13owhunter

"Sams Pro" releases were designed for braid and work well once you get the hang of using them. They are directional and the way you wrap the line does matter. This is worth it for me as I dont want any extra line connections if i can avoid it. I run braid backer on everything so these are a good choice for me.

I think this is wishful thinking. Looks like most of the taxes arent really specific to a "road tax" although most of the revenue is used for highways and bridges etc. One could argue that your boat on a trailer uses the road but what about my mower? She uses a lot of fuel and doesn't use the road at all. =0)

Another slide diver guy here. I have been running 35 foot of 40# mono as well to a 6 foot section of flouro. I ran 30# mono for a bit but felt I was replacing it too often. Ive been running black slide divers with the clear mag ring (no mag weight) Works well for me.

I have two cheap lithium batteries and one charges "weird" sometimes. It charges faster than it should every once in awhile. Really not sure if it is the charger or battery. If I unplug it for an hour and plug it back in it charges normally. This caused significantly lower run time until i figured it out. When I was troubleshooting the issue, I picked up two cheap LCD voltage displays from amazon so I could see the voltage when charging and using them. They use hardly any power. May be worth picking some up so you can monitor voltage on the water. Like it was mentioned above, if one battery has more capacity then the other, the lower one will die real quick.

I hope they throw the book at this guy. Cant fathom the reasoning behind wanting to do something like this.....

Standard rings with a twilly tip will work fine. I would be concerned that a shorter rod doesnt have enough forgiveness for a diver especially a large one. Big advantage in running a longer leader with a longer rod as well as working fish around riggers, outboards etc. A short one will work fine I'm sure but most of the rods specifically designed for wire divers are 9 or better. I think all of mine are 10 footers. Most of my shorter freshwater rods designed for trolling dont have near enough backbone for a diver. If you have some heavier ones they should work fine. If you arent sure, run your TDR. At least if something goes wrong you arent out an expensive rod.

Airmar P66 is not listed as compatible on Garmins site but works fine (you just need to set it up manually) I believe that has the widest cone out there. Looks like it may be similar to the B117 you listed but its not very expensive if you didnt need a through hull. I love mine and am using it with an adapter cable with a 93sv along with a gt54 for HD and side imaging.

I had the same issue the first time i fired it up this season. I had spider webs/eggs? in the hole. Ill be putting blue painters tape over the hole when I store it next season. Weed eater line is a good idea.

I run 32# copper on Daiwa 57Lc3bs which is pretty much the same size. Like it was mentioned above, you can get over 200 yards of cheap 50# braid and 300 ft of 32# copper on there. You can probably get close to 300 yards of backer if you went down to 40# and ran a thinner braid like power pro. When I dont know the exact capacity, I fill one reel the hard way putting the copper on first and then filling up with braid to just over 100% and then taking it off, transferring it to another spool with a drill and winding it back on braid first. I use a clamp on line counter when the braid goes on so I have a reference for future reels. This is not fun but I really dont like reels that arent full nor do I like running 286 feet of copper because I put too much backer on.

Mentioning a warm or cold weather oil seems strange to me. Almost every modern engine uses multiweight oil which I would think just about any common flavor should do fine in 35 degree weather. Wonder if your oil pressure sensor is just a bit sensitive....

If you got a bunch of water in there and think the thermostat will take care of the problem, it would be a good idea to do a second oil change after one trip to make sure you get it all out. Personally, I would do a third after another couple more trips just to check it. You could also change it, get it up to temp and run for a bit on muffs or barrel and then change again right after. No reason not to run cheap dino oil for this purpose.

I foresee using mine in forward mode in shallow water or perspective mode in really shallow water. I think there would be some usefulness in identifying a good target ahead of time and stopping to cast or jig. I have a small boat and that is feasible. If you had a big boat running a ton of rods it wouldnt make any sense. While I have limited experience with this, Im not sure there is a whole lot of value in using it in forward mode for deep water trolling especially if you only have one live sonar unit. Probably need a second live sonar unit to get enough time with it to really answer your question. Better yet, get one for each corner of the boat!

Some good advice above. Hope it is a simple fix! I dont think it was mentioned already but dont run it with milky oil. That could cause significant damage. If you change it and it is milky after one or two trips, I would think there is something else wrong. Doubt a couple of trips would add enough water via condensation to turn the oil milky. The oil in my old 4 stroke kicker looks perfectly normal after running in cold water barely above idle. This is a good reminder to everyone to check their oil before every trip!

Headed out of Sandy this morning around 11 for the first trip of the season and it was one for the books. Started in about 15fow and got on browns pretty quick. Caught a bunch on spoons and stick baits. Was pulling one and 2 colors on boards, a couple of flatlines and the riggers. I made a bunch of changes to the boat and added live scope that I have on a portable transom mount. I didnt have it set correctly for the first hour and then shortly after I figured it out, the one color started screaming with a nice king going airborne behind the boat. Not 5 seconds after the king hit the deck, my starboard side rigger took off to another screamer. 15 minutes later and the second king hit the deck. This one was pretty big around 17#s. Real nice fight on light gear. At this point i saw several blips on the live scope right off the bottom in about 30fow. We had most of the spread in already and there were fish under the boat so I hit spot lock and threw on some casting spoons on spinning rods. My casting spoon hit the bottom and i jigged it all of two times and was hooked up again. This fish was a bit smaller probably around 8 or 9#s but i caught a spring king jigging which was pretty epic. This was my first time using live scope and it was pretty unimpressive most of the day as there wasnt much to look at. I am using the LVS32 in down mode on the transom and not the PS30. What it did tell me was that there were kings under the boat. My 2d sonar had a couple of blips but nothing to get excited and certainly not the 10-20 big marks swimming around at one point. The decision to spot lock and jig a spoon was 100% based on the livescope intel. I did not see the fish or my spoon on the screen at the time for what its worth. We spent the next hour looking for the kings, saw a few more but thats it. I believe we caught 15+ browns, the three kings and lost what was probably a coho behind the boat. 3 or 4 browns were 3-5#s and the rest of them were lil guys. Old boat ran great and it turned into a really nice day on the water. Doesnt get much better!

I run torpedo divers on braid from time to time. Same concept as a pump handle but they have a lot less drag than a round ball and they come with a dive chart so you have a pretty good idea where you are running at. You can get pretty deep with the big ones.