Muddpuppy

Back when when I was first married. My wife and some of her friends in the area decided to have a decorating or tuperware party or something of that nature. This meant at least one of the bunch was banished from the house and figured that this would by a perfect opportunity to do some gigging. One or two would pole while the other two would hold the light and gig. Somebody in the boat kept saying something about a cold front suppose to come through, but he also whinned about snakes, so he became one of those people that you tend to ignore. Besides it was only in the mid 70's. By about 9:00 or so it had gotten cold, and windy and continued to get worse. We had carried some light jackets but they were more for mosquitos then artic wear. By 10:00 ice was forming on the poles and on the boat. Some body was pouring beer in the seats just to watch it freeze. We had rounded up a coffee can to build a fire, but nobody had a lighter that worked. Only one person had gloves and they were drenched and not much help. So finally as we neared the spot where we normally kept the boat around 12:00. One person would have to pole the boat, while the other 3 warming their hands under their arms and stammerd for him to go faster. I don't think I have ever been so cold in my life. As I was typeing this I kept wondering why didn't we just beach the boat and walk home. I guess it would have squashed the adventure.

About a year ago I broke the notch off the bow gaurd mount on my Minn Kota. It is what holds the spring and shaft collar in place in the mount. When I carried it to the shop the guy told me that the Motor Guides were bad about that, but it was the second Minn he had seen it happen too. Ordered new parts and fixed it with J.B. Weld, and a 1/4" piece of key stock before they came in. I like my minn kota. No experience with the difference in the motors it's self though.

With our lakes and your love of fishing, she could have plenty of free time to go home to see her family.

I know somebody that had one. I far as I know the main reason he tradded it off was to get a larger rig. He has a large build and wanted more room. He fishes constantly and I never heard that there was any problems.

Was there a pump on your livewell originally? If so you could probably replace it for what a decent air pump aerator would cost. I have seen some nice 12volt systems that are nice, but priced the same. The cheap ones eat batteries. And even the "good ones" produce a low volume of air. They have some nice oxygen induceing systems. You also have temp. and ammonia build up to be concerned with, by not circulating your water. Wal-Mart carries some low volume bilge pumps that should work. I like the air pump type with a circulating pump especially when it starts getting hot or if you keep fish to take home. If it is just a pump or switch, that maybe real easy to fix. Just make sure all your hoses are tight and leak free, if you work on it.

Thanks for the input. I wish I would have tried the c-rig. There are suposed to be some for-real monsters in the lake, but it won't be long until the water is probably around 100 deg. Maybe I can hit it again once or twice before it does.

I fished a lake this weekend that is about 2000 acrs., mod. cover and vegetation and probably 35' deep. It has 3 - 450 mg. generators on it. The water temp. is already between 82 and 90 deg and stained. There are some nice fish in it it but we couldn't get them to hit anything we threw. Finally landed one about 4lbs. on a smoked pepper wacky worm. They were hitting the surface off of points and even saw about 6 between 3 and 5lbs. in shallow water but they payed no attention to any thing we threw. Any suggestions besides waiting till fall.

I have a Merc. 2 - stroke. It has worked great so far.

We caught a pike at least 5 times one morning between 2 of us. It was tearing the finish off the lures we were useing. Removed the fish from the lake and wasn't bothered by anouther one.

The extendable pole type retriever probably will work the best if you get lures caught in low hanging trees. The knock off or weighted type might help in some instances. Both versions can be home made with little trouble.

I've heard of putting a chicken on a floating board then anchoring it to the bottom or useing a burlap sack like you described. Normally if I bait a hole I use 30% range cubes. There is little odor and they come in large pellets. It attracks bait fish and that is what the others are after. I dought if it works near as effectively as the the milk create .....but.

I fish Perkey in the winter /early spring for bass, Lake-of-the-Pines in spring and summer, Tyler East because it's so close. But there is a list to chose from. I am in Texas also.

I really like mine. I haven't used it much fishing for bass. But it is great when I drift fish for other species. I did start to try it the other day fishing around boat houses in heavy wind. Calmed down before I got it dug out. I ran a (main line) or rope down the side of the boat deck and hook the sock or a rope on it. I can slide it to any position I want. I also attached some weights on the bottom of the sock mouth and put some floats on the top. I opens almost immediately. Also I use a lead line on mine sometimes, it is about 25 ft. that I can hook onto the sock and the main line. This gives me plenty of room to fish around the sock without getting caught up in it. I put two ski rope floats one on each end of the lead line just in case I would need/ or accidently unhook it, I can come back and find it.

I have a friend that just replaced two one his boat. I think he got them localy and not online. I'll ask him next time we call. I don't know what they cost though, every time he brought up price he was starreing at his feet and mumbling. I did not take that as a good sighn. He said he got them at a local fiberglass repair shop. Ran about $75.00 apeice. He was selling the boat and didn't have time to shop. The only other place I know of besides a dealer is Custom Mold and Trim in Monticello Ark.

That's it! It's not good for anything shiney or with a glossy finish ether.

Have you checked out the articles?

Chalk up anouther vote for local tackle shops?

