Billy V

Pretty impressive Tom! You wanna tie up about a hundred of those for me this winter?!?!?

Fish-hawk There was exactly ONE bad batch of transducers that Humminbird got from one of their suppliers this past winter. The issue that is being referred to above was primarily a software update issue, but there were a few transducers that were actually bad too. No company is perfect and mistakes happen, but in my eyes the measure of a company's commitment to their products lies in how they deal with mistakes such as this. Humminbird has replaced every one of those transducers free of charge for those affected, and the free software update has rectified the remaining issues. Humminbird stands firmly behind their products and acted accordingly as soon as this issue was brought to their attention. I personally put a few people in touch with Humminbird with regards to this issue and each and every one of them walked away with a very satisfactory resolution to it - for most is was a simple software update and their issue was resolved, a few others received a new transducer free of charge. Try and find that kind of customer service track record elsewhere. Per a conversation that I had with Humminbird management a couple of weeks ago while I was at their International Sales Meeting, all of the bad transducers should be off of shelves and out of the system by now. You may find this thread of particular interest as it relates to the transducer issues: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19042 I've said it before and I'll say it again: The folks at Humminbird are serious about making the best equipment in the industry and backing it up with the best level of service anywhere. They want to know if there's something not right with one of their products and they will go out of their way to make sure that the customer is happy with their purchase for years to come.

Another vote for the Humminbird 700 series. It's quality stuff. I've been running Humminbird stuff for 4 years now and it's fantastic. Check out the 788c: http://www.anchorexpress.com/Humminbird ... 7420-1.htm

Mark, The first thing you're going to want to do is get rid of that 20# mono on your reels and replace it with 30# 7-strand wire. That mono wont allow you to reach the depths that you want due to drag, it'll stretch beyond belief and you'll never be able to release the diver, and finally 20# test will just get destroyed by a 30lb King. After you've spooled your reel with wire, tie a snap-swivel directly to the wire line and snap that to the diver. We attach a snubber to the back of the diver to absorb the shock of a strike and when fighting a fish at the back of the boat, but some guys forego the snubber and just use a leader behind the diver. For leader on the diver, I'd recommend 6-8' of 30# mono (we use Big Game). Stay away from light weight fluoro as a leader on your diver as it has no stretch and most likely won't last for too long before a King breaks it off. Attach your flasher/fly combo to that leader. Be sure to use quality ball bearing swivels or your gear will get all twisted up. This should get you going in the right direction. Good luck!

Great fish! Looks like you landed the fish late enough in the evening that you wouldn't have made it to an LOC weigh station before they closed anyway. Congrats on the trophy!

We use the 30 size Saltist levelwinds for both riggers and divers and LOVE them. The 30 size will hold close to 1,200' of 30# wire and they've been a great wire reel for us this year - they're plenty big enough for wire diver use IMO. They have a fantastic drag and the high gear ratio makes picking up line a breeze - they're a significant improvement over the lower gear ratio reels that we've used in the past. Good choice in reels chinook266!

Nice reports Tim. I'm wishin' I was out there chasing after the derby winner myself rather than sitting here on the couch, but your pics and reports are helping me deal with my withdrawal!

Our favorites are Die Hard, Mulatto, Lazer Glow Spook, Glow Frog, Midnight Special, Green Alewife and many others.

Great job guys - Congrats on the win - that's a great box of fish!

We thought that we had the boat sold, but it didn't work out. It's still in the water in Sodus and can be seen with a days notice or so.

You must be thinking of the West end of Lake O, because the East end isn't flat much! I'd personally have to see them run in 5-7 footers before I'd trust them to not flip over. I've had several brands of regular boards flip over far too many times to ever go back to them unless I see it with my own eyes - my Otters are in my opinion a far superior board for rough water and are easily the #1 board run by most charters on the East end of Lake Ontario for that reason.

Chowder, Ever have one of those boards flip upside down on you in big waves? I'm curious what happens at that point with them. We fish in really rough water a lot and I can't afford to have my boards flip over and take out my entire spread like my old traditional boards would when they flipped. I loved the way they pulled when the water was calm, but once it got rough they were a nightmare. How do the Aurora or Frank's boards handle being upside down?

