sherman brown

for those types of repairs, I cut up cheesecloth in about 1/4" pieces into my fiberglass resin and stirred it up together then brushed it onto the damaged area about 1/4" thick as smooth as possible and allowed it to dry. after drying I sanded it smooth and used a spray can and painted it. 

another way is to apply your fiberglass resin to the boat and apply your cheesecloth then apply another coating of resin and apply another piece of cheesecloth about 1" smaller than the first piece. I would apply 4 layers of cheesecloth and allow it to dry then sand and paint. 

Quote

i dont know if there is a standard size rod. they have all sizes to acomadate different setups. the best thing to do is close it all the way and measure fron the connections to get the minium length then open it all the way up and measure again for max length. i have a mercruise with my kicker on a panther tilt with a 3" spacer behing the tilt unit. what i use is a 39" closed which is perfect for me. with both outdrive and kicker both dead center the 39" rod closed fits it perfectly. but on an outboard to kicker in most cases would require a shorter rod. so knowing the distance from motor to motor with both lined up will give you the minium length rod you can use properly.

On 3/29/2023 at 4:39 PM, Flygaff said:

Thanks, I ran the boat with the 140 on it for the first time yesterday. 34/35 mph. I thought it would run a bit faster. I only ran it for a few minutes cause I was on a 10 hp lake. I think with playing with the trim and a little weight distribution I believe I may gain a few more mph. I was at 5900 rpm. Mace is 6300. A balancing act for sure. 

if you have a great hole shot but want a little more speed you might try going up 2 degrees in pitch. but this will change your hole shot and might give you 2 or 3 mph. if it's running that close to max hp you will gain some RPMs and gain speed. myself, I wouldn't think about changing anything unless your hole shot is very poor then I would go with a rev-4 4 blade prop.

12 hours ago, drag&snag1985 said:

Looking to buy some cannon track

if you don't find any here ( and you probably won't. ) do a search for Cisco tracks. they are a lot less money than cannon and work great and I think they look better. the tracks are all the same size as the major brands, cannon, traxstech, Berts, and maybe more of the other brands. I recommend getting the longest tracks that will fit on your boat. that leaves room for net holders and moving your holders from place to place. I have 72" on each side of my boat and wouldn't settle for anything less.

I have the Big Jon pro tournament riggers with 12" pedestals then my swivel bases with the slide mounts so I can remove them in an instant. if I was going to mount to a track system then I would use the traxstech 4" risers with the swivel on them.  

i bought a new set of Big Jon pro tournament rigger with auto stop. after less that a couple of weekends of use the auto stops stopped working. the switches aren't covered under the warranty. i never did really check to see if the switches were bad or if the 13# weights had caused the cab,le to cut the hole in the bead stop to get so large for the bead to make contact with the switch. now i just use them without auto stop. you lose very little time without auto stop.

they do work great and if anything does go wrong they have great customer service. one with the short piece booms can be used at 1' 2' 3' or 4'. but the shorter booms do make it much easier to hook the line up to the cable. 

if you get a ball retriever the Traxsteck pully retriever kit is the best one in my opinion. they use to sell them for 2 riggers for about what 1 kit cost now. you can go to Traxstech.com to check them out.

another good thing about them is you can get a set of slide mounts that lets you just slide them out to remove them from the boat. cannon will work with the extendable booms.

I don't need any more now but I used the same weights and they have much less blowback than round type weights. I only run 2 riggers and what I like most is that I can bend the fins and get them to run farther out to the side giving me a lot more space between the 2 weights.

oh yeah, I forgot to mention 70.00 for a pair is like getting one free and more. these can be shipped in a flat priority box for under 20.00.

1 hour ago, Flygaff said:

Can’t wait to get out there. Our striped bass fishing gets underway in a few weeks. I just troll around the bay for them. I think I will be able to troll all day for them for about ten gallons of fuel. I hate to drop my new boat into to saltwater buts it’s gotta happen some day

you want to be sure to wash the trailer as well as the boat with lots and lots of fresh water. then put a set of good muffs that puts water in from both sides and run the motor until it gets warmed up so it washes the whole system out. and don't be afraid to open the water up on high. i have always used high pressure on the hose. it doesn't get near the pressure as running down the lake at WOT.

I don't have one just because m,y merc is too old and it won't work for me. I was going to get one until I read up on them and if I'm not wrong they won't work on merc 9.9 motors older than 05 models and I have a 00.

you can google search for reviews on it and see what it gives you. if I could have used it I was going to buy it.

the system above will work to keep the trolling motor running longer. but if you could spare the money for a lithium 100 amp 12v battery you should be able to use it all day for steering. but if you want to run a charger into it from your motor you would want a lithium starting battery like the Dakota 60 amp 12v which is on sale for 100.00 off but still 599.00. off hand I don't know of any other cheaper starting battery that can be charged by your big motor or the kicker. plus I believe you can use an isolator for safety. I have seen cheaper 12v lithium 100 amp batteries for your trolling motor but they can't be charged by your motors. they are much lighter they will hold power twice as long as a lead/acid battery and charge 2 times faster but you need a lithium charger that will work for charging them.

that's what I have on my Big Jon riggers and with 13# weights they only worked a short when 1 stopped kicking off then a short time later the other one stopped shutting off and that type of autostop is what i was looking to get away from.

