casts_by_fly

And what would you change on the head turner or all round for chatterbaits?

You're right on the cost comparison. I run an amped 80 ah 12v. Its basically two of those with the Li cells in a different configuration so yeah about $1100. I see how Old town got to their pricing. But a brand new 120 PDL is $2800. A newport motor runs another $1k. A battery for $1100. That's $4900 and gives you the same functionality. The old town integrated unit will be cleaner and you don't have to do the motor install yourself but that's a $1k upcharge for a cleaner setup. And the autopilot is $4350 going rate right now. With that battery would put you at $5400. Its a different hull design so different uses though.

Ultragreen was my go to leader material for building fly rod leaders for a long time. Good stiffness, slick coating, ties a great knot. For a braid to mono leader its a good choice.

At $5k I can see where it makes some sense. Its basically a PDL with a supplemental motor and that's what it would cost to set that up. If that's what you need then I get it. Rivers and big water trolling come to mind where just having a motorized unit is a risk with battery life. I'm planning to take my autopilot on the Delaware for smallies but you can be sure that I'm starting the day by going up river and working my way back down. No way I'm paddling the autopilot up river.

Not sure the vendor, but if it was a really cheap spool from a third party supplier then it could have been a clearance of old stock and who knows how it was stored. You've had good luck with BG in the past as have lots of people. Its cheap anyway. I'd grab a new spool and pitch that one.

I can see why you'd say that. That said, I've had exactly one issue over the past ~3 years using it. Its probably 1000 hours that its been on the boat. There are elastic straps on each holder if you want to strap them in. I do that when I first load the boat at the ramp and when I'm making a run across rougher water. The rods don't bounce in any way like in a bassboat in rough water, but just in case a bad wave comes in or (worst case) I flip they are held in place. Again, I've never even had a close call in those scenarios but you never know when something will come up. And for me, the benefit is too nice. I'm standing to fish and using spotlock all of the time. I can turn any direction and cast without worrying about rods behind me. And when I want to swap rods I don't have to sit down and grab one out of the crate behind the seat. I can bend over, swap rods, and be fishing a new thing instantly.

Hi Guys, I have a Helix 9 with the factory cable tray. Since I'm in a kayak I take the head unit off when I have it in the truck and leave the tray hanging. I did that with my Helix 7 when it was just 2 wires hanging. Sometimes I would throw a baggie over the wires but that was more trouble than its worth. I use dielectric grease on all of my plugs which keeps the water of the metal pretty well, but I'd like to put a better/more permanent cap on it for wet days and when I leave the boat in the truck and it rains overnight. I've searched the web but can't find one. Anyone know of a humminbird factory part that is a cable tray cover? If not, I guess my best route will be a snap top plastic box with a cutout for wires but I don't want to go that route if I don't have to. thanks rick

I don't jump in to cool off since its a lot harder to get back into a kayak in the middle of a lake. But I will dangle my legs depending on the lake. Most places up here you're not allowed and some of the lakes have HABs so it's not healthy to. @Catt I didn't know there were 'mountain' streams in LA. That looks like a bunch of different mountain freestone streams in the north east. Had you told me you were on vacation up here I'd have believed it. Beautiful place. I assume no trout in there but probably bass?

When I fish out of my dads tracker 162 we do the same. The passenger running seat stays folded down. My rods in the back are facing forward but with the reels where the end of the back deck ends and hanging down below the deck level. That gives me the full back deck to not step on a rod. His rods are facing backwards and they interlace with mine. He’s only got a 20 hp due to hp restrictions so when we run the big motor I just sit on the front deck by the front seat.

A friend has a lake house on canandaigua and grew up there. We’ve been to her place and it’s an awesome part of the world.

the low rider is the only series I don’t have experience with. I jumped from bucoo to expert and have since started adding caras. The mh/f (aka all round fast) that Brian Mdtx mentioned is unique in the falcon lineup and I would love to try it. I think it’s going to be pretty close to the swim jig for action but can’t say for sure.

Hi guys, I am going to have a work trip at the end of the month in Buffalo and I'm driving from NJ to get there which will take me past the fingerlakes. I might be able to pare off some time depending on the day. Anything fishing particularly well I should consider? Its too early to consider salmon and steelhead at the river mouths. I might be able to swing a day with a guide. I probably can't bring the kayak since I'll likely be driving people around while there. Any ideas? thanks rick

I have the trapcaster in the bucoo SR lineup and use it as my crankbait rod. I fished a lot of things on it the first year I got it and I've talked about it here a lot. For me, I think its a good moving bait rod but I don't love it for single hook applications. That said, if you like the trapcaster and you're looking for something for 3/16 plus plastic then the Swim jig rod is a dandy. I've been fishing it with 1/8 plus a crawtube on straight 30 lb 832 braid. Fantastic rod for that. 7'2", MH (though Falcon's version of MH which is on the lighter side of MH) and true fast action.

you're basically doing what saltwater guys do all the time. Its a dropper rig, a bottom rig, a fluke rig, etc. No reason why it wouldn't work. At that point you would just tie your braid main line to the swivel at the top and clip on your dropshot weight. When I'm fishing the surf for little fish, I just tie up (basically) a dropshot rig with figure 8 knots instead of beads and crimps and pass the loop through the hook eye and pull the hook back through it to be a square knot to the hook (more or less). I will say that the rigs are a pain to keep untangled and I wouldn't trust to not get kinks and knots in typical bass fishing line weights. When you make one of these from 50 lb mono, you don't mind if you loose a little strength to a kink when the fish are <10 lb.

