jimski2

You could try dragging a drift sock on the side of your boat.

My buddy had a Fish On rod holder with an extension to raise it higher, it broke off and he lost a $250 rod, reel, dipsey and gear. Best get a good rod holder, it gets expensive when they break and go over the side.

If you buy an older I/O, water can back into the engine through the exhaust if you hang a kicker motor on the bracket, a cooler of fish on the transom, downriggers and a couple lard bodies on the lines. When the kicker is running the water will come into your main engine exhaust manifold and with no exhaust to blow it out it will flow in your cylinders through an open exhaust valve. When you go to start the main engine, it will turn a couple degrees and seize up since you can't compress a liquid in the cylinder. Your starter may blow, flywheel teeth will break, bend a rod or worse. The newer boats have overcome this secret fault by having wider transoms, but the older guys have this design defect. Be careful if you hang a kicker motor on a swingdown bracket on an older I/O.

Try another battery, your voltage regulator may be sensing a weak battery.

It has to be due to th economy. All retailers are struggling today. With the de-industrialization of the USA, the discretionary spending money isn't there anymore. The smarter, wealthier people have moved out of NY and we're left behind with the geezers and less productive workers.

There is no best port, you must be mobil to go where the action is. An 18 foot trailer boat with a two wheel drive truck to get you there at 55 MPH on Rte. 18 with fuel economy will work. If it's too rough out there for an 18' boat, it's too rough for any boat.

It's best to wash the bottom when the boat comes out and is still wet. That saves a lot of work.

Murrel's Inlet, south of MB has plenty of headboats and charters. I prefer the headboats that head offshore to the Gulfstream and you bottom bounce bait with a gang of people. There's a lot of action and laughs. They don't hurt your wallet too bad either.

Braid may have no stretch but it has less drag in the water, especially when you have a lot of line out and a bigfish puts a belly in the line. The strain of the belly of the line added to your reel's drag may be enough to break the mono. Tests done on just line towed behind a boat in Hawaii showed the line breaking at 700 yards of line out, no fish or lures. Lots of fellows will not take the boat out of gear and let out hundreds of feet of line and then it breaks and don't know why. The drag of the line plus your reel's drag setting add up to failure. The diameter of the line is the key, the larger diameter, the larger the drag created. 30# mono can break faster than 20# mono when a lot of line is out.

After losing the EZ Steer bar when it separated and trying to put it back together over the stern in rough water, I attached a "bungie cord" around the steering bar and it works even better now.

For more ideas on aluminum welded boats, try these sites: www.harbercraft.com www.hewescraft.com www.northriverboats.com www.wooldridgeboats.com www.crestliner.com

The least you need are flashing yellow lites and "overwidth vehicle" signs front and rear.

With the VHS rules, you may not be able to use cutbait this year. The VHS stuff may have come from cutbait, not ballast water as alleged.

When buying a bow mount trolling motor, consider the Motorguide Digital Model. It doesn't give off the interfernce you'll see on your Graph that you will see with an analog unit.

Divers, sometimes called the poor man's downrigger, will out perform riggers early in the season like now. I know several fellows who use nothing but divers set at 3 and 1&1/2 now.

Trailer brakes on rigs over 1,000 pounds are being enforced now, so make sure you get them.

Try this- www.walleye.com

Lake Erie Walleye .com has 3 Crestliner Sabres for sale under "boats for sale".

Another point to remember on puttting anti fouling paint on the bottom of an aluminum boat is to not put any paint containing copper oxides on the aluminum. This applies to both fresh and salt water. The dissimilar metals become a wet cell battery and your aluminum is sacrificed. Read your your paint instructions carefully.

Salt water care consists of raising your O/B and lower unit up out of the water. If you trailer, flush your engine with fresh water and rinse down your aluminum trailer. Your engine has zinc [sacrificial anodes] on the trim tabs of your lower unit. They shouldn't be painted. Inboards have zincs around the brass props and rudders, not painted. Your heat exchanger has zincs at its entrance. Fresh water flushing systems are installed on some boats. Most boats have a "Perko" switch to disconnect the batterys although some electronics require some power to "save the memory?" Again- use a two wire system directly to the batterys to prevent parasitic circuits from starting electrolysis. The new US Coast Guard 47' Patrol boats are aluminum and they have no qualms over their use in salt water.

Welded aluminum boats make it in the ocean OK. Don't use the hull for a ground circuit in your electric. They save a lot in the fuel compared to wood, steel or glass. They also save in paint, you got to get over its lack of chrome and gloss.

Up to 25 HP, Mercury, Nissan and Tohatsu are the same, made by Tohatsu. Just different paint and decals.

Think of like "there aren't more kings at the Bar, they just turn on earlier there." I saw it a couple years ago when the fish were on at the Genesee River flume better than the bar.

Sanders Fishing Guide.com has a Lake Erie Board and other reports, Myfishfinder.com has NY and Lakes reports.

Find another boat with the same transducer and try your machine out on it, if it works you know your transducer wiring is bad.