jimski2

I always use a backing plate of heavy aluminum to stiffen the gunwale and distribute the strain over a greater area. There is an issue called "tin canning" where the material whether fibreglass or metal will fail due to too much flexing.

Cabela's has a transducer mounting board made of plastic. It is held in place by bolts placed through the upper transom, above the water line. Your tranducer screws into the board. Mine works fine.

I have 4 rods loaded with ten colors of leadcore. 100 foot flourocarbon leaders (20# test]. A Church inline sideplaner is set where I want the lures running with a 5 foot drop for each color. This will get your lures down to 50 feet and more if you are using a diving plug and spoon 3 way rig. All the rigs are away from the boat's track. No downriggers are needed except to hold the rods. If I need to get deeper, then I use dipseys on 30# Stren braid. Shallow water I may use only half a color to get the plugs deeper and the Church boards are easy to get off using the leadcore on the pincer grip. Turns will raise and lower your lures. The inboard lines are set deeper to allow a fish on the outer rods to pass over the inner lines.

We use plugs in shallow water to avoid snags when we make turns or have to stop the boat. The shallow water is where the warmest waters are and the browns which are bottom oriented fish like the shallows.

Yesterday's winds measured 92 MPH on top of the HSBC Bank Building. 73 MPH at the Dunkirk Lighthouse. The lake raised up 10 feet in Buffalo flooding some streets. Wave heights on the lake were 14 feet. A lot of ice and water blew down the Niagara River jamming up everything and flooding the roads. Lots of fun.

I stayed at a lakefront campground in Oswego several years ago. It was just a few blocks west of the river. It's not listed in my Trailer Life Campground Directory now. Also we camped at the Oswego Speedway, but that was for the races.

The stringers are replaced with "douglas fir". They have to be cut out, removed and set perfectly in place. Then they are encapsulated in epoxy and glass cloth. If they are more than a quarter inch off, the lower unit bearings will fail shortly. You may need to have a boat yard place to do this since there isn't much room for error and you don't want to do it in the boating season.

A lot of my buddies have abandoned their downriggers and use dipseys exclusively. Their catch rates have gone upand the wider spread of lures may be the reason.

I don't know if this stuff will work for your stringers, but you must use the right wood. I'll get back when I find out what type of wood makes a good stringer.

Walleye Insider Magazine his month has an article about using in-line planer boards for use in near shore waters, The difference is all the lines are on one side of the boat to put the lures on specific structure that has been located earlier. When a fish is on, the other poles are shifted to the other side of the boat to bring in the fish. This should be great for early spring fishing on the "Big O".

Just returned from a Florida trip in my motorhome, 3,000+ miles on the odometer. My 460 Ford which previously gave me 7 MPG has dropped to 6 MPG and with the higher prices, ouch! That will be my last excursion like that. It doesn't seem to make any sense to add 10% ethanol to the gasoline and have the MPG fall off by 14% that we can save on gasoline use. And we have to pay more for it.

Plan on using Dipsey divers on a "3" setting, inline side planers with leadcore and flourocarbon leaders. Keep the lures away from the track of the boat. Let the boat herd the fish off to the side where your lures will be coming through.

My vote is a good GPS Plotter with the Lake Map chip. You need to know where you are going and the best fish finder is a fish on the line. I marked trillions of fish but the only ones that count are the ones that are actively feeding. A good plotter will put you back on the spot best. As in business, it is location, location, location that counts for success.

Charging your riders for the gas can lead to some USCG problems.You have to come up with a better way to share the costs for a trip on a boat.

I'm down if Florida this week and I see a lot of "T Tops" where you can walk around the boat rather than deal with the arch on the gunwale.

In the spring, it's not what you fish with, but where the best water temperatures are. The earliest kings are caught in the warmer waters west of Port Dahlousie. After Lake Erie clears of ice, the warmer waters from Ohio blow down the lake and flow out onto the Niagara Bar and they turn on there. Sometimes the Genesee River warms up early and there is good fishing in that warmer water plume off of Irondequoit Bay. Look at the Lake Temperature Charts. Sometimes you'll find good fishing off a roadside ditch that flows into the lake after a hot spring day. I like J-13 Rapalas in close off the boards because they float up in the shallow waters when you turn or stop the boat. When the sun comes up, like after 8:00 AM, move to deeper waters out to almost 50 foot of water. The best thing is the sideplaners to get your lures away from the boat and out where the fish go when your boat spooks them.

The Niagara River offers a great winter fishery with its open waters that other ports can't.

Cabela's has a an electric steering control used to steer an O/B trolling motor. A 2 way switch on an extension cord moves the engine in the direction you want. A PWT walleye pro had one on his boat and he handled the boat OK.

With my 10 hp kicker mounted on the port side of the transom, I need my O/B in the water to properly steer the boat. Both lower units must turn ot the boat won't turn to port easily.

If you want "ICE", these lakes come on line first. Lake Nipissing is good for walleye if you bring your GPS plotter on a snowmobile with a local chip showing all the shoals where the fishing is productive. Actually a plotter with local depths marked on it will help you find productive areas without having to punch in a hole to check the depth. So go down to your boat and get the plotter and mount it on your sled or ATV and get the edge on the other guys. Ice Shanty Ontario has local ice conditions for those lakes.

Think about using aluminum diamondplate. No rot, easy to clean and stronger.

If you want to plan on ice fishing, consider Lakes Nipissing or Simcoe in Ontario.

How about a metal roof . You have heard of a "Radar Range Microwave Oven".

www.skysails.com Change to the English version if you don't sprechen deutsch.

I run two riggers which I mounted a couple feet forward from the transom and work over the side of the boat. They are more convenient to hook up there and I feel it is safer than reaching out over the transom to clip on the lines. I also run dipsey divers and leadcore lines with clip on side planers. That's enough gear to cover everything -down deep, deep off the side and top water off the side of the boat trail.