16 hours ago, Flygaff said:

Well the twin 9.9/20 did not work. I just mounted a Suzuki 140. Keeping one 9.9 for trolling. I have not run the boat yet. My guess is I will be just over 40 mph give or take. I will know in a few days. Now I wonder if I can run this 15-20 miles off the beach. I have a lot of offshore (75+miles) with my now gone 25 center. Have to check my fuel burn. It hold 35 gal. Looks like I wont get to the tuna, but sharks should be in range.

you shouldn't have any problems getting out that far with a 35 gallon tank. I fish Erie's central basin with a 21' glass cobia with a 350 Vortec 315 HP Mercruiser replacement motor with an aluminum high rise and a double pump holly 4 barrel 600 carb. I started out at 6:00 am in the morning and have gone out 18 to 20 miles then trolled until around 3 pm then made it back in running medium speed in rough water and it used less than 25 gallons to fill it back up. with a 35 gallon tank on a calmer day where you could stay on plane, you would be able to go even farther and not use 35 gallons. but when we would come back in rough water we would only be able to run about 15 MPH and that drank the gas.

15 hours ago, Shakemsam said:

Not in a 2-3 ft chop.

I still think a good trolling motor would do a better job pulling the bow back on course than trying to push the boat from the back. but then I never troll into the waves in rough water, I troll with the waves so you have more control over the waves. 

once a few years back while fishing alone and using my Mercruiser motor and outdrive in some good waves trolling with the waves without any kind of autopilot I tied a 6v flashlight to the bottom of the steering wheel to keep it from turning free and it worked 98% of the time I was fishing. the flashlight would go up when the boat tried turning then it would come back down keeping the boat straight. but it did go over the top a few times then I had to turn the wheel back to straighten the boat manually.

the cannon ratcheting rod holders are my choice for running lite bite slide divers for walleye on Erie's central basin. I switched to traxstech holders because they have 17 adjustments up and down but I went back to cannon because they set with one hand. the others it takes both hands to set them down. hodgesmarine.com has cannon rod holders at a fair price but you may find them cheaper by doing a web search for them.

cisco tracks with canon ratcheting holders are the ones I use. and for me, they are the most fisherman-friendly holders on the market at this time. but I did like everything about the Traxsteck except having to use both hands to set it down.

if you have a trolling motor on the bow that has autopilot built in it will do a much better job of boat control pulling the boat rather than pushing it. plus all the kicker does is power the boat forward and the trolling motor steers it. the t/m will give a much better response steering than a kicker.

beside the main motor would be the way to go if it fits and turns as it should. if it doesn't fit the next best option is to get a mount that lifts by hand so it's out of the water for running. there are tons of them out there but all are not great mounts. go to amazon and search for kicker outboard mounts and on eBay. you will find one that will work for you. panther makes a good one but they are pricy.,

there are way better steering connectors than the panther but if you want a panther steering kit I have one brand net that I bought off here when he had it listed as an EZ steer, but I will take 25.00 for the panther steering kit shipped to your door.

do these have some type of auto stops on them? how does the auto stop work on these? would you be willing to ship at my cost?

you might try looking on eBay.

pm sent on lot 1 that I want them. as soon as I get the total with shipping and how he wants paid I will pay him.

you might also want to check out the traxstech swivel track mounts. I'm not just sure what lengths they have but I used a set of the 4" rise with a set of Big Jon electric riggers mounted on my tracks and they worked beautifully.

3 hours ago, Saugeyetom said:

 

20 hours ago, outwest said:

Pm Sent

if outwest has one I'm sure he will give you a fair deal. he is one of the most giving people I know or has known in my 71 yrs. I was on OGF with him and I made a trip to Erie and forgot my downriggers at home. he contacted me by pm and he lived in the area I fish and offered to loan me a set of riggers. I went to his home and borrowed 2 electric Big Jon riggers with 3' booms traxstech swivel basis for using them in my tracks. I made a great friend that day and I consider him to be one of the very few people I call one of my best friends ever.

he will treat you right.

11 hours ago, eyedoctor said:

What color dipseys should  I buy? Is there a preference of color say if your fishing lakers then rainbows.

for walleye fishing on Erie, I used metallic green with green harnesses and metallic purple with purple harnesses, and both caught fish. but I went all black and never even noticed any difference in my catch rate.

then I switched to black lite bite slide divers and the bite changed a lot but our hookups were much better. and our lures spent more time fishing as we didn't drag small fish around as much and we didn't have to reel in to check for small fish. we used them like dipsy's and just used a 6' or 7' leader. then we set the lite bite adjustment all the way off and even very small white perch would trip them most of the time.

if I could pick my 10 I would buy a lot. but getting 10 spoons that may only have a few that I would ever use for walleye on Erie. so I wish you luck selling them all soon. I would like to have the top 2 and 4th on the left then the 2nd and 4th from the top on the right in lot 1. lot 3 the 4th one from the left in the top row and the last 1 on the right in the bottom row. 2nd and 4th down on the left row then 2 down right row lot 4. this would top out the 10 I would choose.

deep woods off works great for us. I keep a spray can onboard at all times.