Who remember these from the 70s.

[Ray4852]

Now that we covered all the hardware. we need to talk about anchoring a boat from 60 to 250 ft of water. the bottom of these lakes have a hard pan. very hard holding a boat with a 10 mph wind. anchor wont hold. I made up a 40 lb anchor out of scrap metal. that bad boy held my 18ft boat. anchor in 250 ft I needed about 150 ft of back up. 60 ft 120 ft did the trick. when down fishing. what a job pulling this rope and anchor out of the lake. when I fished. nobody could see me out there. my running lights on boat were shut off. if somebody came running up the lake. I turned my lights on and flashed my high power candle light on the water to let him know I was there. turned everything off when he left.  I mostly caught LT at 250. 60 ft BT and a few RT. I hated the RT. LT nice to watch them come up from the depth. BT good fighting fish. today we have better batteries, rods and reels, along with excellent fish finders. who needs bait.  jig tipped with a piece of meat should catch fish.

[Sk8man]

Some real good points. I never fished over 150-175 or so at night as I only had 300 ft of anchor rope. I had (2) 20 lb anchors separated by a couple feet of rope one a river anchor and the other a Dansforth. By having the two separated they wouldn't drag as much or as far unless it was a really stiff wind in which case i would move to better protected water or quit. Interesting about the flashlight routine. I had one too but I also had a little blinking red light that was designed for people using bicycles at night. Very disturbing though hearing someone winding up their motor and seeming nearby in total darkness This still happens a lot on weekends on Honeoye Lake presently during the summer and to make it worse you can hear the beer cans and bottles clinking....while they go flat out without their lights on.

Back then during the early eighties my dad put together my first graph recorder (Heath Kit and used rolls of paper) including soldering all the components into the motherboard along with everything else....came in about a thousand parts in the box that had to be put together (luckily he was an electronics technician or i would have been screwed). Prior to that I used the first Vexilar flasher with two 6 volt batteries. We couldn't even have imagined some of today's equipment that is taken for granted.

Edited December 15, 2020 by Sk8man

[alwysfishn]

The lights we used were special made for night fishing. The tank had a short piece of pipe straight out of the top then an elbow with about 2' of pipe then another elbow with the lantern attached. This got the light out away form the boat and with the tank in the boat it made it easy to pump it up when the light got dim. They had a large dome cover that directed the light down into the water. Not much light shined in the boat or any where else except into the water. This really helped to draw the bait up to net them, They were actually pretty close to the water when we had the wooden Penn Yan boats as they didn't sit too high out of the water. The propane lights were hung from home made rods shaped like a shepherds hook. We used flexible gas lines from the lights to the tank. Angle food cake pans were riveted to the original tops to direct the light downward into the water. And the Cherry bombs were not a wives tale, trust me. We would hear them quite a bit when there were a lot of boats on the water.

Edited December 15, 2020 by alwysfishn

[Sk8man]

Yeah the M-80's also worked with a small sinker tied to them but you had to be real quick gathering any stunned bait because they recovered pretty fast

[Ray4852]

I find it hard to believe people needed cherry bombs to collect bait. I stayed away from weekends altogether. week nights were much better to go out. If I saw somebody and they came up to see how I was doing. I told them what depth I was catching fish at.  just stay away far enough because we don't need to get tangled in each others anchor rope. anybody that needed cherry bombs, was a dumb fisherman. fishing with bait was very popular back in the old days. a lot of fisherman used brined bait when they went out during the daytime. if you wanted dead bait and wanted to save a lot of money. you had to get your own sawbellies yourself. I always had a gang hook out with brined bait.  I caught my own bait with my 5 tiny gold hook setup. on a good night I could collect 400 sawbellies with those hooks. I used a ice chest filled with ice and salt. when I got my bait, each bait went in alive. the ice and salt kept them fresh till I got them in a stronger solution. my method worked enough to save some money.  the information we have today. we wouldn't have any bait left in the lake. the  bait we get now  is commercial brined bait. that stuff  is much better. no need to go out and get your own. the bait laws we have now killed the bait business.

[Ray4852]

Less

 are you fibbing.

[bluetop]

Cherry bombs were bad enough, but I remember when dynamite caps were used - at the end of long wires.

Against the law, of course.  Loss of an eye or finger (or both) was not unknown.  I've heard that earlier than their use they used to put a substance in a glass bottle (I won't say what, as I wouldn't want people to do it), put a hole in the bottle' s cap, add weight and sink it below the surface.  The water dripping in would cause an expanding gas, eventually causing the bottle to explode.

 

I didn't night fish a lot.  The speed nets we used didn't have a round handle,  The handle had a cross section that had an elongated diamond shape, so that it would cut through the water faster.

 

[Ray4852]

cherry bombs 50 years ago were very powerful. I put one under a trash can. the bomb blew it 10 ft off the ground.  anything that hit the water. sawbellies were gone in a half second.  I tried hanging a 4x4 gill net. those little stinkers wouldn't go near it.   M80 tied to a sinker. now I here cherry bombs in a bottle. once the wick gets wet the bomb is useless. the slightest movement every baitfish is gone. these stinkers are very shy. New moon bait came up about 5 ft below surface. once we got to the half moon. bait was about 30 ft below. every night after half moon they kept moving down. 

[Sk8man]

Yes Ray I was kinda kidding....my bait came from netting. But i did blow a lot of other stuff as a kid including all my model cars, ships and planes

[alwysfishn]

A Cherry bomb will stay lit under water because the gunpowder in the wick has an oxidizer in it. The gunpowder being the fuel, burns because it gets oxygen from the oxidizer. Once lit it will burn until it explodes in or out of the water. Of course they've been illegal since the mid '60s.

[Lucky13]

I've heard a lot of this in the past as my earliest fishing buddy, Andy Damen, took up the night game around 1970, generally on Canandaigua south end, and got very addicted to it.  I know he was never short of trout in his freezer, and they were a lot bigger than the ones we'd catch fly fishing out in Spring Brook in Caledonia.  I think it was his major fishing activity until Lake Ontario turned on, and then he moved to Connecticut.  I was back from college once and he offered to take me, but he said "no beer, you'll just be pissing over the side all night," and I passed.   But I've since come to understand what he was talking about!