Tennessee Boy

Very nice fish!

I've always thought that the whole balance rod thing was just more marketing hype by the manufactures. The reason is it just doesn't make makes since when I apply what little I learned in my college physics classes. If someone can tell me what I'm missing I would love to learn something new today. What we are talking about as I understand it, is torque at the pivot point. A balance rod would have no torque if held at the pivot point. Of course as others have pointed out, not everyone holds the rod the same but since most people hold it within a inch or two from the pivot point that shouldn't make that much difference. The problem as I see it is that leverage is such a big factor in torque. If you add a half ounce lure on a perfectly balanced rod where the tip is six feet from the pivot point then the torque caused by the lure will be 0.1875 another site-ft if my math is correct. To counter act this new torque you would need to add three ounces to the butt of the rod assuming the butt is 1 foot from the pivot point. All of these numbers change as you change the angle of the rod and vary greatly as you fish. Most modern rods weight around 4 ounces so it's hard for me to see how the distribution of this weight in the rod would make any noticeable difference in torque compared to the real world forces that cause torque on the rod while fishing.

@Catt you're not that far from Pickwick. It's a great SM lake.

I'm with @TOXIC on this. I can do this in about two minutes in the boat.

I'll consider a lithium ion battery for my boat when we go ten years without a lithium battery fire story on the news. There was a story on the news last night about a cell phone charger fire on a plane. Restarting the clock.

It's a big country with a lot of places to consider for the ideal lake home. I'll mention one lake that I often dream of owning a retirement home on. Wilson Lake in North West Alabama Fishing - It's one of my favorite lakes. It's a small lake on the Tennessee River. It's a beautiful deep lake that is never crowded. It's known for Smallmouth but has great largemouth fishing also. It held the Smallmouth world record before that moved to Dale Hollow. It's not well known although it was listed 13th on a recent list of top lakes in the south east on bassmaster.com. Just minutes away is Pickwick Lake (#6 on the Bassmaster list) and Wheeler. About two hours away you have Guntersville (#3 on the Bassmaster list). Lake Homes - When I'm fishing on Wilson, I'm always impressed by the nice houses on the lake. It's not littered with poorly maintained vacation homes like so many lakes. It feels like a rich area but the cost of these nice homes are surprising low. Check out realtor.com and you'll see what I mean. Area - North East Alabama is very nice area. Florence and Muscle Shoals are very cool small towns. The Muscle Shoals music industry and history gives the area a cool vibe.

Always check you your grocery bag for holes before you leave home. You don't want any water to leak out and lower your weight.?

I would ask them why they don't have expiration dates on the boxes.

Welcome!

I'm not picking on Glenn. I agree the younger generation has a new definition for a lot of things. Like Pitching has become Flipping. As an old guy, I DON'T CHANGE ?

A-MEN! At least Wikipedia still knows what a Texas Rig is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_rig

I think of my boat as a mount for my electronics. 20 years ago it took a lot of skills to use the electronics of the day. I would pull out my paper maps at home, find interesting off shore structure and use my high school trigonometry to calculate the coordinates and plug them into my GPS. I felt like I earned the right to fish these spots. Today it's easy to find these places and everybody fishes them. The technology makes it possible to find fish off shore and on hidden cover, it does not give you the skill to catch those fish. I would say yes but I think the more important question is are you limiting your enjoyment of fishing by not having a FF? Only you can answer that question. I'm into technology in general so to me using the technology is half the fun of fishing.

Sten MagnaThin 16# = 0.013 ?

Welcome!

Welcome!

I don't think the amount of data would be that great. If you were moving a lot and pulling satellite images it might add up but still not a huge amount. Consider this, back in the old days before Google maps you could buy Road Atlas software on a CD. That's a CD not DVD which would hold 700 megabytes max. These CD contained essentially all of the mapping data you see on Google maps for the entire US on a 700 megabytes CD. To put this into prospective, you could download this data 14 times in a month on a 10 Gig data plan. Images (as in satellite images) require way more data than vector mapping data but I still don't think it would add up. It's stuff like watching youtube videos that eat up your dataplan.

I think a tablet would work well as a second graph. You could use the FishSmart App by Humminbird that will allow you to download and use their LakeMaster maps. You will have to pay for the maps. It does normally validate your map purchases when the network is available so it's possible that under some situations it might not work without cell coverage. I just put my iPad into airplane mode and opened the app. It worked fine without cell coverage. There might be a time limit on how long you can used the map without validating. The GPS in most devices are not that great and will not give you an enhanced position fix but you should see 10 meter accuracy most of the time. GPS will drain the battery on a tablet/cell phone very quickly so you might need to keep the tablet plugged in much of the time. You might also want to avoid using the tablet in extreme temperatures. The operating temperature of the iPad as specified by Apple is 32º to 95º F.

Interesting responses to an interesting question. I only use the word to refer to a graphic showing the history of the sonar returns. I call the units "Fish Finders" even though Humminbird now refers to them as "Control Heads". They do a lot of things that don't involve fish so the name change makes sense. I call the lake maps "Maps" even though they are called "Charts" on the unit. I'm sure this is following the tradition of using paper "nautical charts" on ships but I've never heard a fisherman call a lake map a "chart", paper or otherwise.

Welcome to BR! Feed the addiction!

If you compare any two maps you will usually find very significant differences between the two. One of them must be wrong. I was fishing with a buddy a few week ago and he told me he wanted to try a spot a friend of his had just won a tournament on. He said we needed to position the boat by a buoy and throw up on the hump. I looked at my Lake Master map and didn't see a hump. My buddy called the guy to make sure we were in the right place. I pulled up the Navionics map on my phone and sure enough it showed a small hump not far from the buoy. We threw to where the hump was suppose to be and caught several nice fish. Before we left, I ran over the spot a few times and there was no hump. I guess sometimes it pays to use bad maps.

The best thing about being able to cast and retrieve without changing hands is that it allows you to feel superior to those that don't do it that way. ?

Yeah yeah I know. I actually do it both ways. My fast retrieve rods are right handed so I can crank with my dominate hand and my slow retrieve rods are left handed so I can work the bait and set the hook with dominate hand. I'm just trying to help @PAbasser927 start a good debate.

Why would anybody want to change hands after casting? ?

Search the web for Bass Clubs in your area. Most post tournament results on their web sites. 16 lbs is a very nice bag.

Welcome