XcoM274

For us noobs who are planning on going could you give us a rundown of what we need to do preparation wise as far as booking and stuff?

Sorry Bassman, I'm already planning to take 5 guys from my area. Try to work a ride from someone like Maltese if he's going.

10 Hours 54 Minutes and I will be jumping in my seat the whole way down.

Well the side imaging won't work well at low or high speeds if you have the transducer misplaced. There are alot of factors that go into installing that stuff and it is very sensitive to waterflow around the boat. It takes a fair amount of experamentation and tweaking to get that stuff to work right. You've probably noticed boats that the sonar cuts out on as soon as they start moving with some speed. Its the same idea. The function works great when its installed properly. As far as ease of use goes I don't think they're too tough. The unit comes out of the box with everything set on automatic. Personally I like the ability to adjust settings and customize my sonar so I change everything to manual. But I don't think you'd need to spend more than an hour reading the manual over to familiarize yourself with it.

Wow 101 pounder's going to push that boat about as fast as your 10 horse. I've never seen a kicker on a glass boat, and living 5 minutes from St. Clair I see alot of boats. It may very well be possible but the extra weight might not be acceptable on fiberglass.

Take out some average gills. About 5 inchers I would suggest. I'd kill 30 tops. One thing though, if you havn't interfered for 5 years the pond should be in rough equilibrium. Eventually, provided you did nothing to it the ratios of species to species will reach an optimum level and production will equal death and consumption. I believe that when stocking virgin water you stock 10 bluegill fry to 1 bass fry. Could be off on that number but its close. Bluegill reproduce quickly yes, but a good sized bass needs to eat perhaps 3 a week to live. Think about those numbers. I fish a 3.5 acre pond up here in Michigan. My buddy and I have sole rights to fish it so we did some monitoring last year. In a 3 acre pond, we figure there are between 75-100 total bass. Up here there isn't much else for them to eat beside the bluegill and they dine on it quite heartily. Last year we pulled a 4.5, 3.2, 3.0 and 2.8, which are real good sized fish for a northern pond. Anyways, I think if we went out and tried, we could catch 75-100 bluegill in a day. There were days when we were fooling around with catching some and pulled 35 in an hour. So there are ALOT more bluegill in the pond than bass. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Oh I definatly thought we lost that one. I NEVER think I can win on an underlimit, even if they were big fish.

LBH, I believe that at the end of the video for the Fork trip there was a quote reading "No Excuses '08." Correct me if I'm wrong but you're the one who put it there too. Lol, just had to give you a hard time.

Oh I know for a fact that it is. The pond I fished last year that had them, the lady told me exactly what she released there. It was like Koi and some other stupid tropical type fish. Surprised they actually live under the ice.

I like it LBH. Perhaps we need a special sticky thread for that too lol. I have cabin fever sooo bad right now, I'm going ice plowing out on lake Huron tomorrow. Hehehehe. We'll see if I can pull some smallies out of 28 degree water. Only in a Team Red boat.

lol, hang on. Do the words "12 inch" and "pig" belong in the same sentence? Perhaps a 12 pound pig? Oh, then you wouldn't be in MI lol.

Okay. Yes, the plywood for the motor mount is screwed into the aluminum rail at the top of the boat. It (the rail) is hollow and I just used stainless screws with a dab of marine silicone to hold them from vibrating out. Next, no, the aluminum is not attached to the boat at all. In fact, no part of that deck touches the sides of the boat. The hull is made to flex alot under stress and I didn't want to interfere with that. I just used the screws that hold the pedestal in place to hold the deck in place as well. They go right through the floor, through the bench seat and into the foam beneath it. The aluminum is bolted to the deck however, and there are a LOT of bolts in it. 4 per section to be exact, and there are 18 sections. Hope this helped if not please post again.

Lol, he gives up on the beloved NuCanoe. Good man Pop.

Nice build man. Good boat.

LOL. I caught one of those slugs on an X-rap last year in a pond alot like that one. They are LAME fighters.

Good fish. Looks like she had quite a belly.

Added some more pics. Check it out.

Wow, that guy's gonna get real big in a couple years.

JW if anyone has hit Tawas Bay early season. Still ice on the beach but you can get out on to it via the Tawas river. I got a map so we'll see how it goes. There's a couple creek beds out on it and I'm hoping for some smallies to be out there in sluggish mode.

Good smallies. Beautiful boat.

Well I can tell you that I'd be in that dollarweed with a 1 ounce jig, a flippin stick and 40 lb braid. That'd take it out nicely.

I like going for the limit first. Once I got "5 in the Live" (cheesy but it rhymed) my confidence goes way up. A 5 pound northern Michigan bass isn't happening like a 5 pound Florida bass. On last year's trail the lunker of the year was 5.28 pounds. Pathetic to a southerner, but I can load up a limit of 14.5" bass in about an hour. Once you got that you've got an excellent chance at placing, and its time to bust out the swimbait or a 9" Slug-Go and look for mama out in the deep water. My point is that I think it depends on where you're fishing. If I'm in a 20 boat Texas tourney, I probably gotta grab a limit of 2's or 3's for a win, where as here up north, a limit of babies gives you a fair shot. Here's a specific example from my own experience. Last year, I fished a 10 boat tourney in the middle of June. Temp came up around 100 which is really unseasonable here (city all time record 102 in June and 104 overall) so the bite was painfully slow. My buddy and I found some small fish in some lillies with a flowing cool channel nearby. Now, the minimum size was 14 and we were throwing fish back. Fish were averaging 12, but at least we were catching something. In 7 hours we pulled 4 fish between 14 and 15 inches. It was sad. We went back to the weigh in thinking we were wrecked. When we arrived, we found that one other boat had one fish and that was it. It was a NICE fish at about 3.5lbs but it couldn't take down 4 bare minimum keepers. Embarrasingly enough, I dropped one of the fish into the lake while taking it out of the livewell and we still won. So, IMO, in the north, or lakes that aren't known for big fish, go for the limit. Where you know there are bigguns, go for them from the get go.

Well, here's my build thread. As far as removing a bench seat goes, everything I've seen advises against it. They are the core of the structural integrity of the hull. http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1205883728

On my boat, I didn't. The deck only touches the floor in fact, and there is a good gap around the edges. A hard wave and you'll send the brackets right through the side of the boat. Essentially, I have a floating deck that only draws support from the bottom of the boat.

Anyone know a good site where I can find reports on ice thickness for lakes in Michigan? Just want to be able to know without a huge drive.