DanielG

The fish grew.... ?

I've got another dilemma. I have to tell my wife about every single purchase, of anything, not just fish stuff. I do it because I feel guilty because she just listens and says..'okay'. Then goes back to what she was doing. And on top of that I have to suggest things for her to spend money on because she almost never does. If I bring her home a good cup of coffee, (or kitkat bar, go figure), It's as if I brought home diamonds. I'm lucky that way I guess but it's unnerving in other ways too!

A bunch of stuff... Comes and goes. I used to do a lot of backpacking. Section hiked parts of the AT. Probably the best was having and bringing up two girls who've made me proud. I taught science for way too long in a Jr. High. I've had so many. Here's a few things I've dabbled in over the years. I've done portrait painting. This is my niece. I made guitars way back...Played them a fair amount too. Tons of furniture....Another guitar in the background there... And as some of you know, I try to make fishing lures from scratch...

This winter, with 4 ft of ice on my lake and the pandemic keeping us at home I made a few lures when I could. The ice is out now and I took them down to the dock on a balmy 54 degree day here in Maine to look at them in the water and take a few casts. The video ran while I did this. No fish here, just a bit of casting of 'first time in the water' lures with my Curado DC On a Dobyns Champion glass CB rod. Click below to view the short video.

It’s been awhile since I made a fishing lure. I’ve been getting back to furniture and completed 4-5 pieces lately. But I figured I wanted to do something that could be completed in a few hours instead of a few days. So, back to carve and paint a fishing lure. This one is a spinner crank bait. Never made one before. Made of yellow birch (I had some left over from a dresser I just completed) and as usual I make everything but the hooks and in this case, the spinner blade. Click the picture to see it made.

My daughter sent me this article on microfishing today. Her comment in the email was... They won't be laughing at you any more Dad!

Oh God... I resemble that way too much.

I've got a 2015 (first aluminum one) F150, V8. I'm coming of a lifetime of chevy's. The Ford has been the best vehicle I've ever owned. 80k miles, no repairs. Krown undercoating and NO rust anyplace and I'm in Maine. I just replaced the tires but could have kept them another year. Decided new ones would be better on my camp road in the winter. Same brakes and they're still in the green during inspection. I tow a small camper. The truck doesn't know it's there. Avg. 21.5mpg. I had a silverado... nice truck but I was un-inspectable with frame rust at 84k miles. Put a ton of $$ in brakes and other repairs. Really did not get my money's worth out of that one. The change to Ford was a nail biter to me but I'm sold. Of course a new vehicle is always a crap shoot. Your mileage may vary (pun intended) That's right. I had a very heavy, older, Starcraft pop up camper. It cost me about 1-2mpg to tow it. I now have small camper that weighs less, aluminum, but is very tall. Mileage drops about 40%. When I go down a steep grade the thing acts like aerobrakes. When towing it's all about wind resistance.

I've got an electric boat with two 46 lb. trolling motors on it. I live on a lake and with two 100ah agm's I can troll for hours. They are coming near end of life. Not what they were when they were new. I'm going to spring for a Lithium battery unit that's self contained with a BMS, fused, meter, and Anderson connector. They've got the 170 ah and 202 ah versions. Haven't decided on which one yet. I'll also use it in my camper a few times a year. It's portable. About the Ah I've got now but with lithium I should be able to discharge them lower before they drop off. And the unit has a 10 yr warranty. I'd be replacing the batteries in my camper and boat a few times before these die. Here's a link to their site. This is the 170ah unit. https://bigbattery.com/products/12v-owl-lifepo4-170ah-2-176kwh/?ref=13

I live in Maine on the ME/NH border. Maine has taxes, NH doesn't. But, the property taxes in NH are almost what my other taxes are here in Maine. I have relatives there. A $3000 tax bill here is about $7000 there. You've got to pay for the schools somehow. Think about it. No taxes, where does the money come from? Here, people who have high income jobs live and work in NH and pay no state income tax but put up with the property taxes. When they retire they move to a state like Maine where they now have lower property taxes. May not be the same everywhere but it is here in New England. In the end they get you....Sort of evens out. BTW, I am retired, and worked in Maine. But I was a teacher so my income wasn't high enough for taxes to matter much. I live on a lake. Any waterfront property the taxes have an automatic different standard. About 40% more. Either ocean, lake, or river frontage. Live across the street and it's like everyone else.

