Bankc

It's 100% cheating, without any doubt. The only thing that can change my mind is them become cheap enough for me to afford one.

Yup. Stern mounted for speed. Bow mounted for control. If you have spot lock, you'll want to mount it to the bow. It'll hold position better that way as it wants to face into the current/wind. Stern mounting a spot lock TM will likely cause it to rotate in circles on you, because the kayak hull is designed to go forward, not backwards. But a stern mounted TM should be faster, as it should raise the bow a bit a higher speeds and reduce drag. Also, stern mounted TM's tend to be less in the way in actual use, as you're more likely to use the space in front of you than behind you. Mine is stern mounted. It's just a regular Endura C2 30, so it doesn't have anything fancy like spot lock. I had it side mounted for a while when I first got it. You lose a good bit of speed and control doing it that way, but it's the easiest way to install it. For me, I primarily use my trolling motor to get from point A to point B. So stern mounted makes the most sense in my case.

You can theoretically cut it and shorten the length of the transducer cable, but it's not an easy job to do without messing it up. There's some shielding and impedance issues to worry about. So most people recommend not doing that and just coiling the cable and tying it up with a zip tie. As for the mounting bar, that looks like a Hobie H-Rail. I believe you can buy one that's too long and then cut it down to size. It looks like the side mounting pieces are secured to the cross bar with screws, so I don't see why you couldn't shorten one down with a hacksaw and redrill the screw hole. You might have to tap the hole as well. You'll also need access to the inside of your kayak to mount the H-rail.

Maintenance should be about the same on all of them. Just make sure you have a sturdy mount, as a spot lock will be pulling in every direction often. And if the mounting isn't reinforced properly, you'll tear holes in your kayak eventually. I imagine they'd all do about the same, spot lock wise. Kayaks are light and don't need much torque to move around. The main issue will be keeping the kayak pointed in the right direction, and that's going to be an issue with all of them. It's just something you have to get used to. Which one would I get? Well, Xi5 is larger and heavier and sticks out further, so I'd probably opt for the Xi3. And the biggest difference, to me, is that the Xi5 has a foot pedal option, which, at least for me, wouldn't be very useful in a kayak. I'd need a more stable and larger platform to fish from before I wanted to mess with a foot pedal. Definitely stay away from anything 24v. That's adding weight (both the battery and motor) and cost, and not gaining anything in return. In a bigger and heavier boat, you may need the extra torque and benefit from a 24v system. But it'll be wasted in a kayak. Remember, with something as small and lightweight as a kayak, balance will play a huge factor in how it performs, and a spot lock TM will work best beyond the bow. So opting for a heavier motor may throw off your balance and could slow down your kayak, even if it has a more powerful TM. Kayaks are usually more hull limited than torque limited when it comes to top speed.

I've learned that being the big fish in a small pond is more exciting if you don't know your pond is small. Before finding this site, I was a pretty good bass catcher and knew just about all there was to know. Now I know I know next to nothing. And I'm a pretty terrible angler. Still, I'm better than my friends, family, and most of the people I run into on the water.

I tie mine the hard way. I bite down on the braid and angle my rod so that the weight of the leaning rod creates tension on the braided line. Then I use my left hand to pinch the knot between my fingers to keep it tight while using my right hand to tie it. It's cumbersome, but it works. I could probably learn one of the other, more efficient methods, but I tend to tie long leaders when I use an FG, so I typically tie them the night before and don't need to tie them again. So it's hasn't been a big enough problem to be worth my time learning something new, yet.

Heck no it's not worth it! 85 bucks for a foam pad? You can get those all day, every day for $20-30 without the Hobie name on it. Though, really, unless you're hitting the bars below the webbing in your seat, it's probably not a cushion problem. It's probably more of an issue of remaining in the same position for too long without moving and getting some blood circulation. The kayak seat position is especially bad because your feet are about level with your seat, so blood pools up in your rear end. It's the same reason why it hurts your feet more to stand still and not move than it does to walk. You probably just need to get that blood circulating more often, somehow.

All I can add is that I have had mine for about two years now and it's still as smooth as new. I have no complaints with it. I had some doubts about the plastic frame in the beginning, but now it's outlasted some of my cheaper reels with aluminum frames, so I've come to believe that it's less about the materials and more about the quality of the construction and design.

