Not a good morining!

[Jerry Blake]

It would be OK with me if we just skipped August and the first couple weeks of September.

[beagler]

It would be OK with me if we just skipped August and the first couple weeks of September.

Can't agree more qith ya.

[fiddlefarter]

Today I caught a couple... but I had to fish them out of the grease in a fryer. They were good though. Voltage Regulator is out in my boat. A new one costs $249. With the heat and the fact that I have just never really been able to catch many in the summer, I'm just not in a real big hurry to fix it. Going to do it next week and maybe next weekend early in the mornings I might give them a try.

[Jerry Blake]

Hey Fiddlefarter:

What motor? Darryl has a Merc he's parting out.

[rango]

Today I caught a couple... but I had to fish them out of the grease in a fryer. They were good though. Voltage Regulator is out in my boat. A new one costs $249. With the heat and the fact that I have just never really been able to catch many in the summer, I'm just not in a real big hurry to fix it. Going to do it next week and maybe next weekend early in the mornings I might give them a try.

what kind of motor do you have fiddlefarter? i have a 90 mercury. last sunday morning the voltage regulator went out and started a fire in the motor burning most the wiring out on that side . as many fuses as there was around the regulator, looks like theyd have started blowing before the short caused a fire.

[JimmyS]

Man, Now I don't feel so bad. I thought I was getting old and losing my touch for fishing ha ha. The fishing { catching] has been bad around here Sav. Ga. all last summer and so far this year and I can't figure it out. But now I feel better that I know that it's not just around here. Misery loves company he he. Hope it picks up for us all soon. Good luck guys. Jimmy S.

[fiddlefarter]

what kind of motor do you have fiddlefarter? i have a 90 mercury. last sunday morning the voltage regulator went out and started a fire in the motor burning most the wiring out on that side . as many fuses as there was around the regulator, looks like theyd have started blowing before the short caused a fire.

Sorry to hear about your motor.
Too bad, I have a 92 150hp Johnsone Faststrike.

But you know I frequent bassboatcentral.com, the moderator on the Johnson/Erude forum is a local mechanic. After my tach quit, I tested the voltage to the tach and determined the regulator was bad. He told me that if I ran it with a bad reg. it could catch fire. He also convinced me that I shouldn't even let it sit with the battery hooked up, just to be safe, until I replaced the regulator because it could still catch fire. Scary.

I was informed that instead of using wing-nuts to attach the cables from the motor to the battery, the actual specs say to use lock nuts. If the cables get loose at the battery they could arc and cause too many volts to go through the regulator, resulting in a fire!

Luckily for me I checked the regulator as soon as the tach quit and no fire happened.
Here's a link to the discussion:
bass boat central

[Moose1am]

Here is my thinking on this type of thing. It happens to all of us once in a while.

I think that the fish just are not hungry. Maybe they already ate not too long ago and are full. Maybe they are still asleep.

If it's not the above then is it possible that you are fishing a ft below them? Did you try varying the depth by vertical casting? Not only will this assure that at some point in time you will be at the fish's exact level but also the sight of something rising up from the bottom trying to make it's way to the surface triggers the fish to attack.

I have been fishing a lot in the heat and when the fish are not biting I start using the vertical casting. Now I am talking about a very very very slow retrieve upwards. I was using jigs tipped with minnows and Chartruse Crappie nibbles yesterday from about 11 AM to 6 PM and caught about 20 to 25 crappie. Was cleaning fish and burying guts until 8:45 PM last night. In the first two hours I tried fishing new spots and caught my first fish in 4 to 6 ft of water. Now this was at sometime between 11 am and 1 pm. I could have sworn that the fish would be deep at this time of day. There were lots of high clouds but the sun was shining bright. I had to use sunscreen to keep from getting burned and used an umbrella. I would not have sayed out in that bright sunlight without some protection. So I figured that the fish would be down around 18 ft. I also did a test of the temp vs depth with my temp probe and found that water at 15 ft was aound 21 deg C or in the mid 70's. Water at the surface was 30 deg F or around mid 80's. HOT. It got very very cold at 25 ft. Something around 15 deg C. Now that is cold.

But the first fish was at 7 ft in hot water. But he was near a weedline which explains why he was there. Oxygen. The weeds at high noon are producing copious amounts of Oxygen. They are undergoing photsynthsis and producing O2 and comsuming lots of CO2. And the fish have some shade to get out of the sun. I didn't measure the water temp in these shallow waters but should have. I went out to the deeper water to do my temp profile test. I have to assume that the water at the surface in the middle of the lake is simlar to the surface waters in the shallows. Maybe the surface water in the shallows is warmer than the surface waters in the middle of the lake. Even then I remember swimming in private lakes and finding hot and cold spots on the surface. I bet that many of you too have experienced this while swimming in a lake.