Not so much the vibration of the blade but the undulation of the body. Some trailers have enough resistance to flatten out the wobble of the body. You want the trailer to basically get out of the way on a chatterbait. The zako does that. A rage menace is pretty good at that. A simple split tail trailer is good for that too. I haven't fished the spunk shad but that's an option. Things with appendages dampen the action.

I have the equivalent prop for my autopilot and it works wonders in weeds on its own. However, adding a ninja blade is a whole nother level. https://www.precisionsonar.com/products/accessories/ninja-grass-blade Since my motor has to come up through a hole in the bottom of the boat, weeds can block being able to pull the motor up through the hole (which is how you have to clean off weeds). real pain when they accumulate on the nose cone of the motor in particular. However, the ninja blade helps ensure that anything that makes it back to the prop gets cut off so you always have the prop spinning. For me, I can then turn the motor 180 degrees and move the opposite direction to get out of the slop. Then shut off the motor and spin it 180 degrees to let the boat back out of the slop that was on the nosecone. Lots of pain, but the ninja blade keeps the prop itself clear. On a regular TM you can pull up the motor to clear weeds, but if you're right back down into the slop you're going to grab more. I wish I coudl upload the video of what I routinely go through. Matted milfoil with occasional pads and pondweed underneath. Just don't let the prop stop/slow down and it plows right through. I went through a lily pad bed the other week that was 50 yards long and solid across the top.

yes, but like in the Native thread, that's not the point.

@gimruis do you have a ninja blade on the motor? It helps with most all aquatic vegetation. With the 1-2mm stringy stuff it doesn't get all of it but it does still cut through a lot.

Base boat with the PDL drive is $3700 the Xi3 on the front is $1400 Newport on the back is $1000 Micro Powerpoles as rigged are $1400 for both Dual garmin 93SV $1400 I'm assuming he has livescope LVS34 on there for another $1700 I didn't catch which dakotas he has, but one for each motor plus another for electronics is going to be about $1800 I'd say there is another $1k of accessories and connecting bits on top of that. That's $13,400 as a quick estimate so I'd say you were right on the money. As DB said, that's not the point. Kayak fishing is its own sport. If your hobby is kayak tournament fishing then this is a very real ready to go option for a high end rig. Think about a top end tournament bass boat and you're over $100k fully rigged. This gives you much of the fishing functionality (spot lock, live scope, dual graphs, powerpoles) at a tenth of the cost. Of course you give up space and speed, but then you gain back storage at home and towing weight. You also don't have to rig all of these things. Skip the newport, a powerpole, and make it a single garmin and you're down to $10k. Livescope is very optional as well, though a nice option. For a non-tournament angler this is a lot of kayak. I will say that its not far off my autopilot which is a lot of kayak for a non-tournament angler. can you rig a small aluminum for a similar price and have more space and functionality? Yeah, probably. Not a new aluminum but certainly with a used one. Not everyone wants a full on boat though. And, there are some parts of the country where you can put a kayak in and not a boat.

welcome to my world. We usually get it starting in early- to mid-may depending on temps. Then when some of the lakes get sprayed with weed killer the milfoil breaks down into 6' long strings made from just the stalks which are a challenge in their own right. A previous thread of mine turned up all of the usual options. I've fished a few of them to some success. The gambler flat tail worm is on my to try list next time, I just didn't have the right hooks last time (it needs a little bigger gap EWG). A toad is a good way to cover water if the fish are active and a bit different to a hollow body frog. Pitching and punching down through it is an option if you know an area where the fish are holding. My path at the moment is to fish moving baits to cover the water until I find a fish or two and then slow down with plastics for a bit. If nothing, keep moving.

30' is a long way down for a bladed jig to keep it down there. I've gone down to 25 and you have to crawl it, even with the heavier heads. You'll want thin braid to help keep it down. I can't imagine down to 50'. Do you have any live imaging to see your bait is at depth?

@TOXIC- if that's correct, then that implies that D&J's equipment can do much smaller runs more profitably than Yamamoto's equipment can do small runs. That's not entirely surprising. D&J started as a small custom baits business and I'm sure they kept their smaller equipment up and running to support that. I don't know the Yamamoto back story, so can't really comment there (I'm sure you know much better than most). I work in a much larger industry making consumer products and we see similar things. Different smaller packers/manufacturers will have different capabilities that you might not have kept in-house for efficiency reasons. When big manufacturers look for efficiency/profitability, the tail end of products tends to get cut to focus on the larger volume items. That makes an opportunity for smaller manufacturer's to jump into that specialties/niche market.

I saw that and was really surprised. That's what led me to my comments above about small batch sizes for a broad array of colors and shapes/sizes on the market. And, that really correlates to glenn's comment above about D&J being the real prize. That tells me that D&J have the machinery in smaller sizes and larger sizes to make small batches worth it. if you strictly think of production efficiency, the senko production line/molds at Yamamoto will necessarily have some downtime swapping between sizes and colors at each change. The tail end of the production volumes (the lowest 10% of sellers) still have the same changeover time each despite being tiny volumes. Now take those off of the bigger line and put them on a line that can do a 1k minimum, which is 100 10-packs. You might not run that small of a production, but it sure makes it easier to keep all of the sizes and colors in stock (or to produce to demand/order).

it’s also $250 for something I don’t target and not a rubber coated mesh. All no nos for regular use for me. And I can’t keep it open and ready to use like what I have now. If I were targeting musky I would do it but not for a bass net.

We’re you reading my latest trip report? in all seriousness, I’ve been using it for my third year now and this is the first incident. I keep the rods left and land fish in my right hand/net. I always dock on the starboard side. It’s great if you’re going through low overheads. Gotta watch I’d you’re around docks up tight.