Thnx. Ya I'll fish it. Deep lake so not much chance of it getting hung up but if I do, I'll make another.

So.... I'm still getting geared up for when the ice goes out here at the lake. A couple of months left till that happens I'm afraid. I was out in the shop today and made a lipless crankbait in a silver/blue shad design.. sort of. I used Spasstik for the first time to chrome it. It worked okay I guess. A complete video of the build has been posted. As usual, I make everything but the hooks.

Try here.

No, Never been a member. I had a bb gun as a kid. Never held a gun since then. Nice hobby for those who like it I guess. Not interested. Sometimes they are a bit, 'over the top' though.

Fall of the previous year they lowered the dam lower than usual to do some repairs. Not that bad but we had noticeably more beach around the edges than for the usual water lowering each year for sure. Last summer (Maine here so seasonal boat fishing) the fishing was not great at all. I've been told by some that the lower than usual water for something like this can cause one or more years of poor fishing. I figure maybe it disrupts the spawn??? Does anyone else have any experience with this happening? Might things be better this spring or am I looking at a long recovery period. I live on the lake here so it's pretty much where I park my boat from spring to fall. My lake is really a flooded rive that was dammed up long ago for textile mills long defunct. It's 4 1/2 miles long and 1/4-1/2 mile wide with varying depths up to 90 ft.

Out in the shop today. Decided to make a sort of little twitch bait for early in the season when Ice goes out in the spring here at the lake. It's about fifteen degrees here in Maine today. These are very small, but with a little detail. Hard to work on, carve, detail painting, etc, as they're about the size of my little finger. A little flash to them using some rubber skirt material. They sink head down with their tail ends pointed up. The flashabou tries to float and waves in the current. Hoping to twitch them and entice (maybe annoy) a few nesting bass in the spring maybe. The video showing their making.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B4B2X35/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hey, great info. Yes. Two batteries, two motors. I can be three miles away and I can be sure of at least one battery and one motor working right? I actually have a converted sailboat catamaran that I fish with with a deck and bimini top. i live on a lake so it's docked all summer and I take off trolling. The full power thing doesn't really matter as one motor is for trucking faster and the PWM is to get trolling speed, moving around while stationary, and reverse. With trolling motors if you run two of them full speed you really don't gain that much as their designed for a certain top speed.. Not really meant as a get from here to there type of motor.

Ah.. another thing I've noticed using this unit is that it interferes, static, with my garmin unit. And it's not because I've got it connected to the same battery as the motor. sometimes I turn off the unit and run my other motor with the same battery, which is connected directly, no interference. If I put tin foil around the PWM the interference disappears. The interference appears a regular spikes from the bottom up on the screen. Looks like weeds but with regularity. The fish also seem to disappear from the screen a lot too. Another note is that this unit doesn't heat up much, so the comment I made very early on about possibly using a small computer fan over it wasn't necessary. I check it sometimes after it's run wide open and can put my hand directly on the heat sinks and feel them just warm. Nothing more. I guess it's because it's not a resistance unit???

I used the one I originally posted (I'm the OP here) for the season last summer. It worked really good. I have two motors and one is connected directly. The only thing I notice is that with the controller I lose about 10% of the speed but it doesn't drain the battery faster. In fact it seems to me that the battery lasts longer with the controller. It's mounted under a console with a shield over the top of it. But it is protected from water so it hasn't been an issue at all. I have found out one thing. This unit is a PWM (Pulse width modulator) There are some sold as DC controllers but the are resistance based and heat up. This one doesn't get that hot. The resistance ones use up some battery too. The resistance units usually are the ones that look like the're in the silver metal cases with all the air holes punched into them.

