casts_by_fly

I think the autopilot is even a little beefier through the middle too. I’ve stood straddling the front edge of the motor to pitch but not as far as standing on the front hatch.

Here is the sportman 120 in one of those videos. the kayak will be more stable than most people. The bigwater is a little more sleek and still a very stable boat. Listening to people who have both, the PDL is more stable.

It is stable if you're sitting and great for big water because its maneuverable and cuts through waves. The standing stability is not as good as the sportsman series since they are basically plastic pontoons. I didn't see that part. That's exhorbitant. At that rate you might as well just put a torquedo or newport on the back of a regular bigwater pdl.

Yeha, I'm in a kayak and the net I have is the biggest I'm going to be able to fit. I don't fish for them specifically, they just happen to be in a couple of the lakes I like to fish. I see them around all the time cruising and end up having 2-3 encounters per year with muskies. this was the first adult sized one on the line. the last couple have taken and not set or turned at the last minute. If I were to target them, I'd definitely have a bigger net. Funny enough, I used to carry a berkley version Boga but took it out this winter. I have a plastic lip grip on my scale which I didn't even consider using. I think next time the solution is to tire it out a little more, the lip grip in the mouth, and cradle with my other arm.

This has been theorized in the old town groups ever since old town filed the patent a couple years ago. I can see the benefit for some people that might have range anxiety in a motorized boat or that like the control of a pedal kayak. Its effectively giving the benefit of adding a torquedo on the back while keeping a PDL drive, except its all in one package. I'm curious to see the speeds it will get. The Bigwater is known for a speedy hull compared to the sportman series, though its not as stable for standing up and bass fishing. I suspect 6 mph might be possible with power and pedal together unless there is a limiter in the system somewhere.

That's a pretty slick layout. Definitely thought out as a 'what could I do here' methodology with the intention of allowing all of the possible options of propulsion. Also a BIG boat. 40" wide is really wide.

We just don't have that level of cover up here. I imagine cypress knees have to be bad for it. Also deep current washed brush piles. We're lucky if we get a few trees to fall over and lay down in the water. I've lost one jig the past two years and it was to a toothy critter.

Yes, that's true if SP has capacity. Either option though will take time and will introduce change to the product. I would expect disruption during the changeover and your favorite bait might not be the same again.