Thanks guys. I'm not gonna lie - I'm beginning to get nervous about the surgery. All things considered I guess it's a relatively minor thing but sheesh - anyone got any good anxiety meds?!?!

Once you guys who run regular boards have one of them flip over in bumpy conditions and have them torpedo and tear all of your gear off the back of your boat before it snaps your tow line, you'll absolutely switch to Otter Boats! They're the best running boats in rough water bar none. That being said, regular boards do pull nice in flat water. Andy, You might want to mess with the length of your ropes on your Otters - mine pull very well with only one keel but we'll be adding a second keel so that we can pull two coppers per side next season.

Jetsled, Our rigger rods are the 8' Daiwa Heartland model # HLD-DR802M. For our divers and coppers, we use the 9'6" Heartlands model # HLD-DD962H. They're great rods for the money.

Mike, That rod is the center rigger rod loaded up while it was down about 110' or so. We like to run our rods close to the water so that the line enters the water as close to the back of the boat as possible. That makes getting the fish to the back of the boat and into the net a lot easier for us - there's just less stuff that the fish and the net can get into that way. If you take a look at the center picture you'll notice that the center rigger rod holder is turned way to the left. We love the new Cannon rod holders for that reason - we can move rods around so easily to make a lot more room for netting a fish, which is what Jay did just before netting that one in the pic. He also took the 400 copper and moved it over to the side (we were running it down the chute) to clear room. Those holders are probably one of the best additions we've ever made to any boat of ours.

The weather forecast wasn't sounding very good for the day (heavy winds from the East and rain all day long - yuck!!), but we decided to give it a try anyway and I'm glad that we did! We left the dock at about 6:00am and ran out to 100FOW and set up headed North. It didn't take long and the rods were firing consistently. We took a nice mixed bag of Kings, cohos, steelhead, and even a small brown in the first two hours of the morning - all before the wind started to pick up. Once the wind started cranking from the East, things slowed down and we settled into a slow pick of fish until about 11:00am, when we took three nice fish in a row headed into the 3-5 foot waves. Joe did a great job of handling the biggest fish of the day as it was just about to come to the net and suddenly decided to go through two different downrigger lines and one diver line at the last second. Yikes - that one was interesting and I look forward to seeing the video of that fiasco that Joe shot with his video sunglasses! Here's a picture of Joe with that fish and his cool video shades: Our best depths were 150-180FOW straight out in front of port to just a couple of miles West. We had 46 degree water down 75ft and we took fish on riggers set at 65', 75', 85', and 100' over the course of the day. It was mostly a rigger bite for us today, but we did take a couple of fish on divers out 210' and 250' on a #2.5 setting. Those diver bites both came on Spin Dr/Siggs's fly combos - one was a Green Dot Spinny/Sigg's Billy V Glow Ghost and the other was on a White Double Crush Glow Spinny/Siggs' Glow Ghost. That White/Glow Ghost combo also took a wicked shot off the 110' rigger that had our Daiwa Saltist reel screeeeeammmiiinngg! Unfortunately that combo got broken off by one seriously upset King! We sure would have liked to have seen that one. Even though we had Spinny/fly combos on 3/4 of our rods, the spoons fished off of our Cannon riggers were easily the stars of the day as they took the majority of our fish. Best spoons were our old favorite, the Northern King Die Hard and that new Dreamweaver Super Slim Midnight Special that we like so much. Best down speeds were 2.2-2.6mph on our Cannon IntelliTroll . Here's a couple more pics of the guys and today's fish: That might just be the final fishing report of the season for me as I'm having my hip fixed later this week. The boat is still in the water however, so if I heal up quickly enough we might just get out for one final trip of the season!

Awesome fish Tim! I'm glad I could help with the temp info - that's why we built LOT - to help guys out with real time information. Glad to see it helped you cash a check and become the LOC leader! I owe you a debt of thanks for your information in your reports the last couple of weeks too - I haven't been able to get out much during the week and your reports have served as a great starting point for us each weekend. Thanks for posting them!

Nice job Ladies and Werner - VERY IMPRESSIVE!!!

