AJ Hauser

I hear ya. I think the only way to justify the cost is to weigh the personal benefit of double time on the water. What is the value of that perk? Definitely not a 1-to-1 swap. This brings to mind a few baitcasters that are 4 times the cost of some of the others in my arsenal. They all reel line, but there are benefits to the pricey ones... just comes to down how much those benefits are worth on a personal level. I'm headed out here in a bit. Chances are when my battery is getting low, I'd be willing to impulse buy a quadruple priced battery to stay out. (Too bad I'm broke!) ?

Got it - thanks @Johnbt!

Thanks again @MN Fisher - just looked a few up. The 100ah was more reasonable than I expected. If I had a 100ah battery, and my current setup which we noted draws 15amps on average... are we looking at 100/15 = 6.5 hours, potentially? Sorry for all the dumb questions, and thank you again for helping me to get a handle on this stuff.

Thanks @Catt I'll check 'em out!

Hey @casts_by_fly - fantastic - who knew?! Thank you again!

Got it - thanks guys - I was hoping I wasn't insane... Have a great week!

Perfect - checking now - thank you so much for all your help, Tom!! -AJ

Fun story: I borrowed a battery from a Power Wheel my son has been fixing up. Ran the sonar unit for 6 hours in the garage last night. Comes in about 11 pounds and I don't know why but this is really funny to me ? POW-POW-POWER WHEELS!! FISH ON! Hey Tom, thank you - I will look into those! Do you know if there is any maintenance that I need to do with these wet cell batteries in the meantime aside from not letting them deplete 100%? I've heard people talk about topping off... whatever fluid is in there... something? I ain't opening anything up before I get some feedback but I was just curious if you knew anything about this? Thanks guys - talk soon.

Hey all, Happy Monday. This may be a silly question - but you know how trimming weedguards on store-bought jigs and such seems to be common advice? I find that when I trim them down, it actually makes the bristles stiffer and harder to bend or move. Have you experienced or thought this same thing when you're trimming weedguards? I often find myself snipping a few of the bristles off all the way down by the head of the jig itself to reduce the number of fibers by the hook point after I shorten them. This seems to work ok, but I just want to know if I'm crazy... Thanks for any thought(s) on this. Much appreciated.

Got it - thank you for the feedback @MN Fisher and @12poundbass. I appreciate your time and help! So @AlabamaSpothunter... it does sound like we have similar setups. I'm not sure if I can link to personal stuff here, but I was writing about the 'ol jon boat not too long ago. If you click on the link under the picture of the jon boat, it will open even more before and after photos. I've kind of come to the conclusion that the Quickdraw Community is useful for grabbing popular areas... although I question how accurate the downloaded areas are. I feel like some people left the offset on... but, after download I can check contours on my phone and create some waypoints that look good, then upload (sync) those to the Striker and create my own contours while I inspect the areas when I'm on the water. (FWIW: I hate reviewing downloaded contours on my tiny phone screen, it's faster than trying to do it straight on the Garmin / unit, but I wish I could open all of this data on my computer screen... I'll have to look and see if the app can work on a tablet. You'll have to tell me more about your footlong phone situation ?) I'm going to check on Thursday to see if I create contours in an area where I have already created contours previously, if it merges them or overwrites the old contours or what. It looks like I have to stay within the 3 GB of available internal memory, too. Once I personally map a lake though, I'll go into the menu options when I'm looking at a screen with the location / quickdraw function on, select contours and turn off Quickdraw Community - so I only see the contours I have created. This seems like the best way for me to use this unit, which is still going to be extremely valuable on the little lakes I'm exploring. Love to hear more about what 'cher up to! Happy Monday. -AJ

Hey boys - I had a quick follow up on this one - thought of it when I was talking to you about the batteries, @MN Fisher - I mapped a few small lakes with a Garmin Striker 9sv. I like the unit, I like that I can add community contours to the unit from my phone using the Active Captain app. That is neat. However, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get my contours sent back to my phone, so I can review my trips / lakes after the fact. Do you know of any way to do this? @12poundbass do you have any idea? I believe you had the same unit. I currently do not have uploading to the Quickdraw Community enabled, if that matters. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks guys. Have a great evening.

Good morning boys - thank you for all of the great comments! I feel like we're on a path and I've learned a bit. Big thank you. Let's hit a few extra points: Yes, the battery and the sonar and the trolling motor - everything - comes out of the boat when I trailer & travel from home to these smaller lakes. If I could find a smaller batter to dedicate to the sonar like @MickD suggested, I think I could attach that to the boat and leave it, which would be great. I have a Power Wheel battery I could rent from my boys... ? Thanks - that makes me feel better about keeping the current battery until I can replace it. I believe I actually spoke with you about the Striker a while back it's a sweet little unit! Would you mind linking to a battery upgrade you would suggest, please? Appreciate all the feedback @AlabamaSpothunter and @WRB - I will pay it forward, and look for Greg's boat registration. Great ideas. @TOXIC thanks for the feedback - she's a bit unsteady - went to take a leak off the side with the battery and the anchor on it and almost went into the drink the other day ? but if you have battery suggestions (small for the sonar, big for the TM) I'm all ears! @casts_by_fly good idea on the backup battery... would have killed for that after about 20 minutes of rowing into the wind with my small emergency paddle the other day! Very helpful fellas - thanks so much - any more help would be appreciated!