I'll preface that this report contains no fish pictures unfortunately. But it was one heck of a weird night. You fish when you can, right? I had an evening, my wife had lots of work to do late, so I'm going fishing and not worrying when I come home. I figured with the recent rains that the hills would be soaked and all of the major and minor streams would be pouring in to all of the lakes around. My favorite lake has two main creeks that feed it, plus a bunch of hillside seeps and springs. All flow right into grass beds which so far this year have been starting to mat at the surface. I figured the bait would be right up in the grass eating every little thing washing in and the bass would follow them up. There was some wind and supposed cloud cover called for, so maybe a spinnerbait afternoon or a good frog/weedless spoon bite. I got on the water around 4 and started down the bank. The water was a solid foot higher than I've ever seen it which translated into yards of extra bank being flooded right into the shoreline bushes. Since this is a natural lake with no dam (just a natural outflow) I figured the fish would take advantage of all this new cover to explore and find food. It was not to be. I rotated through a whole host of everything imaginable for 4+ hours. Spinnerbait, chatterbait, jig, Texas rig, frog, spoon, walking bait, soft jerkbait, etc. The water was about a foot over top of the old grass so you could work just about anything over the top of it and some stuff through it. The lily pads had loosened up with the extra water so you could work through them a little easier than normal. There was a touch of color to the water and a light ripple. All pretty ideal conditions minus the bright hot sun. I pitched docks and laydowns. Poked holes in lily pads and grass beds. Burned things over under around and through. I fished the shallow side and the deep sides. It was figuring to be another rough one. Since I had all the time, I planned to stay past dark. All of my biggest fish from this lake have been either in the dark or in the first 2 hours of daylight. And since I hadn't has as much as a swirl on the left 2/3 of the lake, I might as well give the right 1/3 of the lake a try while waiting for dark. I never do well there, but I wasn't doing well anywhere so better change something. The right 1/3 has the outflow. I should have twigged it earlier, but if the fish don't want the moving water at the incoming, then try it at the outgoing. The incomings were smaller and scattered, but with the lake up 1' it all has to go somewhere. I threw on a big choppo 105 while it was daylight enough to work it around the pads and it took all of 4 casts to get into the first one, a chunky keeper sized fish. It only took 4 more casts for the second one. That's when I started to figure out what they were doing a little better- sitting right on the edges of the pads in the flow waiting for bait to pass by. The outflow has a little 20' wide x 150 yard channel through the pads before it spills out into the creek so I figured I'd work down through it. Halfway down I had a great hit right in the middle of the channel and as soon as the fish went down I knew it was a better fish. The sky had a little bit of light left, enough to be able to see a little color but not much. The fish started digging for bottom and I knew I either had a 5+ lb. bass or a musky. I got him up to the surface and at that point realized what I had. I think he realized too because that's when it went a little nuts. It was one of the bigger pure strain muskies I've seen in the lake but never managed to get a hook into. It took a couple minutes but I got him boat side and realized my next problem. My net is huge for a bass net. Its a 20x21" hoop. It can swallow a 5 lb. largemouth with room to spare. I landed a 28" musky in it last year. No way was this going to be an easy task. This fish was the length of my paddle grip which has 36" marked and it was bigger than that. It was as big around as my calf muscles, a solid 6" wide across the back. It was feisty and had a pair of #2 trebles hooked in its face. After a couple rounds of diving under the boat, swinging back around, gliding on top of the water, I finally got a chance to try the big fish in a little net trick where you bring it along the surface with the net deep under, drop the rod tip at the last second so the fish's head goes down and swims into the net. I've done it with big carp and steelhead (and oversized trout when I only had a little net), but I could only get one shot on this one. There was no doubt that the treble hooks were going to grab the net. As predicted, the fish slid towards the boat and the net. I dropped the rod tip and raised the net. The fish's head slid in just as the trebles caught the net at the yoke. I just needed the fish to bend its body a little to slide in. It was not to be. It lunged and straightened its body as soon as the net touched it. The net hoop barely made the midway point of the fish so it easily slid back out. Now I have a raging musky hooked to the net, in the dark, with a pair of trebles attached. I wished I had amazon primed those clear glasses at this point. The only option was to lift. No way to untangle the hooks in the net, so that's the first point of contact. I'll grab the body of the fish to cradle him in. Soaked to the skin at this point I reached for the fish and started to lift just as the fish gave one last head shake to straighten the hooks. It straightened out two HD #2 round bends on the back of a choppo and swam away. I think this was the best case scenario- no one got hurt, I didn't have to lay a big musky on the deck of the boat to unhook it, and I'm calling it a catch like when a marlin angler touches the leader. I would have loved a picture, but it would have been a crappy one of a big fish laying on the deck in the dark. After the excitement of the musky, I wasn't going home anytime soon. We made quite a racket so I motored 30 yards to start fishing again. Working down the pad line, I managed 3 more bass (on a buzzbait now as it was too weedy to fish the plopper anymore) with a few more missing it. At the end of the pads is a beach. It's marked out with buoys for the swimming area, and then another non-boating area beyond that. Around and inside the area its 2-8' and weeds. The bluegills were sucking on the surface, the shad were flitting about and I had just caught one and missed two more right there. I cast into the non-boating zone and ended up hooking the rope on the retrieve. No biggie, slide the boat over to it, set the rod down, slip the hook out. During part 3 I realized the problem with part 2. I set my rod down across the gunwales and managed to stick the butt under the 4th rod in my rack (pic for reference). As I reached down for the hook, the outside rod popped out of the rack and into the drink with a distinctive 'plunk'. I had a good mark on where I was when it happened (there was a buoy on the rope) so I flipped on the nav lights but couldn't see anything. I was about to start swirling a whopper plopper blindly on the tip of my heavy rod when I realized I had a better light. Luckily, when the rod went down the reel took the grip down but left the tip up. Air in the rod was enough to stand it straight up in the water and the tip was about 1' down and visible. Phrew! That would have been my Expert Amistad and Chronarch lost. Seeing where I was getting hits (over top of the medium depth grass flats) I figured I'd make another pass to the opposite end of the lake which had more of it. The bluegills and shad were doing their thing there, but I think the bite window was over for a bit. I fished through with not so much as a ripple. I was curious what was making all of the ruckus on the surface so I grabbed my light and waited for some of the swirls to be right at the boat. When I switched the light on I about had a heart attack as it looked like the biggest watersnake swimming right at the boat. My eyes adjusted to the light and I realized what it was- 3-4' eels. There were eels mixed in with the bluegills and shad. This lake is about 6 miles from the Delaware river via stream and there are no impediments between. I imagine an influx came up the creek with this high water and they were just following the moving water up. Super cool to see, if a little unnerving at first. I made a brief pass over the previously bass filled grass bed by the ramp but to no avail. They were done for the evening and so was I. Home after midnight and bedtime after 1 makes for a dull Rick the next day.

so if no one ever retires jigs, why is there such a market to buy new ones.....

Another consideration is if one of your favorite plastics from another company is toll manufactured by D&J. Typically when a purchase like this happens (not just talking bass fishing), the toll manufacturing side of the business becomes a decision point based on the planned strategy. If you acquired a business to build up your own manufacturing capabilities and to expand what they sell, then the contract/toll manufacturing side might be more of a pain than its worth. Any contracts in place have to be fulfilled, but probably not renewed. In this case, if D&J makes plastics for another smaller brand and GSM doesn't want to continue that, the smaller brand is going to struggle to maintain their product line. If there is a real specialty item that you like from a smaller guy not pouring his own, you might want to pick those up now.