All boats are a little different, but. The live well should be filled by a pump, probably controlled by one of the switches. The other switches may controll lights, horn and bilge pump. There should be plug. And if you forget to put that in - the livewell won't be all that gets filled with water. LOL On mine the live wells can be pumped out or remove the drain tubes Make sure these are properly installed and free of debree this controls the water depth in the well. The wells should recirculate water as long as the switch is on. The bilge pump is used to remove any water that may happen to get into the boat. This one needs to be working for sure. The running and anchor lights need to be working if you fish at night. That is one thing that they are strict on around here,anyway. Make sure all hoses are tight and leakfree before useing your boat. I would check my wireing out to he best of your ability. Being out on the water is no place to discover a short. I think the coast gaurd gives a list of safety equipment and rules on their web site. There are also some boating ed. sites that offer a lot of good info online dealing with markers, ect. they are free and you are not required to take a test.

If the lake is used for water supply sometimes they the water district will have a map, the engineering firm that constructed it may have. Try to find an old area map before the lake was built and transpose it onto the preasent day lake. If it is a natural lake none of this may help. We used to fly over lakes around home. You will be amazed at what can be seen from up there. Especially on the on the tops of barges. From what I have read the lake flooded three smaller lakes in it's construction. That isn't where they are fishing is it?I use MyTopo.com on occassion, it shows two islands.

I may pick up something at Wal-Mart everyonce in a while. But for the most part I try to patranize the smaller guys. And for the most part these local shops try to be as competative as posible. Often some of their prices are even lower. Hard to sell items I don't mind paying a little more for. I just keep getting the feeling that the more smaller shops that close the less the larger guys carry. I feel like they try to dictate what I am going to fish with. Once the compitition is squashed they inhance their profit margin by reduceing their stock. Maybe I am just being nestalgic and I'll pay a little extra for that service.

The lake I was on, is (there are 2 that join with a cannal) maybe about 5000 achres or so combined. It isn't a massive body of water but you can fish comfortably without being on top of one anouther. I didn't know it at the time but there was a group from a nearby city down here pre fishing for a tounement. I had noticed them when I first started out and how (3) of them would converge on a boat, stay a minute or two then roar off to find anouther boat. There are a couple of spots that I always hit when I go by and I had stopped to try one of them, here they came. I hadn't had a bite so I left. They stayed just about long enough to get a gps reading and make a cast or two, to make it look like they were doing something, then they also left. Raceing off to find anouther boat. I can only cast so long and I have take a break to stretch out my back. So that's what I did and just let the boat float. I had rested a rod up against the console and I will rear back in my seat periodicly, so it may have looked like I was setting a hook rather frequently. Once again back they came. So I would leave and go to anouther spot always with the same results. This happened about 4 times. Now they did not just come up slowly they had the boats on plane and would just shut them down. If you had been fishing the wake would have washed the spot out. Then they would leave in the same fashion. Finally one guy with the club (not one of the trailing boats) eased up along side of me and said he was fishing a tournement this weekend and notice I had stopped a in a few few different places and wanted to know how many I had caught and what I was useing. I said... &*@$ I haven't been fishing for a while now I'm haveing to much fun watching these idiots follow me around the lake. I wasn't bothered any more that day and ended up showing the guy I had talked to a map of the lake since they are hard to find.

I started with a couple of freezer bags, then went to a tuperware container. Started putting 2 or 3 of each bait into a utility box and rolling up the full bags in freezer bags and putting them into the tuperware container. Tried a bag sealer with different size bags. Filled up one storage bin with utillity boxes and went back to the freezer bags in the tuperware container under the seat. After the last few trips I was trying to sort things back out, and have come to the conclusion my whole boat is my soft plastic storage system. So I think next I will try to find some fine mesh cargo netting and mount in the storage bin lids and leave a few freezer bags at home.

If it is already painted make sure it is real clean first. There is a pre paint cleaner called TLP or something like that Turpintine should work. Scuff the paint lightly with sand paper. Then paint it. If it is bare aluminum I have been told you can wash it with vinager to get it clean. You may want to use a primer first. I got some camo paint from an Army Surpluss Store here and it has stayed on pretty good on the things I have used it on. It comes in 1 gal. 1/2gal. and spray cans. If I hadn't left it at camp I would see what the brand was. You can spray a clear polyuriethane on after you paint it it comes in spray cans. After you have a base coat on it place plant leaves or grass next to the boat and spray them with a contrast color. The over spray leaves the outline of the leaves on the boat. Do this with several colors. Use flat colors stay away from glossy ones. Krylon sells camo kits but I have only seen these in the fall.

I have a blond Cocker Spaniel that loves to go with me. And the carpet collects hair. He has long hair and it seems to weave into the fibers. The wire pet brush works pretty good. They also make an adheasive roller that works after you use the brush. For cat hair it may work great. Wide scotch or packing tape works I hooked the drive roller from an old Dirt Devel hand vack onto a wet-vac and it does a pretty good job.

Light mist to intermittent sprinkels, steam comeing off a warm water lake, throwing top water I love it when they explode on one in the fog. Sloshy shoes, sticky dripping clothes and thunderboomers ....mamma I'm come'n home!