The fisherman’s corner

What a monster!! Is that a crocodile laying on the bank next to the logs? Something about fishing where your not on top of the food chain takes the fun out of things :laughing:

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Na no crocs this far south it is too cold for them in winter - so we are top of the food chain (ish lol)

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So how goes the fishing, folks?

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I’m sure that’s how I look on the water.

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So, great year on the boat. The changes I made over the winter turned out perfect. Fishes great and plenty of room now.

Hooked a Yamaha engine interface cable up to the NMEA2k network, and fed it into the fish finder. Aside from good engine performance data, it also captures total hours. After the trips this year, it stands at 142.6 hours. That’s nothing for a 12 year old boat.

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Also, I’ve found that I’d forgotten how much I enjoy night fishing off the dock, especially for catfish. So I’ve been finally getting more sophisticated and serious in my approach to catch them. I’ve always done fine with the old J hook and some slop bait in the mud, but that is far less productive than actually trying.

I’m using a Santee rig with a circle hook and catching my own shad in a cast net. That is about a thousand million more productive for the big blues. It’s so much fun that my daughter and wife both insisted on their own catfish gear. It used to be just me and my catfish pole, but now we have four out patrolling for blues. We have a final trip to the Ozarks planned for mid-October then sadly the boat goes into dry dock for the year. Way fast year…

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Wanna have pretty good balance and no beer on that fishing trip, falling into the water could leave a mark.

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Leaving tomorrow morning for the last boating outing of the year. Should have decent weather, and decent catfishing.

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I’ll grab a few, hopefully with a good size blue in the frame.

We went in August and there was a lot more activity, naturally. The go-fast types will definitely be absent this time, leaving the lake to the fish hunters. And the nighttime dock fishing should be good too. October is a great month for cats.

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Trip sucked, end of story.

So, we got there on a sunny, calm, 72 degree day. In other words, perfect. A few hours after we arrived, I already had a 10 pound blue on the dock. It looked like it was going to be a good trip. But then, a big front came through. It dropped the temp 15 degrees but worse, it drove the fish out to the channels, far from the dock. It was steadily breezy for the next three days. One of our favorite things to do is night fish for blues off the dock. Well, not only did we get nothing, but the breeze and the high-30’s made it very uncomfortable. On Thursday, the last day, it stopped breezing and warmed up, but it was too late. We got some decent crappie on the boat, about 20 feet down on a stump, but we got no big cats. Real shame.

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Sorry to disappoint! :sunglasses:

Actually I did have a stupid incident on the August trip. We were cruising around one evening and I wasn’t paying attention to the chart, and I went too far down on the lake… Got stuck on a sandbar and had to get out and push the boat back to deeper water. Got lucky I was able to push it out. Turns out I’d gone to the ‘end’ of the lake at the Little Niangua river inlet and it went from typical lake depth to about 6 inches before I tried to turn around, but it was too late. The wife was in full panic mode thinking we were stranded and would soon die of starvation and dehydration. But that did not come to pass.

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Hahaha reminds me of years ago when I was out fishing with a mate and his father on the lake here - we came across a house boat that had run aground the tourist waved us over and asked what time was high tide and my mate’s father without missing a beat picked up the newspaper and said ya high tide is 8pm. Not a very helpful comment but damn we laughed our asses off for hours.

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Finally got to go fishing, caught a nice smallie on Friday at the creek first cast, about 10 minutes later some family and friends showed up and we started a little fire and tried for some catfish, only to play bait tag with gar the rest of the evening.


Went down to linton on Saturday in the kayaks and took my 20 gauge with me, caught 15-20 bluegill and kept 6 that were over 8” and shot one squirrel, all on one lake from the kayak:) it’s legal in Indiana to shoot squirrels from a boat without a motor, and it’s pretty damn fun too lol. I’ll edit in a pic of the bluegill once my wife sends it to me lol

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WhooooWe! Nice catch hoss!
Funny you mention squirrel as I sit here watching Meat Eater… grins

Been far too long since I’ve been out in the sticks.
Definitely miss it.

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Nice smallie FA!! Ah, to catch again. Sounds like fun.