I'd just bring a paddle, in case there's and issue, and leave it at a single 100Ah battery. At least for the motor. That should be enough, I would think. I get by with a 50Ah and have fished up to 8 hours without any issues. Though, I might grab a second battery for the fish finder and anything else. Sometimes the fish finder and trolling motor don't like to be on the same battery. But you don't need a huge one for that. I use a 7Ah SLA battery for mine, but some people go with bigger. Especially if you have a large screen on your fish finder or lots of bright lights. I originally planned on getting a second 50Ah battery (as I can't fit a full sized 100Ah through the hatch in my hull), but never needed it. At lower speeds, it doesn't take nearly as much juice. Like 80% speed requires half the amperage or something like that. And you'll probably spend most of your time running at less than that, as no one wants to putt around for 2-3 hours, not fishing, just to get to their fishing hole. Being in a kayak, if you need to travel several miles, you'll likely launch closer to your fishing spot anyway. I rarely travel more than 3 miles out from my launch (and 3 miles back is just 6 miles total, or 1.5 hours of full speed). So chances are, you'll spend most of your time going slow and draining very little power, doing actual fishing. Also, don't worry about volt meters with lithium batteries. They won't tell you anything you don't already know. All their good for is letting you know the battery has already died, which you can figure out on your own when the motor stops working. They're not like lead acid batteries that slowly degrade over time. They work nearly as good as fully charged until they almost instantly die. They do make battery monitors that you can buy and install that will give you a better idea of how much juice you have left. These measure and record both the time and amperage and calculate the remaining juice stored in the battery. They're a bit more complicated and expensive, but it's the only real way to know how much you have left in the battery.

It looks a little better made. Will probably last longer. The Bunkster might last long enough for you though. But since they're based on the same design, I imagine they'd operate about the same.

Will Prowse has a YT video on it. He says it's a decent one. I'd trust his opinion as much as the next guy. And I think we're getting to a point where most all of them are pretty similar. I mean, they've been around for a while now, and I haven't really heard a lot of people complaining about any of them.

Yeah, I've run into that on one of my Tatula CT's as well. It was the screws that hold down the shaft on the drag. You had to access them through the holes in the gear above. Two of those reels, they came out with a bit of torque. On the third, I gave up and left it. Cycling heat and cold is a good way to break screws free, but with something like a reel with all of the plastic bits, I'm afraid to try that. I usually rotate between a soldering iron placed on the screw head to heat it and canned air, held upside down to freeze it. But I wouldn't trust either around plastic. A little acetone allowed to seep down the threads also works stuff free, but again, with all of the painted metal and plastic, I wouldn't want to try that. So I just called it good enough and moved on. I love those Tatula CT's. They're so easy to use and really well made. But they're not designed to be easily worked on. I've never been able to get the spool bearing out on the side with the brakes either. For all of that type of stuff, I just clean it in place and call it good.

You want to stick out while blending in. The idea is to make it look like a shad, while making it stand out from all of the other shad. Sometimes color or size can do this. Sometimes it's action. If you blend in too much, then the bass won't focus on your bait. But if you stand out too much, they won't see it as prey. Spoons are good for this, because they look like a shad that was already attacked and injured, but not eaten. So they're an easy meal. Bass will often attack from below, so sometimes a crankbait pulled in from just below the rest of the shad will catch a strike. Often times, one that's slightly bigger or a more vibrant pattern will attract the bass. Those are my two preferred baits for this situation, though I'm sure a lot of other things will work too. I've also had luck with hard swimbaits reeled fast.

A lot of people do this. Find an old boat or jet ski for free or next to nothing and toss the boat and refurbish the trailer to suit their needs. It can be a lot cheaper, if a bit more work. But make sure you have a good plan to get rid of the old boat, as sometimes they can be very expensive to dump. Though, if you can strip any salvageable parts, you might be able to make up for some of the fee to dump the boat. Though I'm thinking that up in Maine, that might not be so easy to do.

It's rare that I would even get a chance to fish in the rain. Usually, when it rains around here, it comes with high winds and lightning. Even if you don't get the high winds and lightning at first, they can, and often do, pop up randomly. Our weather here is just too unpredictable and severe to reasonably take chances on most rainy days. I mean, my house has been struck by lightning three times. I should move, right? Well I have. That was three different houses!

It's hard to say without seeing a picture of it, but my gut instinct says wacky rigged senko. Though an inline spinner is great for anytime you're not fishing vegetation and don't know what's out there, as anything will bite those!

