XcoM274

wow thats gonna be a fricken sweet jon when its done. I was thinking the 25 would be way too heavy but maybe it isn't a 3 cylinder. I know on the new motors, 20hp is 2 cyl, and 25 is 3 so you add about 100lbs more weight. Nice work. And the console, wow! Impressive.

I've been looking into the same boats, and I went and saw both in person. I was MUCH more impressed with the Stratos. The decks were bigger, more open, much more attention to detail, and all around a more solid feel. The Nitro was nice, but there were some minor issues that turned me off a little. Just things like loose carpet corners under the lids, handles that were difficult to open, things like that. It had much wider and taller gunwhales than the Stratos which I didn't like, but probably offers better ride/stability in rougher water.

Order shouldn't matter as long as you've got a neg and pos going to the front. Check the voltage in the plug up front.

Ground? Wire it to the boat? Just guessing at it...

You are going to regret an electric steer TM like a Terrova or PD. I've got the powerdrive, and if not for the Autopilot it would be in the trash. It is so clumsy with the foot pedal. Save money and get a better product, go with a cable steer. Autopilot is absolutely crucial to using one, and at times its actually pretty nice, but I would take a cable steer any day.

There's a good broad question, and my response may seem similar. Yes, the smallies are going to seem more nomadic, and indeed they probably are, than the largemouth on the same lake. Thing is though, they aren't really moving that far, say, 100 yards during a day? They have somewhere to rest during the day, and somewhere to feed when they choose to do so, generally dawn and dusk. Sometimes the spots are one in the same. The fish tends to minimize the distance it must cover soas to conserve energy. This is why during the day we start looking deep, because the fish aren't expending energy to feed and are resting. I know here in Michigan its light until around 10:30, so until then, and for a little after, I'll go active, looking shallow and covered for feeding fish. There won't be much lure selection that needs to take place if you find them, because they'll hit most anything. Later though, after dark, it may be advantageous to look for resting spots, deeper. If its warming up into the night, my favorite tactic is topwater, even out in the middle of the lake you can draw them up on an Xrap or Original rap from 6 feet under in those conditions.

Well, the fish don't know its a tournament, they just continue on as they do day after day. Rule of thumb says a bigger lake will be colder, so thats good if you want to use a jerkbait. Here in Michigan the water isnt over 60 yet so they're still wrecking them, moreso than in the south where the water flies from 50 to 80 in a month.

Sounds like you've got a fuel issue. Check the carb and fuel lines?

You aren't going to get outrun by a pontoon with that rig. mid 50's id guess. My dad has a 175 on an 18' and she hits 53

It deals with what the fish is eating. It will develop a larger mouth as necessary. Nice fish man.

The answer is yes. Cranking batteries aren't designed to run small current objects like lights and pumps, but, is that really going to prevent you from doing so? No. There is a chemical reaction occouring inside the battery to produce electricity, usually between a silicon compound and the led plates spoken of above. When you charge the battery, you reverse the reaction and it can start again when you put load back on it. Unfortunately, a small amount of lead is lost every time the reaction occours, and eventually you will eat a hole in one of your plates, at which point the battery isn't going to work anymore. Use the thing for a year and buy another one next year. Perhaps you want to consider an AGM battery. They're expensive, but will do what you want and are pretty invincible.

Jeeze you could quit workin if you fished a couple tournies with that kind of bag

1993 Skeeter SS140 17' Yamaha 150 V6 Twin Eagle 350s, Garmin GPS Motorguide 71lb, 24V 3 batteries, charger trailer Everything runs and it looks to be in great shape, 5,000. Deal or no deal?

The answer to your question is yes. You obviously can't see into the water, and the ability to do so is vastly beneficial. Think about sending a camera to the bottom of the lake and looking around. With the recent implication of these camera systems it is actually possible, but for the majority of us, we need to use our sonars as the image from that camera. And if you stare at that screen for long enough, that's exactly what it will start to look like. If I'm just trying to locate fish say when I'm prefishing a tournament, I can pull up and look down to see whats there. If I graph fish, I can mentally jot down those conditions and search for them elsewhere. If I catch a fish on a location, I will do the same. Even if you're fishing shore cover, that fish chose the location its in for a particular reason. Many times I find it has to do with what is offshore a little from the cover. You can access a wealth of information from a sonar unit. At first, it looks like a line going across the screen and thats the depth contour and thats it. Couldn't be further from the truth. Water temperature is one of the main factors that dictates my fishing. Most, if not all, fishfinders have a temperature readout. Not to mention the data you can interpret from the seemingly plain line on the screen. Bottom composition, structure, bait, and obviously spotting fish themselves. If you buy one you're going to wonder how you got along without it.

