Way north bass guy

I also leave both my units on the whole time, although I do put whatever unit I’m not currently using in standby mode, but that’s just to help conserve power and has nothing to do with the transducer. In over 20 years of running boats with trolling motor transducers, I’ve never had an issue with one not working.

I have several rods rigged with different sized jerkbaits from ice out to freeze up, have for many years. I’ve caught so many different species, from spring lake trout to pike, muskie, bass, walleye, catfish etc etc. It’s funny how so many people say they’re only good when the water is cool, but I have some of my best days with them in the highest water temps of the year, ripping them about as hard as I can along weed edges and shallow rocky areas for both largemouth and smallmouth. When gamefish are feeding on minnows or smaller fish ( like perch), they are often one of the best choices of lure, both to cover water quickly and to slow down and work a spot over.

Doing some stonework at a house this week, and this little rascal is my “helper” most of the day. She likes to just sit there and watch me lay stone for a while, then suddenly my rag or small trowel or a couple screws are not where I sat them last ?. And she’s got the “cone of shame” on due to just being spayed last week, but it doesn’t seem to slow her down at all. Also, she seems to like my “very comfortable” tool bag as a bed while she inspects my work.

Forgot to mention that I mainly use it when I’m actually pike fishing in the spring, a lot of the time though it’s with bass sized jerkbaits, spinnerbaits etc and there’s pretty much no issues at all with the leader changing the lures action. And as for water clarity and visibility issues, I use the black coated wire and the lake in that pic above has about 20’ of visibility, and that was one of about 25 pike we got that day.

I’ve been using the same stuff as A-Jay the last couple years, and it works fantastic. Caught some pretty big gators and it’ll handle a lot of abuse before it gets bent up enough to change out. I use an Alberto knot to attach it to the main line and an improved clinch for the lure end, and never once had an issue with knot failure at either end.

First solo ride for the boy in my brothers farm field. Did pretty good, remembered to let off the throttle before he hit anything ?.

We had a lab that did the exact same thing. Even in his last year, at about 10, he still loved to “eat” the snow I shovelled.

It’s funny, because I feel almost the opposite of you on this. I have SI on the console and at the bow, and if I’m casting fairly shallow ( less than 20’), I use SI most of the time. If you set the scroll speed down to match your boat speed, at least on the Helix units, you can get fantastic images of structure and fish. Now, it will not work too well if your sitting still, but if your moving even at a slow speed, it works great. I have the transducer on the trolling motor, and many times while slowly moving along, I’ve seen schools of smallmouth off to the side of the boat up to a cast length away. You can see each individual fish very clearly, and a tube or drop shot tossed in that direction often gets a bunch of fish that I would’ve never seen if I was just using regular sonar. It also comes in very handy to spot patches of weeds, rocks, or laydowns that are too far to the side for me to find with regular sonar. I’ve used my SI do look under docks and weed mats, and yes, it will distort the image a bit if you turn the motor back and forth, but for the most part if it’s set up correctly, you will find fish and structure that you would’ve passed by with just 2d sonar.

That’s a real shame, sorry to hear about it. Be strong, and remember all the good times you had together.

Up here there’s a lot of big boathouses on most of the larger lakes, and a few times while in a tournament I’ve pulled up and tied off to someone’s dock, or even pulled into the boathouse If the slip is open, and waited it out under cover. You will never, ever catch me out on the open water in a lightening storm, it’s just not worth a few fish.

I’m about 100yds from three fantastic little lakes that my son and I often drag the tinny out into for a nice mixed bag of smallmouth and largemouth, but for the big boat, I have to drive a whole 4 minutes to fish ?. I probably have easily over 100 different lakes I can launch in that are within a 1/2 hour drive of me, not to mention the massive amount of water known as Georgian Bay, which is a five minute drive. The only hard part is deciding which one to hit next.

Sitting here wondering why there was a real low growling noise, cause our dogs don’t growl at much of anything, then I realized what the “problem” was ?.

Got the old blue rocket out for the maiden voyage of the year today. Trails are all still closed around here due to not enough snow, but there’s enough to rip around behind our house. Honestly, if we don’t get any more show and I never run it the rest of the winter, that’s fine by me. Rather be in the boat any day but ya gotta find fun one way or another around here, at least for a couple more months.

