Weather be damned.......G'ville still rockin'

[PUBoiler]

I made up my mind last night I was going fishing this morning........monsoon or not. My 14-yr old was much less than enthused when I got him up at 5am, but that ended within 10 minutes of hitting the water. Herman vonSlabhausen and I boated 36, including a 16", 2 15's and all the rest on the 10"-12" range. After not catching much the last couple times he went with me, he was convinced he wasn't ever gonna catch any. Anyway, weather was actually perfect until about 1pm.....couldn't ask for better. Also caught several bass, a bunch of little bluegill and 3 huge drum, but only landed one of them on 4lb test line. Color didn't seem to matter, we caught them on red, black, white, pink, yellow and chartreuse heads with about a dozen different tube colors.

This was also my first day with my new Terrova trolling motor and that thing is a god-send. Only issue is that both depth finders (597ci HD's) were reading over 70ft deep once the power to the trolling motor was on. I can understand the front unit doing that, but am baffled by the console unit doing it also. If anybody has any suggestions I'm all ears.

[GreeneGiant18]

Nice catch

[Linestretcher]

Good job man!!

[[email protected]]

Nice catchin day. Congrats. Check your ground system on the motor circuit. I dont know anything about your boat but if you give me a few ideas of how many batteries and voltages you are using I might be able to help. PM me if you want Ill try to help.

[s81p]

Awesome! Glad to see the fish are still going all out despite this weather. Great job guys.

[PUBoiler]

Boat electrical is as follows:

24V (2 batteries) for trolling motor only
12V (1 battery) for starting motor and running electronics
MinnKota MK 315D 3-bank digital onboard charger (Possible route for noise to get from trolling motor batteries to starter battery. Have not isolated yet, may disconnect 12V battery from charger for next outing)
Will check fuse in trolling motor head tonight.

Also, I don't have the chokes on the Humminbirds (didn't come with any), but I understand a lot of people have had to install them. Even though the depth feedback was random and fluctuating, I could still see the bottom in the chart, it just looked like the sensitivity was max'd out and everything was yellow and red. Would have played with it some while still on the water, but the damn fish just wouldn't quit biting. Work is the biggest obstacle to my fishing, now fishing is the biggest obstacle to my electronics troubleshooting!

BTW, only had a few females among those fish and they were all spawned out.

[Bob D]

Excellent Job, those are some great looking fish! Were you trolling or just casting tubes and what weight jig head did you use. How shallow were you? I suspect that water temps and clarity are really taking a beating this week with all this rain.

[PUBoiler]

Actually, yesterday morning the water didn't show any signs of the previous days' rain, it was still pretty clear. We trolled until we found an area where we were consistently getting fish, then stopped and did some casting. Granted, we caught fewer casting, but it's more satisfying to me to fish that way. I just get tired of running and gunning, with limited success, to catch fish, so I rigged up to long-line so I could use that to find fish quicker, then go to casting in that area. I'm trolling with a total of 6 rods, 3 off each side of the boat, 2 of which are the casting rods when we stop to cast.

We were using 1/16 oz Big Bite and Lucky Strike jig heads with Southern Pro tubes; trolling in 7-10 ft water at 1.1 mph. Kind of tricky now to stay out of grass in some areas as it starts to come up. If you get even the slightest bit of grass on a lure they won't touch it. Learned really quickly how to look at the rod tip and tell if there's grass on the lure. Oddly enough, I didn't even look at water temp. Now that spawn is wrapping up I don't really have a reason to.

[pjsanfordpj]

Great job!

[Ikard77]

Nice job!!!!