Later that afternoon I went to my favorite honey hole and found the fish there. But they didn't bite right away. They were more shallow than last year. Last year I found them at 25ft most of the time. Yesterday there were around 15 to 10ft deep over the drop off. The drop went from a 6ft deep shelf that ran out about 50ft from the shoreline and then suddenly dropped steeply of into 25ft of water. The West side of the shelf drops off and then comes back up so there is a hole at the bottom of the drop. The fish like this area and also like it because there is brush down on the bottom. This brush or submerged brush comes up from the bottom about 10ft. So it's 20ft deep with brush coming up from the bottom to about 10ft from the surface. The fish hang around this brush. Sometimes at the bottom and other times they are suspended at the top of the brush. That puts them about 10ft deep. This is a good spot to use a slip bobber with a minnow/jig or jig alone. Finding this spot is the hardest part.

But back to your question. I found the fish to be not bitting well until I started to drop the bait down to the bottom and then slowly reel the bait back up. The fish suddenly turned on and started biting. Maybe it was the vertical retrive that got them going ot maybe it was just a coincidence and they were going to bite anyway as it may have been getting closer to supper time. I alway like to fish this spot after 4 pm as by then the sun is setting lower in the sky and the fish seem to turn on more. And BTW. I have been watching the Solunar Tables as I fish and guess what? The times I catch lots of fish seem to match up with the Solunar tables best or good times. I get the table off my Garmin eTrex Vista GPS unit which has the solunar tables in it's memory. I mentally make a note of when the best times are going to be and usually the fish will be most active at those times. Not sure why but maybe it's the moon's gravational effect that helps make the fish bite better. Who really knows. But if you look at the record books and see when the biggest fish were caught they often match the solunar tables best times to fish preditions.

Next time out don't forgot this vertical casting trick. It pays big dividend during these dog days of summer. And don't overlook shallow water weeds or submergent vegetation as they put out lots of dissolved oxygen into the water in the middle of the day. They are also full of aquatic insects that live among the weed.

I saw one guy going though the weeds into the wind in shallow water once and then letting the wind push his boat back. He was repeating this over and over again. I was not sure what was going on at the time but then after talking about aquatic insect life in the weedbed I am wondering if his boat was not knocking off lots of aquatic life from the weed as he motored though the area. The fish are keen to pick up on these now free floating organisms. It like rigging the diner bell. I talked to this fellow after he came back to the boat dock and he told me he had taken some nice big crappie out there that day. It was last Sept, Oct that I saw him doing this. I watched him from the launch ramp with my binoculars. He was about 1/2 mile down the creek. I took some pictures of this are with my Pentax SLR camera yesterday but the shutter was not working right. So they probably won't turn out. They most likely will be over exposed as the shutter was very slow. I has the speed set to 1/250 sec but the shutter acted like it was glued shut and refused to open and close at the right speed. Sort of like it has mollass in the spring or gears. I'll try to develop the prints and see if I can salvae any images from them. If they turn out I will post a picture in here.

I was on the lake at 5:15am this morning and slow trolling by 5:30. Saw many fish suspended at 8-10ft over 20 ft of water. In four hours of fishing only caught 6, all very good fish of 1lb.-13/4lb. Also caught 8 white bass of 1lb. class, and one big,bull bream of close to a pound. CRappie all over brush in deep water at about 10ft., but very,very close mouthed. Tried slow trolling them, dropping right in front of them, minnows and jigs of all colors. My conclustion; I was not holding my mouth right, or the East wind shut them down, or I really don't have a clue. Could be all of the above, and mostly the last mentioned. But I had fun none the less and came home with a small mess of filets.

[rango]

Sorry to hear about your motor.
Too bad, I have a 92 150hp Johnsone Faststrike.

But you know I frequent bassboatcentral.com, the moderator on the Johnson/Erude forum is a local mechanic. After my tach quit, I tested the voltage to the tach and determined the regulator was bad. He told me that if I ran it with a bad reg. it could catch fire. He also convinced me that I shouldn't even let it sit with the battery hooked up, just to be safe, until I replaced the regulator because it could still catch fire. Scary.

I was informed that instead of using wing-nuts to attach the cables from the motor to the battery, the actual specs say to use lock nuts. If the cables get loose at the battery they could arc and cause too many volts to go through the regulator, resulting in a fire!

Luckily for me I checked the regulator as soon as the tach quit and no fire happened.
Here's a link to the discussion:
bass boat central

i dont have no gauges or anything on my boat to tell me things aint working right so all i got to go on is it aint running and its smoking. . i think my depth finder was trying to tell me something that night tho cause it wasnt working right. not reading the bottom half the time, lots of interference, etc. i just hope it aint damaged from this mess. when i get it back, my depth finder will be on a seperate batt.

[Meat on the Table]

Moose, I varied my depths to no avail, but I did not try the vertical casting trick. Never entered my mind. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. I would have liked to hang around that spot a little longer and kept playing the game. But in that spot, this time of year boat traffic becomes intolerable by 10am. I sure look forward to the empty waters of October through February.