have: 24v 70lb powerdrive, plenty of power and life spot lock remote operation of TM stop and deploy is ok, but not great. Dream list: Plenty of power and life spot lock ability to use remote AND a foot pedal integration with garmin graphs, including depth contour following. Livescope on the TM, so no secondary poles to stow and deploy. easy stow and deploy Unfortunately, the garmin TM doesn't have the integration advantage that minnkota/humminbird has, so for me, it isn't ever going to make it worth 3k, when the minnkota is less money and gives me the same features. If they integrate it, I can check off all things on the dream list, and find a way to justify the cost :).

For now.........there is a reason people spend hard earned money on new lures, techniques, combos. Sure, some of it is our love for gadgets, but mostly it is to get better at catching fish because for whatever reason catching has gotten more difficult, at the end of the day, the tug is the drug, with relaxing in nature being second. Lets be honest, if getting out in nature, spending time with grandkids, etc, is the main goal, there are much cheaper ways to do that than owning a boat and or fishing tackle to bank fish, especially at the level of addiction that most of us are at If the 297 swim senko, or the fluke, or the roboworm, or whatever, was the end all be all that caught fish everywhere you went for the rest of your life, there wouldn't be stores, warehouses, and careers dedicated to offering thousands of different baits. Nobody would need them, there wouldn't be a market for them. 3 years ago I would have said the Ned rig was my 297 swim senko. But sadly Ned is letting me down lately. 3 Years ago the whopper plopper was slaying bass, I haven't had a bite on a plopper in a year.