capt ace

Last week of July, first week of August for kings that are still silver.

The point of the X4D is that it tells you, based upon water pressure, the actual straight down location of the temperature vertically from the surface to its location in the water column. In other words, the actual depth of the temperature. For guys like me who fish temperature most of the time on a day to day basis, knowing where the temperature is vertically in the column really helps me to dial in on the fish. I now know where to run my dipseys and coppers more accurately. It just takes a lot of the guess work out of it and gives you up to date information on what's going on down below. I did check my probe out in a known depth to verify its accuracy and my unit appears to be spot on.

I have run both the torpedos and the sharks, and all else being equal weight wise, I have to give the nod to the sharks. The prices on the sharks have come down considerably on their website and are right in the same ballpark price wise as some of the others.

I second Northwoods, they had the best price when I bought mine last year.

Amen, Werner. I have a $4400.00 Lowrance radar unit that won't work because of a rim 200 power chord which they quit making. I just found out that their HD radars like the lra1800 need a rim 300 chord to interface with my older chartplotter and they quit making them and there are none to be found. That's what I hate about lowrance and that's why I will never try to deal with them again. Built in dynamic adolescence and no parts to fix them when they break. What really sucks the most is that we are talking about units that cost in the 1000.00's not 19.95 on TV. WTF?

Atommik all the way here.

By the time the fleas show up and we are fishing for kings, we typically don't run spoons. We usually run either flies or meat or both. That being said, if we aren't getting bit, we have been known to fish spoons. One thing to keep in mind, the 12lb test Gamma actually breaks at around 17# or so. Gamma also doesn't seem to load up with fleas as bad as you would think. We also check lines a lot more frequently when the fleas are around, especially on dipsys because if the dipsy lines load up they will float up in the water column. You know when it's happening because you can see the angle of the line change in the water as the dipsys rise in the column. With the spoon rod, we just pop it and slap the fleas off and send it back down.

The Solterra 50L has tons more room than the 345 Penn gti. I have 750 ft of Atomik .037 copper on one Solterra with a 1000ft. of 50lb Finns backing on it.

Yes. We run 12 lb Gamma on our spoon rods.

The best bands we have found are the number 19 from staples. What we do is wrap the band around the line several times and then insert both loops of the band into the blacks and snap it shut. Done this way, the band will not slip and the rod tips can be cranked right down to the water. We set the blacks tight enough so that the band breaks and the blacks stays closed.. The black's setting by the way, is left on the setting that we use when running attractors. When the band breaks, it just falls off of the fishing line. Having the rubber band wrapped around the line instead of half hitched, does not affect the integrity of the line. Using the rubber bands we can see small fish bites, but it takes a bit to break the band which insures a good hookset on mature fish.. The bands can also be broken manually if needed, just pull the rod by jerking up and breaking the band. We have been doing it this way for years. It allows us to get away with using lite line for spoons which we feel generates more bites, especially on those tough days when the temps are up and the water's blue.

When we run light line and spoons, we usually run with a rubber band on the line put into the blacks. You can see smaller fish bites, too.

Yup!! No problem. I have a bunch of friends who do just that.

Literally thousands of kings on the 600lc Shimano reels over a decade of use with no issues except you do need to clean and regrease the drags every other year or so. There are also aftermarket drag kits available for 9.00 or so from Tuna Tom's and they are silky smooth as well as basically maintenance free. My experience with higher gear ratio reels is that they require a bit more effort to reel in do to the higher gear ratios.