Russ E

it is all personal preference. some people will tell you to only use flourocarbon. While others will tell you to use only mono or copoly. I catch fish with both. Good flourocarbon is usually expensive. If you are on a budget I would try a good hybrid line. Lately I have been trying highseas grand slam. it is a flouro coated copoly. So far I am impressed.

unfortunately it happens to everyone.. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. If it is not during a tournament, I just chalk it up to a quick release and move on. 2 days ago I lost a nice fish on a shakyhead. Se picked it up and swam right at me. I tried to catch up , but never got a good hook set. She spit it right at the boat. Even though I did not get to touch her, it still gave me a good adrenaline rush.

my trolling motor is 24 volt. It has the built in bonding ground, for the transducer. If you are running a separate ground, I would put an inline fuse in the circuit. Some onboard chargers bond the grounds on all of the batteries. if this is the case, you can create a ground loop and create a short circuit. the fuse will catch this. If you are not electrical savvy, I would have a shop do this for you. I had some problems with my boat blowing the fuse, when I plugged in the charger. had to do some wiring changes to fix this. I eventually went to an external transducer, because it had better resolution and down imaging. also found it ran at a higher frequency and did not get any interference from the trolling motor.

depends on how long you keep them in the bag. if it is just for a day trip you should be fine. Most soft plastics will leech the colors if you keep them mixed too long. you may end up with some weird colors if you don't separate them after fishing.

not sure about lowrance. Hummingbird has a program called Contour Elite. It is the pc version of Lakemaster. if you have lakemaster on your unit you can move waypoints, to and from your graph. I use contour elite all of the time. one nice feature is: I can look at the contour map on my pc. Then mark waypoints and download them in my graph. another great feature of contour elite is: you can look at the lake bottom in a 3D view. the one drawback of Lakemaster and contour elite is: there are not maps of most lakes under 300 acres.

the motor housing needs to be grounded to the negative terminal of your sonar battery. This carries the interference away from your transducer to the negative side of your battery. The new Minn kota motors have a built in ground for their universal transducers, that connects to the negative side of the sonar circuit. there is a fuse in this circuit, in the trolling motor head, that occasionally blows. when this happens the sonar gets a lot of interference Not sure if motorguide has the built in ground. If your trolling motor does not have the built in ground, there are videos and articles online showing how to run a separate ground.

I use 10 lb. braid on my shakyhead rod. It always has an 8 lb. copoly leader. I use an alberto knot and have never had the line fail at the knot. the main reason I use a leader is, Kansas lakes have a lot of zebra mussels. straight braid dragging through the mussels fails way too easily It may be more personal preference than actual function but, I also like the lower visibility of copoly over braid.

my best big fish finesse bait is a trick worm on a shakyhead. my best numbers finesse bait is a ned rig. there is usually one of each, at the ready, on my deck.

fished Olathe today. caught 12 total. these were the biggest 3. all were in 10 to 15 foot of water. caught them on a shakyhead with a trick worm. I was the only boat on the water all day. I have not had much success flipping the shallow weeds this year at Olathe.

my grandfather had 7 ponds in southern Iowa loaded with huge bass. I started fishing for them when I was 12 years old and was instantly addicted. I moved up to tournament fishing Iowa lakes and the Mississippi river, when I was in my twenties. Now I just bass fish the local Kansas lakes and reservoirs for fun. After 43 years of bass fishing, I still get an adrenaline rush, when I hook a big fish. That is why I fish for bass.

Here in eastern Kansas it is rare to not see at least one rod with a ned rig on the deck of a bass boat. I know a few fishermen that don't use any other bait. I personally only use it around 10% of the time, but there is always a ned rig ready to go for follow ups, or if the fish are not biting.

one bait that has caught a lot of walleyes for me while bass fishing is a trick worm on a shakyhead.

i have a hummingbird helix 7. the actual graph looks fine with suglasses, but the down and side imaging was hard to see. I had to play around with the screen colors to to get a picture I could see. without sunglasses I use the blue screen on side imaging. with sunglasses the only screen I can decipher is brown/tan.

it depends on what you consider getting skunked. there are times the bass just will not bite, but there are so many catfish, white bass and drum in our lakes that I usually catch a few of them while pursuing bass. I don't recall the last time I went without catching a fish. there were a couple times this spring that I did not catch a bass.

went to La Cygne today. it was hot and calm. I caught 2 small bass and 3 catfish. That lake is one of the toughest around for me. someday I will figure it out.

no matter what it weighs that is a nice smallie. I would be happy with that fish any day.

nice fish. Glad you were able to keep her alive.

You can't really go wrong with either one. Look at them both, then decide. I looked at both of them and compared the features. I bought a Ranger, because the layout worked for me. there are also 2 Ranger dealers within 1/2 hour of me.

fried white bass is excellent in fish tacos. the gamier taste stands up to the spicy ingredients in the taco. one thing I do is, use an electric filet knife to clean them. I just leave a fine layer of meat behind with the skin. what red meat is left does not impart much flavor.

I use 2 spinning setups. for finesse baits like a ned rig or wacky rig, I use straight 8lb. trilene xl. these baits are usually fairly short casts and I like the shock resisting stretch of straight mono. for soft plastics on a slider or shakyhead, I use 10lb power pro braid with an 8lb. flourocarbon leader. shakyheads and sliders are usually longer casts and I like the sensitivity of braid. all other baits, I use a baitcaster.

congratulations

If the weather is calm I use finesse baits like a shakyhead or ned rig. If there is wind I use chatterbaits or swim jigs around main lake points.

I have both Navionics and Lakemaster. This may vary by region. On the lakes I fish, Lakemaster seems a lot more accurate. Navionics misses a lot of minor bottom contour detail. Lakemaster also seems more up to date. On the lowland reservoirs around here, silting is a big problem. a lot of the contour detail on Navionics is no longer there.

listen to what Tom said. Most 3 bank 10 amp chargers draw less than 3 amps from the AC input.

I thought the water was dirty from the storms. maybe all of the boat traffic this weekend stirred it up. That lake has impressed me this year. I wish they would put the 18 inch minimum limit on the other lakes. it seems to improve the average size bass. Wyandotte and Leavenworth still have the 15 inch limit on Largemouth. while they do have a few big fish, the average size is much smaller than Shawnee and Olathe.