Different setup but similar use here. In my kayak I only have one unit, but I have sitting/running and fishing positions which would correlate to your console and bow. When I'm 'running', aka sitting down and moving between spots I have side imaging on. In fact I have side with something else. My standard is a 2D and DI split box so I can check what I'm seeing on SI in real time. My other default is SI/GPS when I am mapping and marking waypoints. In both cases I know where I am running to and from most of the time, so I am just watching the underwater world go by and seeing if there is anything interesting to mark. Unless a lake is extra low or high, I am charting depth from the time I leave the ramp so I'm always building up my maps. When I get to fishing position, I am now almost 100% using live imaging. I turn it on and occasionally look at it. Most of the time I have it 45 degrees ahead and towards the bank I'm fishing. That way I can see the weedlines or other cover that's coming up that I might not know about. Prior to Live, I would put on SI and do the same- keep an eye out for underwater cover- but you're only getting it after you're past it and you have to be moving at .8 mph or so to have any chance of reading the image. Its better than nothing some times (and its nothing some times). In a river? I wouldn't bother unless you're fishing the deeper pools. At 5' any cone hitting the bottom for DI/2D is going to be about 18" wide. Side imaging for 5' deep will max out around 50', but be best less than that.

Its expensive, but not out of touch. An amped 160 Ah is $1100, so this 180 AH for $1400 isn't out of line considering the increase in capacity and the extra starting battery features. That said, before I'd go that route, I'd skip the starting battery features and use a lead acid starting battery at this time. There are a lot of complications with using lithiums as starting batteries. They talk to the challenges in the press release. I want to see proven performance and ideally a recommendation/qualification from mercury that they have approved it for that purpose. At that point then maybe its the right thing.

Tis not a difficult add on.

I do love my zillion, but I love my Met also. Its a hard choice between them. I also love my chronarch MGL which is a little lighter than either and on one of my lighter rods.

I was thinking of this thread as I used the IR searing grill last night for the first time. I've been slowly breaking in the grill with burgers, dogs, and cedar plank salmon over the past 2 months. My wife and I often do a nice sunday dinner together. In the winter we'll make a big batch of soup and store the rest for lunches. Sometimes its a whole roast chicken with all the fixins. Yesterday was a washout kinda day so we had nothing to do all day. I went big on the perfect roast potatoes, some roasted broccoli, and we went out and picked up a ribeye. 1.58lb total, somewhere around 1.5"-2" thick, bone in. I snagged some pictures during the process and thought I'd share them here. Seasonings were simple SPOG and throw it in the fridge for an hour or so to dry the surface a bit. Next up was an oven based reverse sear. In hindsight, I should have skipped the fridge because I had limited time in the oven (needed to get the potatoes in). Either way, a 150F oven for about an hour got me up to 85-90 internal temp. A good start, but not warm enough to sear. Since I had turned the grill onto 'insane' temp on the sear side and the whole thing was pretty warm I threw it onto the right side with no burner lit so it could warm to temp inside. Final result was a nice 110-115 in the eye and 125 on the outside edge. My wife likes her steaks a little more done than me, so that 125 should get up to a perfect medium in the end. Now for the fun stuff. First time searing on this IR grill. Supposedly the grates can hit 1000F and I believe it. As soon as the steak touched the metal it was instant flare up. I gave it about 10-15 seconds of that, pulled it to the side to let the flames die, flip over and do it again. 4 total blasts of 15 seconds per side, crisscrossed as best I could for pretty lines. The end result was maybe the best steak I've ever cooked. I don't have a picture of the inside because I cut it table side and it was a low light candle-lit type of dinner. Suffice to say, it was a perfect medium rare in the eye and medium on the edge. Some perfect roast potatoes and a 2016 napa petit sirah blend rounded it out.

that makes a lot of sense and I didn't pick up on that. Expanded manufacturing footprint to allow greater volume and flexiblity. Given the blurb on D&J website about contract manufacturing capabilities and small batch abilities, that implies to me that they have some production lines on the smaller side. That pairs well with a very large lineup of colors where you need faster changeovers and smaller minimum batch sizes. If only they had another plastics brand that had a HUGE range of colors they needed to maintain...

This was my thinking as well. Not that BBB plastics are 'cheap' but Yamamoto is certainly considered expensive. Look at their other categories and they have a high and low price offering. Truglo/apex, ameristep/muddy, Big Game/Hawk, etc. Tailored offerings for different retailers.

