Jig Man

I buy from Ztackle, Jans, Barlows, Stamina, Shorty's Hooks, Bass Pro Shops, and Do It.

You should be able to find out the mfg by looking at the title. Then look up the boat/motor/trailer in nadaguides and you can see if the price is good. It seems high to me for a rig that old. I think a $1500 offer would be quite high. By comp he is referring to the motor's individual cylinders compression.

Buy you a new Gloomis rod and a good reel. That should give you a reason to hit the water.

Your system must be a 12/24 with both parallel and series wirings. You can simplify the whole thing by going 24 only. You would need a + from battery 1 to the + trolling motor lead. You would need a - from battery 2 to the - trolling motor lead. The connections for the charger are a bank + to battery +, a bank - to battery - then the same procedure with the other bank and other battery.

I used to have that problem playing golf 7 days per week. There is a band which you can get and strap around your fore arm. It will help some.

One of us is smoking too much weed. 8-) For 12v you need a + and a -. For 24 v you need a + on battery 1 and a _ on battery 2 with a jumper wire from - 1 to +2. Somewhere in the mix you have completely lost me. If you have a camera, some pics would help this poor tired mine.

I no longer have the cojones for cold nights.

Tap #1 fish taking bait into its mouth Tap #2 fish spitting bait out Tap #3 same fish or another fish taking bait into its mouth Tap Tap Tap Tap some kind of brim trying to get the bait in its itty bitty mouff (We call that the TBerry shuffle here in the Ozarks.)

Modified SDJ.

;D ;D ;D ;D We have all been there. I spent the winter trying to make little plastic baits which I could buy for $3.00/dz. I spent around $100 and got lots of burns before I had a finished product. BTW: Watch the toaster oven. I have ruined a bunch of jigs due to meltdown in mine. If it were me I'd put a few in and set it for about 250° and pull them out in 15 min. fish them and see how good the paint adheres. If you need more time use another 1/2 doz and go for more minutes. Don't put all your jigs in one basket. ;D

First time you miss a fish and come in with the Y guard on the hook point you will know the difference. :

You could very well have a lower unit on the tmotor needing repair.

Take your time and look the boat over all the way around it. Get down and look under it looking for missing chunks and cracks. Look the trailer over from outside and from underneath. Look at the tires for uneven wear which could be a bad axle. Pull the cowling off and look at the motor. Get in the boat and look in all of the boxes. Turn on every switch in the boat and make sure that the accessories work. Open the bottom screw of the lower unit and see what comes out (hopefully only lube). Ask the owner for a maintainance record. Like stated insist on a compression check and test drive. If it measures up and is within reason, make an offer. Good luck.

Run your accessories off the engine battery not the trolling motor batteries. Hook them up so that the main power switch (NOT the ignition switch) can turn them off.

Most jigs with rubber or silicone skirts will resemble a craw depending on how you fish it. Allowed to drop near or on the bottom and moved along it either being dragged or hopped imitates the craw. Many different styles of jigs are in this category. I make banana head, arke, and football jigs for this application. However, there are lots of jigs which don't and have never been intended to immitate a craw. For example, bucktail swim jigs and float n fly jigs don't have anything to do with crawfish since they are in the upper part of the water column. Here are some examples: Craw jigs Bucktail swim jigs Float n Fly

I have had a bunch of depth finders and have been able to see the thermocline on all of them. The thermocline will not always be there. Right now I am fishing a windy lake and have been for the last week. I haven't seen any thermocline on it. If you really want to locate it, be sure you know what it looks like and spend a little time slow moving from shallow to deep. You should be able to see it with the unit in auto unless you have a poor transducer installation. If you don't know what it looks like check your manual or got to the Lowrance tutorial. Good luck with your search.

I have a Browning insulated gortex jacket and bibs which is great for the really cold stuff.

A friend and I did a tube experiment last week. We only fished tubes and rigged them the following ways: Insert w/o weedguard Insert w/ weedguard Tex-skin with bullet sinker regular tube Tex-skin with bullet sinker plastic craw tail glued in head Tex-skin with bullet sinker w/plastisol injected into the head Tex-skin with bell sinker inside the tube In our six hours of fishing mostly rip rap and rock piles we found that by far the hangup and loose was the insert w/o weedguard. Next was the insert w/ weedguard. The different bullet sinker rigs were all about the same. The bell sinker was the one that would hunt in the junk and come back to the boat. The downside of it was it was also the hardest for us to detect a strike. The reason for the different bullet sinker types was trying with and without bait clips. We found that we like the bait clips and of the three types we were using they all worked. ............... As for your Carolina thoughts, a friend of mine fishes tubes Carolina rigged except he puts a piece of styrofoam in them so that they will float off the bottom. I haven't tried it yet but he swears by it.

You bet. I spent much of last winter trying to make a little bait like one I had seen. It took many many hours and lots of grinding of teeth not to mention a few bucks but I finally came up with 20 injectible molds and a few homemade injectors to get the job done. Now I have a one of a kind bait which will catch all species of bass as well as crappie and walleye.

RayRe is dead on in his thinking. The initial cost will probably be close to a C note. That much will buy a good supply of jig trailers. However, it is like buying baits, rods, reels, etc. There is no place to stop. Then you get into making hard baits, etc, etc. ;D

"I currently have cable steer, but as soon as I take my foot of the pedal I'm doing circles." How does that happen? Are you running that thing in some kind of constant on? I only take my foot off the pedal to get another rod or change a bait. I do move it on and off the power switch but not off the foot control pedal. That way I am always in control of the boat with a 1-2" movement of my guiding foot.

I have a Motor Guide TE82. It has been on my boat for 5 years. I have over 300 hours on the Opti and figure I fish at least 3 trips for an hour on the engine. My trips are from 6-10 hours so if I averaged 7.5 hours per trip and made 900 trips that would be 6,750 hours on the trolling motor and I have only had to replace the little piece of metal that keeps the direction arrow pointing correctly. (And yes I have been around 900 times in the last 5 years. I fish at least 150 days per year.) My motor may die tomorrow but if it does, it doesn't owe me anything.

I carry so many jigs that I keep them in all kinds of containers. Some of them are just dumped into plastic boxes. I don't have rust problems. If you want to avoid rust: Never put a wet jig back (throw it on the deck until it is dry or throw it away), if it is rainy take several jigs out and put them on the deck instead of opening and closing a box, and never let any salt get into the container with the jigs.

I have an assortment of soft sided bags. Depending on what type of fishing we are doing I can sometimes get by with one or two of them. In the boat I set the boxes on edge in the center storage compartment. The labels save me some time picking out what I want to use.

My fishing has been good this fall. I have caught a lot of fish shallow on spinnerbaits and buzzbaits. They backed off them about a week ago and have been hitting jigs and tubes. I am finding the fish in rocks and ledges since we have been having passing cold fronts. For a while they seemed to be roaming and you could catch them anywhere on the cast but lately they are close to cover.