The best tip I can offer is to buy a quality knife and keep it SHARP. Makes cleaning fish a million times easier. We have a Forschner Cimeter and it makes cleaning either on the lake or at a cleaning station a bunch easier - it literally takes Jay about 15 seconds to clean a King with it.

Today we had a full day trip out of Sodus with part of a two-boat trip that we ran with Russ Hacker of Honey Hole Charters. Having gotten into the Kings last night, we felt that if the wind would just hold off for a little bit that we might be able to get out to last night's way points and put a few Kings in the boat before Mother Nature had her way with us. We left the dock and ran out to our spot from the night before only to find that the SE wind we had over night had already messed up our water. We set out or standard 8 rod set of 4 Deeper Divers, 3 riggers, and one copper rod and went into search mode anyway - the guys really wanted Kings and didn't want to go back into shallower water to try our hand at the browns. After about an hour of searching, the 400 copper rod fired and the drag was just screeeeeaming! Ricky grabbed the rod and the fight was on. While he was battling this behemoth, two other rods fired and we boated a small King and a nice healthy coho and had yet another rod fire with no one home. Ricky continued his battle with this fish for almost a half an hour and after a near disaster at the net, Ricky had boated his personal best King - a 28 lb beauty that is going to reside on the wall at his house thanks to Jay's unbelievable save at the back of the boat. About "The Save" - Jay was just about to net this fish when it made one last lunge at freedom and caught the stinger hook on the fly in the net. When that happens its almost certainly going to cost the angler the fish, but not today. Jay knew he had a big fish on and nearly went into the drink to grab this King by the gill plate and land it by hand. You've never heard so much cheering and celebration as when Jay pulled this fish into the boat by hand. Great job buddy - That was easily one of the best saves I've ever seen in the back of the boat! After we landed this beauty we decided that the wind and waves were getting to be too much so we trolled back into shallower water. We had a few more bites on the way in, but nothing that compared to Ricky's fish. By the time we had gotten back into the brown trout water the wind had built to the point where the water had changed drastically from the morning bite and the fishing had shut down. Our best combo today was easily that 400' copper that was pulling a White Double Crush Glow Spinny/Sigg's Glow Ghost combo. It took 4 or 5 shots today. Others that took shots were our JV Cheerleader fished off of a Deeper Diver out 300' on a 2.5 setting, a NK Seasick Waddler off of a 110' rigger, and a Super Slim Green Alewife fished off of a 90' rigger. The fish wanted it faster today - 2.6-2.8mph on our Cannon Intellitroll. Temps were all over the place today and the SE wind brought ice cold water in as the day progressed. Congratulations of the fish of your life Ricky! That's one to be proud of!

Jay and I went out for a short 2 hour trip out of Sodus Point after work tonight. We were in search of KINGS and once we got to 250 FOW just East of port the screen lit up and so did the rods (thanks for the tip Finders Keepers!!) . We had consistent action for the last hour or so of our trip, the highlight of which was this beauty that took my Lemon Ice Spin Dr/Siggs Glow Ghost combo out 710 feet before finally slowing down. The sound that our Daiwa Saltist Levelwind made when this fish took off on its run was incredible -zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!! That combo was fished off of a Deeper Diver out 270' on a #3 setting. We also took fish off of our 120' rigger pulling a Super Slim Midnight Special, a 100' rigger pulling a NK Glow Frog, and a Deeper Diver out 300' on a #3 pulling a Green Dot Spinny/Sigg's Billy V Glow Ghost. Our best water was 250-310' down 70-120'. Best down speed for us was a slow 2.2mph on our Cannon IntelliTroll. The screen was lit up with fish and we were really excited about our prospects for Saturday morning - until we heard the weather forecast of 20-30 mph winds from the SE. Ugh!

Give Tim Habecker at Krenzer's a call and talk to him about it. 315-483-6986.

LOU has had a permanent place on my browser at work for probably 5 or 6 years now - that's a lot of time spent wishin' I was fishin'!! Thanks to all who contribute and make this the best forum on the web.

Glad I could help! The folks at Humminbird are serious about making the best equipment out there and backing it up with the best level of service in the industry too. They want to know if there's something not right with one of their products - I'm glad you guys brought this up here. Turns out this situation was a software update & transducer issue that they've been able to resolve.