Tyee II

Awesome blend of underwater, on deck, and aerial shots. That takes the edge off a bit during this arctic blast. Thanks!

I used 7' ugly stik tiger rods for inside braid dipseys for years and loved them. If you're setting up a wire dipsey rod, I love my Shimano talora 7 foot roller rods.

mr 580, where do you get your sattelite view from? All my links don't work because of the government shutdown.

I have the Lowrance Outboard Pilot installed on my 23' Grady White Gulfstream and it works flawlessly for much more than keeping my boat in a straight line. I use the lazy s-turn function almost every time I fish, and the circle back function will put me right back where I started (which has helped me recover lost tackle after a breakoff). Both of these functions can be adjusted in degrees to control the radius of your turns. I can also pick a waypoint on my chart and the AP will take me right to it. As far as I know the Outboard Pilot can only be controlled by Lowrance or Simrad MFDs though. It was very easy to install myself on my older boat with copper hydraulic lines. I had to buy adapters for mine, but if you have standard hydraulic lines it is even easier to install, and comes with the tees and adapter kit for different seastar hydraulic helms. You do need to check your hydraulic ram capacity to ensure compatability, but mine is installed on twin Yamaha 150 outboards. My buddy has the same AP system installed on his 22' Hewescraft with the AP installed on the main motor and a connector between it and his kicker. He uses the same functions I do and loves it as much as I do.

They still have the old power cords, which a service shop will replace with the new ones for free, so I'm guessing they haven't been serviced.

There is a difference between a star drag and a lever drag, and there is a difference between a carbon drag washer and a dartanium drag washer, but a reel could have both a star drag and a dartanium washer. Shimano at some point switched to the dartanium II drag washers, which are more like carbonex, but for whatever reason they still called them dartanium. It's pretty confusing, as is the fact that you have to upgrade the drags on the Takota reels right out of the box or they will start sticking and slipping after they get wet a few times or after a few good runs from a big fish. I haven't tried the new Takotas, but my Diawas are great right out of the box.

Head first always, and never leave the net hanging in the water. A quick netting stab exucuted at just the right time is what you want. If you have a deep basket you either need a clip to hold it, or hold it in your hand until you make your stab. Communication from the netman to the person on the rod is imperative no matter how you choose to net.

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Sealines will be fine for Kings. Jumping up in size doesn't give you anything but more capacity, which you really don't need for rigger rods. I typically downsize my rigger reels compared to my board rods because I don't need the capacity.

It probably wouldn't be a proper test. Maybe I could try it one rigger at a time, but fishing circumstances might end up different that way, and I don't know if I could handle only using one rigger for too long, lol.

I use a camera on my downrigger and have heard the engine noise and cable hum. The cable hum gets magnified on my setup dramatically because the sound is conducting into the camera housing through the termination swivel. Using an isolator on the connection greatly reduced the noise in my footage. I'm one of those that thinks fish are very curious to noise, and often times the hum of the cables and engine draws fish into my spread. Depending on the fishes "mood", they will either come in to have a look and leave, or aggressively strike your bait. I may have to set up a second camera rigger with braid to test if there is a noticable difference on camera in strikes or interest from the fish.

One rigger bouncing or near bottom with a short stretch for Lakers, another rigger on the same side 10-20ft. above the bottom rigger with a SWR, and a probe rigger on the opposite side that changes depth with conditions is what I run most often in the gin-clear waters of Lake Michigan. If I am avoiding Lakers and not running the deep rigger close to bottom, I will still keep the tail gunner second rigger just above with the SWR, and don't have to worry about short stretches spooking fish down deep. The fourth rigger gives me other options that still work in clear water like running a rod right in the prop wash for aggressive Coho. We are lucky to have multiple species to target for much of the summer in the southwestern basin of Lake Michigan and Grand Slams of 5 species are common at times. Having more riggers gives me more options to target more species, and you can pull it off in clear water if you can spread them out into productive areas of the water column.

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I see West Marine has the Garmin 78sc Marine handheld for 100 bucks off for their black Friday sale. $179.99 from Nov. 22nd-26th.