Hey fellas, So fun story... my battery died on the lake the other day, and a very nice fisherman named GREG from Geneseo, IL gave me a tow after he saw me paddling my jon boat. The battery was so dead when I got it ready before the trip - it would not charge, but we were able to bring it back to life by "jumping it" - connecting it to my truck battery, then charging it. I have a few questions... 1. The battery is a Farm & Fleet Marine / Deep Cycle / 24MDC / 550A and the trolling motor I use is a Minn Kota Endura C2 (30 lbs of thrust) - I also have a Garmin Striker Vivid 9sv on the same battery. I was able to run the trolling motor a lot for about 3 hours, then when I juiced it, the Garmin died. When I tried to come back to the launch, I noticed that while the trolling motor would spin... it was spinning at about 15%, barely moving me. I do not know much about batteries, but does this run time seem reasonable, or is the battery compromised? 2. Do you have a smaller battery you could recommend that I could dedicate to the Garmin? I'm hoping there is something for a kayak that is small & light and inexpensive that I can use to separate the two? 3. Does anyone know Greg?! I must find him and thank him again He has a nice Lund and was trying out hos new Spot-Lock unit which is worth more than my entire boat setup... 4. Any suggestions on battery maintenance? Again, I'm a noob, made mistakes, just trying to learn. Any help would be appreciated - and for reference, yes I did catch fish, and here is Greg in action! (see pics) Thanks all - happy Saturday! -AJ

Ditto - did alright with bass earlier this year, lately it's been real bad. Trying again later today, we'll see what happens!

WARSHED?! Like on the WARSHboard out back? ?? Lord have mercy...

@TnRiver46 hahaha, it's the spelling police! What does Randy do that you mentioned? @gimruis I appreciate you sharing that with me - I was lucky to get into some bigs earlier in the season, but I couldn't believe how much has changed since I got back from Wisconsin. I'm hoping we get some water and they come back a bit so that next season we're in good shape - I guess we'll see. @Dwight Hottle thank you for that - what are your thoughts on fishing smaller ponds and lakes with floating algae? I'm thinking my time will be best spent there for the rest of the season. There are also some deep, clear strip pits that I could try my luck in... @Basser2021 I was in Tennessee a few weeks ago. Didn't get a chance to fish though. You foshing lakes, creeks or rivers - or all 3? Thanks guys, much appreciated! Trying to make the most of my limited remaining time... whenever I think I have it figured out, Mother Nature slaps me in the face and tells me to sit back down.

Guys... HAAAALLLLPPP. First off, happy Saturday! I hope you are all on a lake and unable to answer this until later I am having a heck of a time fishing in Illinois lately. Two days ago I went to my favorite creek, and the water was extremely low. Several of the runs were actually like rocky paths and I had to carry my kayak over 'em. In three hours fishing the pools that remained, using a swimbait, a lipless crank, and a jig & plastic, I caught 1 tiny smallmouth and left defeated. The next day I went to two local lakes, about 12 to 15 acres each, and fished from shore. Max depth in each is just under 10 feet. The water looked like pea soup. Algae bloom I assume - fished a crankbait along the rip-rap shoreline, then a swimbait, then a wacky rigged stickbait. No strikes, no taps, no follows (that I could see in the 5 inches of visibility). I was reading that with thick algae like this, there can be visibility below that we are not aware of... not sure. Q1. Can low water trigger smallmouth to move out of the creeks, into the rivers that they feed into? Will they come back if water levels raise up again before the end of the season? I know these dudes and dudettes have a sense for lowering water... but do they exit the building for a time or until next spring? I sure didn't find many in the pools that remained... Q2. Do any of you guys have a similar situation with low water in the Midwest at the moment? Any thoughts on fishing from shore on smaller lakes with the conditions I mentioned above? I am completely deflated. Crying in my coffee and questioning everything I thought I knew about life. Existence, even. My wife won't touch me. Said "ain't no way I'm gonna be with a man that can't even catch no fish!" Well she didn't say it, but I could see it in her eyes. I think. Maybe I'm just paranoid. Any insight would be very appreciated before I plan my next trip. Thanks all, and have a great weekend. Catch more fish than I did!

Bwahahahahaha! 50% of the time, it works EVERY time.

*Daughter identifies another plant* Listen here you little whipper snapper...

Clearly, God intended this technology be used for this purpose.

Gosh dang Googlebox... *kicks computer and it shuts off* That one looks cool too - what kind is that? Thanks for taking the time to check, I appreciate the help!

Thanks man!

FWIW (that's "for what it's worth") I tried to do a Google image search with the photo I attached at the top of this conversation and it didn't find any results. Interesting that your phone did!

That's it - thanks man! So for what it's worth, this jerk is pretty inexpensive and it worked well for smallmouth bass in a slight current - the bait suspends. Might be worth picking up a few if you guys are fishing a situation where you know you're going to lose some baits - you could get 3 of these to each Vision 110... although, I'll be picking up a few of those to try as well. MANY THANKS to all that replied - this was driving me nuts.

I see 3 hooks when I look them up on T. Warehouse but maybe I'm looking at the wrong one - body type is definitely a match. This one in my hand is 3.5" not counting the lip, but 3.75" with the lip which is what the 110 Jr is apparently. I believe I have a knock off... I think you are correct. I dig the finish though, even though it's not a super-detailed print... Suppose I'll just use it until I lose it. You recommend the 110s over other jerkbaits, or what is your favorite if you were to suggest a replacement? Thanks! Thanks to all of you guys that responded, I appreciate the help!