I've been through a few generators and have settled on one type. Here's my take in Southern Maine were we lose the power a few times a year. Usually for a short time. 3400 watts can be easily enough if you don't mind winging it a bit. I run a couple of extension cables into the house. We plug in an entertainment area which includes a 60" tv and internet stuff. Also a couple of lights (led bulbs) I plug the pellet stove in for heat. Or if you wanted to you could run an electric heater. So far you are well under the limit. Now, if you don't open the fridge you can leave it a day without noticing much heating up. But, once or twice a day unplug something like the heater maybe(?) and run the fridge for an hour. When the compressor stops the fridge is cooled enough till the next time. I also have a cpap... don't worry about the power that needs it's not much. Added info you may not need. I've got a dual fuel propane/gasonline generator. They are expensive but if you run propane then you never have 10% methanol gasoline running through it go gum up the carb, especially if it sits for long periods of time. You turn off the propane bottle to stop it; nothing left in the machine. I've had good luck with a Champion dual fuel. It's an inverter generator. I wouldn't have any other type. Inverter generators run on idle. Other types run wide open all the time. The inverter generator will only ramp up speed as you plug more things into it and they require more power. So, when the fridge isn't running the motor throttles down. It's also a filtered sine wave so it won't hurt any electronics. And they can be great for camping as they are often quieter. i've got a Champion Dual fuel electric start 3400 watt.

This is a little bit of a late response.... A lot of people use balsa. I don't like it because it's too soft and it fuzzes up when you sand it and it's just too soft and light. Very easy to work with though. A few woods that are easy to work with and don't do that are White pine (not southern yellow pine as it's hard), cedar, basswood. All of these are interestingly the choice of wood carvers too. With carving you're looking for wood that's not too hard and has a straight grain. Some woods like walnut and cherry are kinda okay too. Poplar and basswood are in the same category. Maple and other hardwoods are fine but hard to work with. If you're going for an unfinished clearcoat grain showing appearance then they're nice. But that grain is what makes some woods harder to work with. I use White pine, cedar, and basswood. The first two are very easy to get where I am. If a wood is going to be painted then an easy carving one that finished nicely (smooth) is good. You have to weight the belly of a lure. It's easy to weight pine as the top is buoyant and the belly sinks when weighted. So, you get a more stable upright track in the water. Maple is much less buoyant and rides low in the water. When you weight the belly you can't do it that much or it will sink. But if you don't put enough weight in the belly it often will roll instead of just wobbling. My take on this is why bother to add this complexity, I just use pine to begin with. That being said... if you're going to simply cut out a bait on a bandsaw then shape the roundness of it then anything will work fine. It's when you start carving gills and mouth slits that you appreciate the softer woods. It's not easy to make these tiny indentations and raised areas look smooth with hard woods. More info that you wanted probably.... Ya, but you know, it takes about 3-4 hours to make one and a couple more to make a more complicated carved one, so losing one isn't too big a deal. After accumulating about $250 worth of materials/tools to do it I figure I use under a dollar in materials to make each bait. So a lot of baits for that initial tooling up unvestment. The only one I've lost was the first bait I made that I caught a fish on. I had made my first 5 of them over the winter and this is the first one I chose to use in the spring. But, it ended up high in a tree, later on, after I had caught the fish. It's still there. I made a replacement the following afternoon...

Ya know.... I just started last year. I looked at a bunch of youtube vids, it takes about $200 to get started, then you can make a lot of $20 lures for that two hundred. And it's a bunch of fun. It's really a paint job. A lot of lures have just shaping to them not much carving. Once you get the airbrush down, then you can just do it. I made a 6 part video that goes from materials to the final finish on a bait as I was learning in hopes of helping someone get started but with all the 'beginner' questions answered. Anyway, thanks for the kind words.

Thank you. Super glue is actually used a lot. With baking soda, it's rock hard. Originally used to fill the string slots in guitar nuts, then refiling the slots. They wear as good as the bone.