So, condensed version of an otherwise long story. You know I got a boat in 2018, no need to re-hash that. It is a Cruise model from G3, 2007, 144 hours. Cruise means not fishing, and frankly it is not all that easy to fish off. All the seats face away from the water (except my chair that swivels), and everyone says they get a little uncomfortable sitting sideways plus twisting their bodies to face the water. Fair enough.

Side notes: we got this boat because it was in excellent condition and the price was right. And, we don’t actively bass fish or troll, they mostly jig/minnow over a crappie bed so a pontoon fit well. But the layout of the Cruise doesn’t fit well at all, as we’ve come to learn over a year’s fishing in it now.

So, the wife says, go buy a new boat that we can all fish from like we should. I responded “You are nuts; to get everything we want is tens of thousands of dollars!!! No way!!!” So she said I must rebuild the deck of the boat to make it fish better.

Here is roughly what it is today:

layout-current-sorta

And here is the design for the new layout. It will be several thousand dollars and as yet I don’t know where that money is, but I want your thoughts on this setup, pros and cons.

final2

I’ll explain it all in a little bit.

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This is an online tool I used so it doesn’t capture the exact dimensions of the current layout, but the look is accurate. The fuel tank is at the aft port side with a ‘sun deck’ that covers it and the motor. My daughter usually sits up there to fish but she doesn’t like it. Others either twist themselves around and fish from the seats or stand in the open areas, but when perched over a crappie bed for an hour, that gets old. The trolling motor is currently at the aft starboard side; I removed the ladder to mount it there. I tried it in the front but there just isn’t enough room to maneuver around it to fish, plus when stowed it lays on the deck and blocks the foot spaces for the people sitting in the front seat area.

Also, while the trolling motor works well back there, it is far off the center line and struggles to hold the boat still, since it thinks it is mounted at the front and center of the boat. So, when we have it set in ‘anchor’ mode, the boat stays on point but rotates and turns a lot, so for a little while one side of the boat faces the shore, then the other side faces it. It’s annoying to have to adjust your fishing position constantly.

So, the proposed design not only allows for bucket seats that can face the water easily, but also moves the fuel tank to the aft center, allowing both rear corners of the boat to be fishable, whereas now neither is available. Also, the front buckets allow for the trolling motor to be returned to the proper position, fore and centered. The rear middle bench in the proposed layout will not be a bench, but rather a livewell with the fuel tank under it.

The seating area and console will be fenced in on the sides per MO regulations for behind the gunwhale seating during above idle operation. The seats are also open storage on the bottom so we sacrifice no storage area this way too. And a new console will alow all new wiring and switches so I can properly get all electrical connections made as well as new wiring since I’m already going this far. And of course, new marine plywood decking and vinyl flooring. It’s basically a completely brand new boat from the deck up, with a perfectly functioning 144 hour motor. I’ll polish up and sharkskin the toons while I’m at it.

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First off, I’m glad you replied. I know you’ve been down this road and was hoping you would chime in.

As for the bug, 100% honestly it really isn’t that. Selfishly, I fish off it just fine (having a swivel bucket), and the trolling drift is annoying but not enough for me to just stop fishing. It’s the rest of the fisherpeeps that are having a rough time. And from that end I empathize. I’ve had a lot of fishing trips with less than optimal conditins for seating so I know their plight. The boat as it sits now is actually in great shape, and I’m sure I can recover at least some of the expense by selling the current deck bits and bobs (not the decking and carpet though) because the seats are clean and none have rips or scuffs. It will not offset the entire project though, unfortunately.

So, epoxy the decking, nice. How about some more insight?

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As you know $50 is barely the median when it comes to fishing boats. It’s nuts how much they are. That one above will absolutely never happen, I can guarantee that 100000%. A deck refresh is possible but even that will take a lot of convincing (and a surprise source of income I don’t know about. Hey, she can hook…)

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Well, I crunched the numbers, checked the bank accounts, investigated potential additional streams of revenue, and I can say that this project isn’t going to happen. I could have said that before I did all that too. But it is fun to dream, I suppose.

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