For smallies, I’d go with pretty much the exact same thing as you, same colour and everything, but if I had to choose one bait for both species combined, it’d be a Strike King double willow spinnerbait in white with one silver and one gold blade, 1/2 oz with maybe some extra weight attached for burning on top for smallies. In 20 years of serious bass fishing, I have caught WAY more and larger of both species on that bait than all the others combined. Something about a big bass absolutely crushing a spinnerbait that just raises the hairs on the back of my neck just thinking about it.

Well try to suck as much of it out of the clouds over your house before it blows across the bay to us please ?.

Not really, although I don’t usually cast the drop shot too far, maybe 20 yds from the boat at most.

It’s funny how some have problems with hookups with the drop shot, for me it’s one of the best bite to hookup ratio baits I use. I pretty much do the same thing A-Jay does, you don’t need to reel down and hammer on the thing like it’s a punch rig on 60lb braid in thick slop. Most times for me, the bass almost hook themselves if they’re aggressive, it’s mostly just a reel faster and lift up a bit set and your off to the races. I’ll bet it’s either the wrong size hook ( too small) or the way you have it in the plastic. I just nose hook my baits and it works fine for me.

I have a Terrova without spot lock, but I have occasionally used it to keep the bow in position for a little while, just by occasionally tapping on the pedal in a super low speed. Usually though once the wind spins the boat to a certain position, it only sways back and forth a few feet and that doesn’t bother me too much.

There’s not very many of them around here any more, so few in fact that my ten year old thinks they’re some sort of cool, wonderful place to go check out. I think they’re mostly a glass house of germs ?.

That’s where it comes in VERY handy to have three bathrooms in your house. With only three people living in ours, I know I’ll always have at least one available to sprint off to should the need come along ?.

I’ve had one 12’ talon on my rig for a few years now, and it’s helped me quite a bit. I use it in the spring shallows for pike, in the slop for largemouth and in the rocky areas for smallies and never once had any issues with it. I don’t feel that having only one has any real disadvantages for me, and for my boat at least, there’s not a lot of “sway” from the wind, or at least not enough to screw up my presentation. Lots of times, if there’s a wind blowing fairly steady away from where I want to cast, I’ll just drop the talon and let the boat spin 180 deg then cast off the back deck, works just as well as the front deck for me. I doubt I’d own another boat without one on it.

I’ll never forget the first time I really discovered the “ slightly off feeling” bite. I was dragging a football jig across rocky areas for smallmouth in the late fall, about two weeks before freeze up, and when something just felt “off” about the bait, I set the hook and sure enough there was a nice bass on the end. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head, and suddenly I realized how many other times I could’ve had fish and didn’t even realize it. I’ve gotten quite a bit better at detecting those types of hits, but like everyone else, I’m sure there’s still lots that go undetected.

I was ice fishing for lake trout, and managed to hook a small laker probably around a pound on one of my tip ups. For the southerners on here that don’t get the “pleasure” of being able to ice fish, a tip up is basically a spool of line with a flag attachment, that you pull in the fish hand over hand instead of using a rod. Anyway, the little laker managed to wrap itself around about 100’ of wire line and a trolling dodger ( looks like a 12” spoon and used as an attractor while trolling in the summer for lakers). We were fishing in about 80’ of water at the time off a big rocky point. When I set the hook, I could hardly move “the fish”, so my cousin started filming it as we thought we had a real giant on. With 20lb test, I was pulling right to the breaking point, then a bit of wire would let loose from the rocks and I’d gain about 20’ until the wire tightened up again, the whole time the small laker was head shaking down there just enough to give the feel of a real monster trout just toying with me. Finally after about 20 min. of not moving any further, I said screw it, it’s too cold to stand here all day, I’m gonna just pull till I move the “fish” or my line snaps. All of a sudden the wire came free of the rocks and up popped the little laker, a pile of nasty old wire and the dodger. That was the best one pound lake trout fight I’ve ever had and got the whole thing on tape ?.

Man, that beats the heck out of snowblowing the driveway. Nice work fellas ??