Jig Man

Being that conscious about inches, you must be at lake Darnanelle which has an average of 7 fow.

I haven't seen it yet. I have enough trouble with the 8/1 that I use for FnF.

I can't speak about the Triton but I can tell you that the Xpress rides like a glass boat. I have 2 friends with them. One of them is a 19' with a 200 EFI. The other is and 18' with a 115 four stroke. I have never been in any alum. that didn't blow around more than a glass boat.

Any color water brown is my first choice and black is my second.

Jans Netcraft or Barlows Tackle Shop can sell you the plastisol. You need a microwave or an electric hot plate. Just a work... that stuff really stinks.... ;D OH BTW: Your first bait may cost you as much as $50.00.

It is probably a pretty good deal. NADA shows $9000 with a 175 instead of a 150. The electronics should off set the motor and it is PRE Johnny Morris which should count for something.

It is hard to get a depth finder to read on alum. Even installed correctly the alum hull tends to send air bubbles to it and causes it to go crazy. I have owned a few and the best lost the bottom around 35 mph.

Tube. Anything that swims wil take a tube.

My favorite skirt material is cotton. There isn't much nicer than a cotton mini on a hottie. OOps for fishing I like rubber.

I own both Saharas and Symmetrys. I have had both apart. The Symmetry is better by more than $20 IMO. I have used my Symmetrys very hard for the last 6 years. I only use the Saharas for FnF. I don't think that they could take the use that I have given the Symmetrys.

I like to swim tubes when the fish are shallow. I have several colors but black, green, brown, and smoke are the 4 basics that I use most. Here is a pic of one rigged with the weighted jig and weedless.

I use Restore for basic daily cleaning. Wonderfoam, limeaway, oxyclean, and soap and water for deeper stuff.

It seems to be priced right. The average retail value in the NADA guides is $8840. Give it a ride, check the lower unit fluid and a compression check.

We have them here in MO, mainly in streams. We call them goggle eye. They are small but quite tasty.

Try Barlows Tackle Shop, Jans Netcraft or Stamina Inc. one or all of the will have what you need as well as the components and equipment to bend the wire.

As far as the insides look, there seems to be 1 more ball bearing in the Stradics. My eye isn't good enough to tell if the bearings are the same quality or not. I own both and like both.

Thanks. I hadn't even thought of that possibility.

I never owned a 2 stroke motor that got any kind of decent mileage. I run an Optimax connected to a smart craft gauge. It shows around 6 mpg when in the 4-4500 rpm range. At wot it gets about 2.5 mpg. I have a little over 300 trouble free hours on it so far. One thing you should know is that those Lazer spark plugs are quite expensive. From a dealership the run about $25 @. I get mine from O'Reilly Auto Parts for less than $10 @.

The spook is a great bait. Once you get the dog walk down you can do lots of other things with it. One thing you may want to try to learn is to take up 1/3 of a reel crank with each twitch or snap of the rod tip. The tip doesn't have to move very far each time and you should move the tip back to the bait slightly before the next one (like on a jerk bait). Also try different rod levels to see which one works best for you. For me it is to keep the rod tip down. I know guys who like it level and one of my friends holds his tip straight up in the air. I also like a short rod with a pistol grip if I am going to be doing it a lot.

The only way I have been able to really maintain a fall like that is with a spinning reel by leaving the bail open.

The plastics I don't make myself I buy from Ztackle.com. I buy hooks by the 1000 from Shorty's.

Something you should know is that there is funding available to boat buyers of up to 125% of the value of the boat. I will cover the price of the boat, licensing, and even sales tax. It is available for buyers who haven't had charge offs or bankruptys. It can be done for a period of 180 months. The kicker is that kind of loan usually comes with a hefty interest rate.

Yes I understand about the antenna. My 480 is on the console and the antenna is on top of the console only 6" away. I have some problems with that and would like to get an antenna up front with the second unit and its transducer on the tmotor and run them both from that antenna. I'm thinking about mounting it somewhere on the starboard gunwale.

My first boat was a 12' styrofoam canoe that cost me $39.

I have the IMX blank in 843c in both spinning and baitcaster. In baitcaster it is great. In spinning it is one step more than I like. If I had do overs I would back down to an 842.