digitroll

Sorry to hear your selling Rusty! I get it if your not using something it's tough to let it sit idle too. These boats fish well up to 5 ft swells in Lake Ontario. I keep my front bow as light as possible with nearly no weight and a bow cover always in place. No electric trolling motor or batteries up there. I do have a 30 lb bell anchor but that's it. You will have no problem selling it and it's wise till wait till Spring during the peak selling season. I sold Starcraft boats for 14 years retired now. I know a good friend of mine that might be interested in your boat here in Vermont.

My 2013 Starcraft Fishmaster 196 with 4 months to go to finish the 2024 season at this point has 10,997 miles recorded on my Simrad Autopilot log checked today and 3,100 hours on the previous 150 hp Mercury and repowered 200 hp Mercury 5 years ago combined. Is it fair to say it gets some use?

Some great questions asked and some good support answers! I honestly haven't been this excited about a new product since I installed my first autopilot in 2005 on my boat. It's a great system to validate with my Fish Hawk Ultra and run both to play off each other with great data of temp and depth! I can move stuff around to take advantage of keeping my lures or paddles above the fish most of the time in the warmer water. It's even worked very well in our own Lake Champlain for landlock salmon our home water with Lite Bite Slide divers. I like both systems and they complement each other! Fishhawk and Smart Troll!

Very true Les! It took me a little while to get use to seeing these differences hardly believing it and then I began just trusting the depths and temps on the screen and made my adjustments! Felt very confident when Divers starting popping vs. riggers many times over 3 trips to Ontario this past year! My buddies the first day on another boat without Smart Troll never had a bite on their divers. I can relate to this prior to Smart Troll!

We did run into the bottom by accident as the diver rod was bouncing at one point on our two day trip and I looked at the sonar and the readout on the diver probe and it matched! We also have the Fish Hawk X4D Ultra on a rigger that I constantly see a match with temperature and depth when comparing to the Smart Troll probes! When I first started using it a year ago I would sometimes get depth on the probe that didn't make sense maybe 15-20 ft higher than I previously read going in the opposite direction. I put my Fish Hawk TD on that diver to verify what I was reading! Thats when all this clicked for me that these readings were accurate. Using pressure sensing technology in the probes. I used my Fishhawk on the rigger to keep that in the right spot too! Having temperature data on the Smart Troll probes validates wherever it is running to the depth when compared to the other smart probes and Fish Hawk probe. No diver rod is the same I have found out so the short answer is not all the time is it equal to another diver with same reel same wire and same full reel. Hard to believe but true! However with riggers my Fish Hawk probe is very close to the other riggers around the same depth. If you want to run a Smart Troll probe on another rigger that is an option too. Currents and waves effect the dive curve when you turn the boat more than 30 degrees! Here is a summary video of our two day trip last week:

I have run 4 divers with Smart Troll probes on my previous 2 trips to Ontario this year and it works very well in May at the Bar and the Oak in July. Due to the fact we were fishing so deep in early September I dedicated just two divers to run that deep 95-110 ft on my divers that was in the zone above the fish and temp break. I have been running divers for 25 years and I am confident having used these with 4 that I can achieve pretty good success with just two divers. Doesn't mean I will abandon running 4 as I have that option in May and July to run that program if it's slow. I have that same experience as many here that Gambler describes. When we make turns in the currents and waves the dive curve changes quickly and adjustments are sometimes needed to keep it running where it's getting bit. My buddies diver rod was off 50 ft compared to mine last week. He made the adjustment to get to 95 feet with the Smart Troll probe. Soon after he was getting bit and the rest of the two days! Smart Troll allows a person to quickly adjust and when you get bit on one diver you can see where it's running and adjust the other diver to that depth. How often you have had days the fish are biting one diver and the other is dead?

What have I learned in the last 13 months using Smart Troll: Our Smart Troll system kept are divers in the zone and proved to be our best option on these stager salmon in 140-160 fow! Can't say enough about this system after 13 months now! It just keeps our divers busy putting them in the sweet spots! We only used two divers with Dreamweaver Deeper Diver dipsies on a 2 setting running 95-110 feet down for these Stagers on Sept. 4th and 5th. One day we spent 13 hours on the water and the two probes didn't run low on battery life. We have done well with 4 divers the last two years at the Oak and the Bar in May and July. Now I am contemplating going back to 2 divers! Why? I feel I am have more confidence with 2 divers running them at precise depths above the fish many times in warmer water just above the thermocline than running 4 blind divers before I had the Smart Troll system! Efficiency over quantity of 2 divers vs. 4. We fish 2 people on my boat and I have a lot of confidence with my two divers. Less headaches and better management during a hot bite with 2 divers with Smart Troll on my 19 ft Starcraft Fishmaster. If I can become more efficient with 2 vs. 4 divers with the same amount of bites or more then it's a big win!

Great time before bringing our son to college as a freshman today at WPI in Worcestor. Emphasis wasn't on fishing but many activities he would enjoy on a trip like this. We did manage to float for Rainbows and Dolly's landing 8-10 fish (25 bites)over a 10 mile stretch of the middle Kenai river under very tough conditions due to precious heavy rains resulting in dirty water the guide said before we arrived a few days earlier. We both lost trophy fish at the net which still was a blast battling them in the current. I chose this kind of fishing because these are native fish that are returned to the river and it's more interactive and fun. Jigging for Halibut or flossing for pinks and sockeye didn't appeal to me. Fun when that bobber goes down and they bite! The kings now on the Kenai are down to a few hundred returning are in almost extinct mode these days. Wade and I really enjoyed casting along the banks and hooking these fish along the 10 miles of river we drifted in 4 hours. We would do it again somed