Sk8man

I think the weather (and report) scared off a lot of folks that trailer there from a distance John.

Must not have been very appetizing sitting next to Keith at breakfast Brian

Nice work Mike! I'm jealous... wanted to go all day but the storms kept rolling through here...you have a great situation being close enough to get out relatively quickly and get after them when you get the chance. Good going bud.

All good advice Mike. No matter how tempted don't tempt Mother Nature....you'll lose every time.

I would consider it if I can rig up some clamps that allow it to be taken down easily after fishing as I fold down and store the bimini in a boot at the back and there wouldn't be room to fold it down there with the launcher attached. It has me thinking though If it were SS I could use pins through as my bimini framing is stainless but I'm reluctant with aluminum tubing about 1 inch diameter. For someone leaving their top up all the time it could be a neat solution. They are currently unavailable both from the manufacturer and Amazon by the way.

One their website I believe they have both a bimini version for $69 (out of stock) and a full standalone one for $139

I guess I should have mentioned in my comments that the Lake O bottom in most of the places I fish there is pretty flat gradual sloping and for the most part featureless and this is very different than in the Finger Lakes where you have abrupt underwater cliffs, sunken barges, etc. so it is much riskier there too and there are more effective ways to fish for lakers there than riggers. (e.g wire rigs with cowbells and gambler rigs or peanuts) and 40 oz. sinkers dragging along the bottom)

The anxiety issue is far from haunting only teenagers. We are a society adults and children alike fraught with anxiety over everything and the media, TV programs, video games, news, and Internet and social media have amplified the problem by a hundred fold. We have government at both the state and federal levels that is both corrupt and incompetent to actually solve even the most rudimentary problems, and that acts in a hysterical manner when incidents do occur by passing gutless laws that fail to actually deal with the origin of the problems and merely attempt to give the appearance of control because they don't really have any valid answers and are unable to compromise with one another. At some level we as a society truly realize this underneath it all and we know that given a major disaster that involves the whole country we will be screwed and left to our own devices. The fear giving rise to the generalized anxiety is REAL: it is not paranoia (imagined or unreasonable fear) and is not just something teens are dealing with if folks are to get their heads out of the sand. As far as the issue of the boating safety training I think most of us know that it is long overdue but as a matter of course we resent the state telling us to do it and it is as much who is telling us to do it (and the control issues involved) as it is the training itself which we know for many folks it is needed because they either don't know what they are doing out there or maybe just don't care about rules of the road or common courtesy.

Just a suggestion and I know folks do bounce rigger weights off the bottom but I think it is taking an unnecessary chance with your equipment and possibly your boat. When fishing a derby on Seneca some years back while camping at Sampson State Park. I saw a guy in a fiberglass boat get a large part of his gunwale ripped out of his boat and his downrigger go to the bottom in about 80 ft of water right out in front of the marina.. I talked with the guy at his campsite and he told me that he was fishing close to bottom with his riggers and his rigger ball snagged something and he had his rigger drag tightened up all the way so it didn't release and ripped out the rigger from the gunwale. Luckily there was a guy at an adjoining campsite who was a diver and had his stuff with him and he was able to find the rigger for the guy but his boat was really messed up. It was a good lesson to me and I always make sure my rigger drag has just a tiny bit of play in it so that it will slip if necessary. A couple years afterward I heard that there were large anchors with very heavy metal cables down there left from the hydroplane races they used to hold on Seneca which had subsequently been removed.

You can use them Don but they are a different action. Sometimes it pays to try them you have tyo let the fish tell you what they want sometimes so it pays to experiment using spin docs, flashers, or dodgers even changing sizes of them. On the Fingers I also sometimes run Lake Clear Wabblers or Fish Flashers with small spoons or sticks behind them which can work well on rainbows and salmon for an even different action.

green or white fly behind green spin doctor or flasher

The file is a .mov (movie) file (not sure why this was chosen for this purpose) so you need a viewing program that supports that format to view it. It is just a single frontal shot of the boat on a tri axle Boatmaster trailer.