Elkins45

Go to the Dollar Tree and pick up a couple of bottles of nail polish. I like it way better than model paint and the bottles come with a built in brush. It cures faster than model paint as well.

Sportsman’s Warehouse has long synthetic hair in their fly tying section. You might want to give acrylic yarn a try. If you separate out the strands and fray them it makes a surprisingly good skirt material.

Not the first time ever, of course, but the first time with my good boat. Parked my truck, walked back to the ramp and noticed there was already a pool of water in the floor. I immediately remembered laying the drain plug on the transom when I was removing the transom saver so I pulled off my shoes and socks and tried to insert the plug. I almost fell in when the motor shifted, my glasses almost fell off and my keys did fall out of my pocket. I have no idea how that happened but fortunately they landed in the transom well. I was wearing my inflatable PFD so as I was reaching down to put in the plug and sliding toward the water I remember thinking ‘If I fall in it will cost me $25!” I got the plug in and flipped on the bilge pump, but after 10 minutes the water level hadn’t changed at all. To cut to the chase, I had installed the plug in the live well intake and not the hull drain hole. Once I corrected that the pump didn’t take long to empty it. On the bright side I know that my bilge pump is at least capable of keeping up with a missing plug. On the other side I wonder what possessed G3 to not equip this boat with an automatic float switch for the pump? If it had kicked on by itself I might have known it was taking on water before I walked away. I’ve owned this boat since shortly before I retired and I’ve launched it at least a hundred times, so I suppose I should be grateful it didn’t happen sooner. As a friend once said, there are three kinds of boaters: the ones that have launched without the drain plug, the ones that are going to launch without the drain plug, and those that are liars. If I could make three suggestions to help others they would be (a) have a spare plug immediately accessible (like twist tied to the transom) (b) learn how to identify the correct hole by feel while hanging over the back and (c) wire in a float switch for your bilge pump. Learn from my stupidity!

Has anyone had any luck with rigging a full sized curly tail worm with a jig head and using it on the bottom with a moderate retrieve? Or swimming it at mid or shallow depth like a swim bait? Sometimes I think when fish are suspended but not particularly aggressive they aren’t willing to swim down and get a soft plastic lure being worked on the bottom. This seems like a way to maybe avoid having to use a drop shot rig. I find them awkward to cast with any precision because of the amount of line and the weight hanging below the rod tip.

I use 30# catfish mono for backing. It doesn’t take much to take up space and it’s super tough.

I have some braid that has spent so much time in the water that it’s lost most of the dye and is a pale mint green color. It still seems OK performance wise but I know it’s a few years old. How often do you replace your braided lines?

How about Pickwick? Worth trying?

I have a week to fish at the end of the month and can’t decide where to go. I’ve never fished Guntersville and it’s not a terrible drive. Or I could go farther south. I don’t think I want to drive all the way to the middle of Florida but if I change my mind I would probably hit the St. John’s and Lake George. How about Kentucky Lake? Would it already be too cold? It’s an easy drive for me.

1. What’s likely to be the most productive month for fishing Florida lakes? 2. Are those big catches people post from Headwaters and the other famous lakes all taken with shiners or can you catch a similar amount of fish with artificials?

175/80/13 vs 205/75/14 so 75” circumference vs 80”. 24” vs 28” diameter.

Fun fact: in the year since I bought them the 14” Goodyear Endurance tires have increased from $118 to $160.

The spare is identical to the ones that were on the axles so presumably the weight capacity wouldn’t be an issue. I totally get your point about uneven wear, but do you think this would be a problem for just a few hundred miles?

Restarting my browser made it work on my iPad once, but as soon as I left the site and came back it didn’t work again.

Technically I think this question is more about the axle, hub and weight distribution but it’s caused by a tire, so… My 16.5’ aluminum boat (around 1300 pounds including the trailer) came with 13” wheels, but since all 13” trailer tires seem to be garbage I bought a set of 14” wheels and mounted Goodyear trailer tires on them. My spare, however is still a 13” and I wonder how much of a problem it would be driving with it mounted for several hundred miles to get home. The boat would obviously be tilted toward the smaller wheel and my understanding of vectors makes me think that would make the tire, hub and axle on that side carry over 50% of the weight since the boat would be tilting “downhill” into the smaller tire. Should I spend more money for a third 14” wheel and tire or am I overthinking this? Or should I just carry all three of the old 13” tires with me as a backup LOL?