Im thinking about selling my boat. Its a Lund WC14 with alot of quality custom work. Everything is new and in excellent working order. I've added the link to it below. Anyone interested? What do you think I'd get for it? (I'm really more curious to know what its worth) as I'd like to upgrade to a glass boat. Drop me a PM if you actually want to make an offer. http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1205883728/0#0

Hehe. That Tuscon would do it great, but if you drop that boat on the bumper you're going to have quite a repair bill. That's a lot of weight and you need to put a real hitch on the car. It isn't a tough thing to do. You might be able to get away without the trans cooler on the V6, but if you're in the hills you definitely need one.

NICE boat man. I'm in a "dying" mood myself. Wish I could find something like that.

You can always be long on the shaft. You only need to worry about it if you have a tall transom. My boat had a 15" transom instead of the standard 10", so I had to be sure to get a long shaft engine. Either will work with your boat, but the longer shaft will draft more. If you're planning to go shallow, you might want a short shaft. Great work on the deck! I commend you're bravery for putting 3 people in there lol, but 2 would be great.

If you run the pump or aerator in your rear well the bass will survive with surprisingly little space. Again, you have to keep the water moving. Every fish you add puts another set of lungs to work on that water, and the heat generated by the sun doesn't help at all. I keep limits of 7 in my incredibly small well but as long as i run the pump every 10-15 minutes for several minutes, it does great. Never lost a fish. Now I don't know where you live, but here in Michigan it doesn't get too hot so the heat in the well is less of an issue, as well as the fact that the water is cooler and takes longer to heat up. Another trick, keep your well as dark as possible. Don't open the lid for more than a couple seconds. Light causes them to start trying to escape, and they damage themselves in turn.

Well, it would be stomachable if you could do it yourself, but to pay someone would be rather pricy. I don't think you need to rerun all the wires unless you've had it exposed to mice, but redoing all the connectors would suffice. As for the TM, MinnKota has a wonderful policy for broken stuff. Go to the website and look up repair locations. Its just guys that do it out of their garages and get paid by MK. When mine had a catastrophie last year I took it to one and he replaced just about everything for free.

Well I did better than I expected. 10th out of 17. Brought 6 keepers (limit of 7) for 11.41lbs. Males were furious on the beds when we found them, bit whatever came their way but they were small. got a couple good cruising females on shallow flats, a 2.7 and 2.5. Figured they were looking for a mate as we're near a new moon. Full would have been better but I'll take what comes. All the fish came on a watermelon Senko or white spinnerbait. We started the day with freezing air and 54 in the water in the bay where we were. By 3 when it ended, it was 63. Sun came out and warmed it right up. The males were cruising weedlines or building beds, especially later in the day, but males aren't going to win the tourney are they... Better luck next time I suppose.

I'll shoot gulp Gobies up here in Michigan. They imitate sculpin and gobies which are major smallie forage everywhere. I find that the bigger fish avoid them, but if the bites tough you take what you can get. An interesting fact I learned about Sculpin and Gobies that helped in my presentation is that they have no air bladder and can't raise and lower themselves in the water column effectively. In other words, they're bound to the bottom.

Lol, good point, the water is plenty warmer than the air. The problem (or possible benefit I suppose) is that its been stuck there for almost an entire month. I got out a week after ice out, and read 51-54, and that was mid April. Its Foote Dam Pond on the AuSable. Last year I was looking at bedding smallies a week ago this time... I found ALOT of good staging ground for spawners. Steep banks, from a foot deep to 30 in the length of my boat, with hard sand on the higher end, which I assume to be the preferred area second to rocks, which are lacking in the lake. Theres a good amount of standing timber, would the smallies bed up next to that in place of rocks or just stage there pre and post?

I've got a tourney coming up this weekend. Water temp went down from 61 to 59 (consistantly) over the last two weeks (Welcome to Michigan eh?). The lake's clear, steep dropoffs, mostly smallmouths. Are they going to be deep or what? Two weeks ago we found them on a steep bank near an abyssal hole. This week I had them in the same spot on the graph, but not on the line. I don't need big fish, just something. What can I do? My thoughts have been RatLTrap, drop shotting a goby and a jig. Anything else to try? 5 14" fish have never been so hard to come by...

Hmm. If you knew what you were doing you could do it. You'd have to attach new leads to the alternator and obviously the car would have to be running. The only issue I can see is that a 100 amp charger might damage these deep cycle and gel batteries we tend to use on boats cause it charges too fast. Not saying damage as in explosions or immediate failure, just might heat it up or something like that. I'd check on the specific recommendations for your battery.