I would think you're be fine with exposed hook paddletails on that rod. That's basically a chatterbait hook. I assume you had sharp hooks. braid? I've lost a couple fish this year on braid that I was surprised by, one a big largemouth that would have topped 4 for sure. After looking at a few more fish caught on that same rod and braid I could see the issue. No stretch in the braid plus a MF/F taper and plenty of power meant I was tearing big holes with the hook. Combine that with a more front of mouth hook position (again, no stretch in the setup for them to really inhale it) and a couple popped. My dragger was set up with 17 mono which I think is a good choice for moving baits on that rod.

In any acquisition you have to think about why the acquiring company bought them in the first place. There are many possible reasons. Maybe BBB was underrepresented in the market and lacked the ability for greater distribution. Maybe BBB was low profit and GSM thinks they can improve it. Maybe GSM saw an opportunity to get into an area they didn't have before (though maybe unlikely since they bought Yamamoto). All will be options as to why they bought BBB and any one can inform what might come next. Looking at GSMs brands, they have done a mixture of buying up old classics that maybe weren't at the height of their market but have value, volume and/or distribution (truglo, NAP, Ameristep, birchwood casey), up and coming hot brands that maybe people don't know about yet (i.e. not widely distributed like Halo optics, Apex gear), and opportunity areas on the fringes of their core business (skull hooker, viking solutions, zero trace). From a size perspective, they can now offer competitive packages to retailers that fill a lot of needs. if you think about the buyer for Academy or another box store, they can fill their shelves 90% by dealing with maybe 4-5 suppliers. There is a lot of merit in that as the retailer as you simplify your supply chain. As the supplier, you need to be able to offer solutions to your buyers. My suspicion in this case is that GSM had an opportunity to buy with the idea of increasing distribution. Look what they did with Yamamoto and walmart. Cut down the pack size to better fit walmart customers, special packaging to differentiate it, increased distribution to more stores and more variants. If I look at walmart.com for BBB available in store, I see a negligible amount (10 SKUs and none of the good stuff). There's a big opportunity there.

I think I remember that thread now that you mention it. I would still recommend the rod for this new task (and if you like it, it might replace the poison adrena). I'm afraid I can't help on the Cara dragger. I have the bucoo SR dragger 1 and I used it for moving baits to good success. I agree that one is maybe on the slower side of fast but its more than a moderate fast. You're probably right that its more of your style vs what the rod needs. For big chatterbaits and spinnerbaits its a great rod. Its not the rod I'd pick up for jigs and worms.

hi All, I check the USGS a couple times a week and man is it ugly today. From the top of the Chesapeake bay to the Canadain line. For anyone unfamilar, the black/indigo dots are records highs for this day. Pink circles are flood stage. Dark blue is above 90th percentile (which mean on average you'd have this happen 3-4 times a year, usually in the spring/winter). We are firmly in the black and blue here. I haven't ventured out today after the storms last night but will be out this afternoon on a small natural lake. River fishing isn't happening anytime soon. stay safe out there.

Living not far from there growing up, I fished erie back in the mid 90's with my dad and he fished it all the way back into the 70's. Funny enough, back then the bay and lagoon area of Presque Isle was a largemouth hotspot. Smallies in the 90's were there with lots of 5+ fish caught by casual anglers every year. 30+ fish days were common if you could get out onto the lake and fished tubes. When the zebra mussels came in there was a lull period (I think the emerald shiner population collapsed due to competition, but have no scientific evidence). The water got really clear (it was decently clear before) and then the goby population kicked off. Fast forward to current day and from reports it looks like its fishing its best ever, though I haven't been personally in a long while now. saying its the best though? I think there are quite a lot of lakes putting out record numbers of 5+ smallies right now. The St lawrence didn't use to be as good for smallmouth as it is now. We fished it in the 90's and it was a great largemouth fishery, but the smallies weren't in the river like they are now. BASS tournaments were won by either big largemouth bags or running into lake Ontario for smallies. Now both lake ontario and the St lawrence are on fire. Champlaign is dropping big fish. No one has mentioned lake st clair yet. And don't forget the video a couple months ago of the guy in california that weighed a 35 (?) pound bag of 5 smallies all on video. I think the best way to put it- if you love big smallmouth, there might not be a better time in history to be fishing for them than now.

I can't help on the kistler, but I know falcons. Do you know the Finesse jig model? Its just what you're looking for. 6'10", medium to medium heavy power (falcon lists MH, but I'd call it medium), fast action. Different ratings in different lineups, but my expert is rated at 1/4-3/4 and I'd call it a 3/16-5/8 which is what the Cara is rated at. With a light reel mine comes in a shade over 8 oz total.

I love mine. Mine is an autopilot but the hull is the same. If I am pitching cover all day I will stand all the way forward next to the motor, straddling the motor, so there is basically no boat in front of me to get in the way of pitching. I also keep my spare prop in the front hatch. I will crawl all the way up and grab the spare to swap them any day.