I hang mine from the ceiling in the garage, hull down. It's not the best method, but it allows me to store other fishing junk in there. I did have a problem with the belts it suspends from denting the sides of my hull. But I fixed that with a heat gun, and made a 1x4 stretcher to go on top of the kayak to pull the belt out so the belt no longer rests on the sides of the hull. I also learned to replace the bolts that secure the pulleys to the ceiling. They're made of a very soft and brittle form of steel. So if you buy a ceiling hoist kit, replace those big bolts. They can be the same size and everything. And they don't have to be anything fancy. Whatever generic bolts they have at the big box store will be 100x stronger.

There's a good reason why a lot of strong swimmers and people who don't think they need PFD's drown. When you first hit the water, especially if it's cold and you're not prepared for it, your natural instinct is to take a deep breath of air. This is doubly so if you screamed or shouted on your way into the water. If you're already underwater when this happens, you'll draw in water instead of air. And once the water hits your lungs, you very quickly go into hypoxia (within seconds). Drowning victims (who survive, of course) report a sense of immediate calm and indifference to their fate after breathing in water. Their brains are oxygen starved, so they're no thinking correctly. So many drowning victims will just sink to the bottom, without a struggle, while still conscious, and be at peace with that. And that's why so many people who fall out of a boat or off a pier never surface. If you can remain calm when you hit the water and avoid the instinct to draw breath, give yourself time to orient yourself, and swim to the surface, you have a lot better chance of survival. Of course, then you've got hypothermia and muscle cramps to deal with, so you're not out of the woods yet. But you've given yourself a fighting chance.

That's it! They're not too hard to take apart and put back together. I would add that I like to work over a white bath towel. Tiny parts love to bounce away and get lost. And a white bath towel grabs parts as they fall out and makes them easy to find. Don't use a good one though. You'll get grease on it. Also, there are two bent washers that are shaped like tiny Pringles. They're spacers, so align them so they separate from one another and create some space and tension. Don't nestle them together, like in a Pringle's can. They should oppose one another. That's a common mistake lots of people make their first attempt. Watch a couple of YT videos showing how it's done on various reels before you start. Most are pretty much the same. This will give you an idea of how complex of an operation it is. Then you'll know if it's worth attempting yourself or having someone else do it.

I agree. Check with the authorities in charge. Around here, night fishing is allowed, but not on all lakes. It depends on who owns the lake, as some of our lakes are owned by the state, some by the county, some by the city, and some are owned by private business, but opened to the public (usually power plant lakes). So the rules and costs at each can vary wildly. On my local lake, there are signs posted saying you're not allowed to be on the lake property between sunset and sunrise. Yet you're allowed to go fishing, duck hunting and camping at night. So how are you going to participate in those activities without physically being there? Yeah, it makes no sense. But the people who write the laws are different from the people who enforce them. And fortunately, the people who enforce them have a bit more sense than the people who write them.

People do change. For the worse and for the better. "The only constant is change". And sometimes all we need is a friend to help us through the bad times and show us the better path. I know I wouldn't be the person I am today without a couple of good friends to help me along the way. It's up to you how you want to approach it. Just be careful and take care of yourself. Don't sacrifice yourself trying to save someone who wants to drown in their own anger. He'll take you both down with him. It's like the parable of the scorpion and the frog. As noted, often times people with bad attitudes don't learn to act better, but instead learn to tell people what they want to hear so they can continue their bad behavior. They'll offer you promises, ask for your pity, and then when they get that, go back to doing what they did before. They got this way by learning how to emotionally manipulate others. It's up to you if you want to give this guy another chance. He could be genuine this time. But odds are it's just another trick, and he may not even be aware that's he's pulling a trick on you. These guys are so manipulative, that they can manipulate themselves into believing the things they say. So be willing to walk away at any moment and stand firm in your decisions. Everyone deserves a second chance. But no one deserves to be abused.

Yeah, but I was invincible back then.

You know, high heels were originally only worn by men, as a means to better grip the stirrups of the saddle. It's why cowboy boots still have high heels. Women rode side saddle and didn't need heels.

Everything thinks they're a lot better swimmer than they are. I know I do. And I also know that two out of three people I know who drowned were really strong swimmers. The third was a kid at a large family gathering where several adults were keeping an eye on them. PFD's are like seat belts. You don't wear them because you're a bad driver. You wear them because things happen outside of your control.

To be fair, the OP was asking if you can, not if the setup was optimal.