Has anyone tried Armorall or some other UV treatment to make them last longer?

Yes. A squeeze bulb is $19 at Walmart. $23 at Academy.

Went to pump up my 9.5 Evinrude this afternoon and it sprayed gas all over me. Best price I can find in a physical store for a new primer bulb is $19. Or I can buy a four pack of sketchy Chinese ones that have 0% chance of meeting the air quality standards for $15 on Amazon. Gee thanks, EPA. You’ve totally solved the pollution problem now. On the bright side, at least one of my old six gallon steel fuel tanks is still functional so when this plastic one inevitably cracks I won’t have to spend $60 on another disposable tank.

The “arms race” to own the latest version of electronic gizmos isn’t helping either, and nothing loses value faster than technology. My 2007 outboard is every bit as functional as it was the day it left the factory but my 2007 sonar/GPS might as well be an Atari 2600 Pong game compared to the giant screens people are buying today. And I doubt I could sell it for $15 on eBay.

I can't imagine how the average middle class person with a family could ever have enough disposable income to buy a $62K boat. $92K is just laughable. I think people need to temper their expectations about how much boat they need in order to have a workable fishing rig. It doesn't take 22 feet of fiberglass and 250 HP to catch fish. Don't be a victim of marketing and consumer envy.

I do too until the credit card bill comes. But in this particular case there isn’t a hotel nearby, or at least not one that isn’t some sort of private resort booked years in advance.

There's a piece of water I want to fish but it's too far to do as a day trip and too remote to have any places to stay nearby. I had the crazy idea of somehow rigging up a cot and canopy and just spending a couple of nights on the boat anchored offshore of the ramp but close to my truck. I figure I could take a day off in the middle of the week and go somewhere like a truck stop to shower and replenish supplies. Anybody done this? Anybody done it in gator country?

That’s an idea that’s easy enough to try, as is going down to a shorter rod. I’ll bet I have a dozen old light action fiberglass rods from my grandfather I can experiment with.

The rod I’m using is a Berkeley Lightning Rod UL. I picked it because I wanted something with some leverage so I wouldn’t have to swing it so hard to get distance. My experience (and physics) tells me that the shorter the rod the harder you have to cast to get the same distance. I thought the longer rod was part of the whole BFS system? This is the rod I bought: https://www.amazon.com/Berkley-Lightning-Cast-Rod-2pc/dp/B07BLHQB4G/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=13X6ZR5AP00ZF&keywords=berkley+lightning+rod+casting+rod&qid=1680909411&sprefix=berkley+lightning+rod+cast%2Caps%2C180&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFSSUU2RkVCOUZTU08mZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA3MjMxOTkxVkc5N0ZSU1FBWTcyJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTEwMTExMTUyRjBSSFg2VkFXVkImd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl

I like fishing with light lures but I have never really warmed up to spinning reels. I was optimistic when I heard about bait casters designed just for light tackle so I bought a KastKing Zephyr BFS reel and an 8 ft. light action rod. Sadly I just can't seem to get the hang of it. I've been fishing with a bait caster for close to 40 years now but I just can't seem to throw an unweighted worm with this rig spooled with 8 lb braid. Even with the magnetic brake turned all the way up and the spool tension set to the point the lure won't drop I still get terrible bird nests unless I just barely flip the rod tip, and that really defeats the purpose of the specialized gear. It's not the reel's fault. The bearings are super smooth. I guess I will have to relearn how to cast a baitcaster or maybe try it on a shorter rod until I figure it out. Maybe spooling it with mono instead of braid might help add enough friction to the system that it won't outrun my thumb? I've never used a touchier combo. Once I tried heavier lures it got better because I could really crank up the tension and still get crazy distance, but the main reason I bought this rig is to topwater fish floating worms. Anyone fishing BFS get that can offer some advice?

Anybody here have experience with Lake Talquin? I'm probably headed to Seminole in a couple of weeks and thought I might spend a couple of days on Talquin if it's worth fishing.