casts_by_fly

i have the Microsoft suite because that’s what we use at work. Since it is office 365, the app is free (a login is paid, but the login comes part of my work account). It means everything from work that I use (which isn’t often) works perfectly. I also have Google sheets and the word equivalent.

i went tablet only about 5 years ago. iPad in my case. The last straw was photography but the new photos does enough for what I need with some added ’other’ app support. I also have a full suite of Microsoft applications on it for when I want to do something for work on it.

How involved do you want to get vs how much do you want to spend? the easiest solution but most expensive is to sell and get an autopilot. I have a 120 and it’s an awesome fishing machine. Spotlock is incredible. I’d get the 136 to do it again as there is minimal downside in the extra length and it’s only 4 lb heavier. You get an extra foot of space up front and 6” in the back. Neither is a light and portable boat, but if you’re going to add a motor to anything it isn’t going to be light and portable. If I remember, you have a hill to cart your kayak up and down, right? Keep that in mind. most work but keeping your boat is fabbing a mount out of starboard and similar then getting the xi3 kayak. That’s what a lot of guys do who fish tournaments since you can take the motor off when you need. You’ll need to be handy to sort a mount out. a rail mount and a transom mount motor on the side will get you the distance you want. Canoe guys have been doing it for ages. Transom mount motors are cheap. Not sure what you can mount to. the other option is to cut down a transom mount and make a mount that fits your PDL drive out of a plate. Mount the cut down motor to the plate. It’s very diy and works best if you have a used motor already but it kinda turns you into a MK style kayak. It’s a lot of fab with pvc pipe, starboard, and wire.

I’ve started converting all of my jigs, swim jigs, and bladed jigs to his. Anything new I buy comes from there. I love the tremor bladed jigs. Great action, quick startup and heavy thump. Absolutely the sharpest hooks I’ve seen.

Depending on the pier, a long handled net or a basket net on a rope. That’s how the saltwater pier guys do it. There was a place we fished steelhead in Erie that you were on a break wall. Similar deal with a long net.

im glad someone else typed this already. Save me some typing. im in a kayak also so rods have to do double duty most of the time. I carry 4-6 rods depending on the lake and the day. That said, I almost always have a chatterbait, jig and/or swim jig, a topwater, and a beaver on. The rods that I throw them on you could almost call dedicated.

I have the autopilot 120 so similar weight and size. I truck bed and primarily fish lakes with boat ramps so I don’t need a cart hardly at all. Given the lakes I’m fishing, I’m very seriously considering a trailer. It’s a bear to get it into the truck bed even with airbags on the truck to lower it 2”. An extender would help but a trailer would solve the entire problem.

i like the owners in a 5/0 screw lock for toads because the extra ewg gap, but I didn’t have one in a eighth ounce. i don’t think a 4/0 Vmc will have enough gap for a toad. The 5/0 have maybe a quarter inch clearance which isn’t enough for me.

Hi team, I needed a lightly weighted hook with a twist lock for toads because the owners I'd been using were either unweighted or too heavily weighted. I happened to be in the local store and saw them, so grabbed a pack without really looking closely. They are really long for a given size. A 5/0 is too long to put into a toad as the bend is behind the legs. Even if it did work, the gap is not an EWG 5/0 so there isn't much hook beyond the rubber. I've looked at my keitechs and its similar. Either the hook bend is in the thin tail of the plastic or the gap isn't enough for the plastic. I guess a 6" sluggo would work or maybe a 7" worm if you wanted to swim it. Anyone else use them and have a good use for them?

ah, gotcha. This was part of the 'wrapping up for the day' activities that cause the flip in the first place. My 'drive' is the last thing that gets put up and away before I hit shore. I wrap up the rods, clean up the rear tankwell, turn off the graph, fold the net, and then as I'm just about into shore or dock I'll lift the motor up if I have to. If I'm on a dock it stays in and ready. Sounds like your friend is still working out his 'done for the day' procedure.

I have a revo SX on my big rod at the moment. It is an 8-1 retrieve so that's why its there. Its also a little heavier than my STX and balances just a touch better. That said, if the STX gen 4 was an 8-1 (and maybe even with the 7-1) I would have it on there. Like you're looking for, both have the bigger flat knobs, strong drag that you don't have to tighten to the nines to have enough drag, and are smooth for pitching. If I'm casting big heavies then I'll up the spool tension a touch so I have less work for my thumb, but the STX Gen 4 and the IVCB-6 can put a lot of resistance on the spool on a cast if you like low spool tension. I'm running 0.016" mono or 50 lb 832 over the same mono depending on the day and have no issue with capacity. If you're 20 lb mono+ and casting a long way, then maybe you want a bigger reel.

Is the design of the drive such that it can fall out upside down? That would be very surprising to me that there isn't a latch or other part that holds it in place. If nothing else so that it doesn't move when you're 'pedaling'.

Razor blade. If I'm salvaging a blank or doing a rebuild on that rod, then take the blade across the top of the reel foot so you don't scratch the blank. a good sharp razor blade will make short work of the epoxy and thread. You only need to make a single cut line down the top and the rest will peel off. Painted guides you might make a little scuff in the paint, but a sharpie is enough to blend the color back. Once you rewrap it you won't see it.

straight wood filler is okay, but elmers white glue mixed with cork dust into a paste is better. I don't know that color, but I would take some 400 grit to the grips very lightly first to get to the color you're going to end up with. Then match to that. save the cork dust that sands off and mix it into the filler/glue.

What they said. If you're including all forms of jig in the discussion then the only time its not worth throwing one is when they aren't eating one or when its too painful to fish it (like the bad snot). I had that on Wednesday. tiny natural lake I fished back in the spring for the first time and caught some decent fish. I figured give it a try in the summer and see how its fared. Well, the lake is very clear (8+ visibilty) so grass grows down to 25FOW. The grass strands are 12-14' long, so anything with a bottom depth of 14' had surface grass. Anything deeper had grass on the bottom. The grass ended at the 25' mark, so if you wanted to fish the weedlines you had to be at 25' which I wasn't up for. Normally fishing a swim jig in the shallower cuts and holes would be good, but the milfoil, pondweed, and coontail were so thick underneath the lily pads that you needed 3/4 oz and a punching rig to get through them. On top of that, there was green glob HABs (cyanobacteria) that slimed everything up. So really a jig was pretty ineffective and difficult to fish. I'm sure if I had gone to a heavy jig and kept punching down through the mat methodically I'd have found some fish eventually, but that would have been a painful day so I stuck to a frog and caught a few bass.

really freaking sharp is better.

yeah, that’s a good guess. And I’ll go to your grave arguing that too. A massive kerplunk is going to put off any bass it lands on. I’m casting right into the cover where they are laying.

I have very few but very close friends, so I don't have the problem of 'fake friends'. I like it that way. I'm friendly to most everyone. I'll go fishing with anyone. But to be called a 'friend' is an investment in a couple years of time for me. We use the measuring stick of "who would you walk across the airport to see?". You're in the airport and have plenty of time before you flight. You just realized you're in the same airport as a 'friend'. You have to walk to the other side of the airport. Who would you walk across the airport to see? Those people are your friends. I have a dozen friends I'd do that for. Maybe that many.

The butt is easy enough. Custom, but easy. The seat is going to be harder. I think that's a downlocking seat that's be totally covered in cork (composite cork in the middle). It won't be available on the market as is, so it's a custom build. I'm thinking something like a KSKSS Fuji would get you the back end and the threaded barrel. The locking nut would need to be fully cork covered. Between the two you'd need to put composite cork and file/sand to get the right profile. Rear grip of the seat is no problem. It would be a bit of work to get it right, but I'm sure a custom builder would get very close, especially if they had your broken one to work from. the other option would be cutting and reaming like a noted above. Kinda a pain, but for a one of a kind seat that you love and can't otherwise get it might be possible.

Some people, yes. This topic comes up on a couple FB groups all the time. Someone will take a picture with a fish covered in dirt laying on gravel and the comments start. There are always some who, like you said, take pride in not getting it. "Its just a fish". "It's fine it swam away". etc. I think more people than not though, just don't understand. So a light touch of explanation is never the wrong course of action. There is a good quote that explains most people most of the time, Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can equally be attributed to stupidity" (or in this case inexperience).

Agreed. I'd be jumping up and down on every panel and every lid looking for anything that moves. Since you own it, I'd get into the wells as deep as you can go and pull back some carpet. Maybe get a drain camera ($30 on amazon) and send it down the floor drain to see what you can see. Any point where you can take a panel off and look inside. You could run into $10k by the time you're done and still have a late 80's boat that was redone by an DIYer. Lots of other boats I'd spend $10k on and have a lot more boat.

Guides yes. If the rod has titanium or torzite guides its worth stripping. Plain Aluminum oxide it isn't even worth it unless you're doing a lot of repairs on odd rods and just want to have a stock of randoms that might match something in the future. Grips, not so much. They are a lot of work to get off and they are pretty cheap brand new, even nice ones. if you had something special and the grip was worth more to you than the rest of it then you can cut the blank and ream the grip from the inside. You can also cut the blank a couple inches above a grip and then insert a new rod blank into it some of the time. The new blank has to be pretty stiff around the bottom foot so you don't make a pressure point.

nice cocktail garnishes

Hi All, I know everyone has their own way to browse, whether just clicking through as is, using the 'new content' buttons, etc. My routine was to open the browser on the main page, and then open new tabs for each of the forums I'm interested in. Once they were open, I'd use the first main page and mark all as read. That way I know if there is new stuff I want to read or haven't read yet. I just found a speedier way to do this. In your 'favorites' in your browser, create a new folder (mine is titled BR page opening). Then inside that folder create a shortcut for each of the sub forums that you normally read. Then the next time you are browsing the forums, just right click on the new folder and click 'open all'. You'll now have all of the sub forums open and ready to browse. I still then mark all as read on the main page which doesn't affect the other tabs. Hope this helps someone. rick

so first, I'd get rid of that map. Great that the county publishes it, but there's not enough detail. Go to Navionics online for an immediate upgrade: https://webapp.navionics.com/?lang=en#boating@11&key=k_eyFvhqpN You don't say which of the lakes you're fishing since there are a couple in the lake group but I'm going to guess east and west since they are both ringed by docks per google maps satellite view. It looks like your max depth is about 25' but the majority of it is <15'. That's like a couple of the lakes around here and there are usually two solutions. One is what you've been doing. The docks are still holding the fish. They might be tight lipped at the moment. They might be getting a lot of pressure. Not sure which docks you're focused on since "you can't fish them all", but I'd be looking at the docks with deeper water nearby like on the eastern shore of east reservoir. With the water this hot, some of the bass that are up shallow will move deeper but stay under the same dock as the day and shallow water get hotter. If they only have 3' under the dock in the first place, they might just keep sliding into the grass and are harder to target. Old wooden docks with heavy pilings and The other is the deeper weed edges. Its harder to fish since the bass could be anywhere in the column from just under the surface to 15' deep. You could spend all day working high medium and low to find them. For me, I will start at the bottom usually. If fish aren't in the areas near the weeds and docks (which I've fished with both moving baits and bottom baits) and aren't chasing, then I'm assuming they are hugging bottom and I'll go straight there.