Leaderboard

Scratched my itch yesterday. Ice was wet but still decent. Here’s hoping for a flash freeze and it will be great out there! Perch tacos for lunch today!

Last battery I bought was around $200. At the time a lithium was $500-800 a piece. I agree you can probably get some AGM’s and lithiums close in price now. And I’ll definetly look at them next time. My new boat is a 2019, and the old owner was meticulous and replaced all batteries last spring. It’ll be a couple of years before I’m looking for batteries and no doubt the pricing will be comparable.

Finally got out last Saturday, The ice was sketchy where we wanted to go, like 2 to 2.5 inches, so we stayed on better ice (about 5 inches of white ice) and caught one dandy perch and a pike about 4 pounds. Been out twice since, on better ice, and put a couple feeds of perch in the bucket. Fresh perch, yum yum! Now we are having rain and plus temperatures............😟 Doug

Just an update on my recent trip on the ice for 3 nights. Unfortunately nothing big was caught. Ending up landing 6 lakers and 7 burbot. Lost a few but I don't think they were big. Had a few hits too and you never know what that could of been🤔. 30lb pike lol. Within my area one guy caught a 31" walleye and another guy caught a 33" walleye the ice hut operator mentioned.

Jeez...If you add up the cost of "our favourite rods by technique" list, it comes close to $20,000. Don't think there's a rod on that list for under $400, and bunch of the NRX+ that are on there are north of $900 each. And that's just for Bass fishing...then start adding up Musky, Walleye, Panfish, Steelhead rods on top of that..and then of course there's the reels. Plus in 5 years it'll all become "obsolete" and you'll want the "new and improved" models. Brings to mind the old joke..."I just hope that when I die, my wife doesn't sell my gear for I what I told her I paid for it". I'm a bougie tackle nerd myself, and I appreciate using a finely crafted tool that's perfectly suited for the job at hand, but a lot of the rods on that "budget" list make a lot more sense..

At $325 for a 100a lithium, compared to the price of an AGM...I'd say the price difference is now negligible.

I’ve been to a couple of house fires that burnt to the ground as a result of charging batteries in the garage. None of them where lithium at the time. Any battery or charger left on constant charge has the capacity for catastrophic failure. I have used lithium for years. One of my kids and I flew model planes for a few years and we charged lithium’s for 100’s of cycles . I even charged crashed batteries that had puffed packs outside while keeping an eye on them. Never had one light up. Millions of cell phones, iPads and other lithium powered devices are charged daily across the country with no negative results. Every so often one sparks up and we get to lithium is bad. I just don’t see that as being the case. I’m sticking with lead acids or AGM’s at this point because of price and because I can still heft them. When the difference price is negligible I’ll go lithium!

I’m still confused by “direct through” but I believe what it is attempting to resolve is my very predicament regarding using bait in the Great Lakes in a legal bmz purchased from an appropriate bmz but needing to travel through a bmz where it would not be legal to use the bait. what I alluded to in my post, that somehow launching in honey harbour instead of penetang would make you a criminal if you had live bait lol. knowing how regulations are written, the purpose of the direct through term, ensures that there is no ability to stop and camp in a different bmz but claim that you have no intent of illegally using your bait. Otherwise you could clean your hook off as the MNR runs up on you and claim that you’re only carrying live bait to keep it alive. Pretty sure that one’s going to be up to the CO’s discretion, either way I don’t intend to stop legally purchasing bait and using it in an appropriate bmz just because I have to drive into an “illegal” bmz before I can put the minnows in the minnow bucket at the dock.

This is the same thing that happens with cell phone. That was the 1st time I herd of them telling people not to leave them on the charger when they are full charge. I was lucky that my Galaxy 8 never caught fire. I left it plugged in whenever it was not in use, which was most of the time. The only thing that happened was the battery expanded to the point that I had to use tape to hold it together.

Got out yesterday with Tim Hales, a solid 8+" of ice where we were. It started off slow, didn't have a single bite in the first hour. Then I landed a nice one and as the day progressed so did the bite. It never got crazy busy but the ones we were getting were all good size most were in the 11 to 13" range with several over 13. Now here's the interesting part. My fishing partner was using our triditional drop shot rig, he caught 10 fish all day. Of all the other huts we talked to, most reported 6 to maybe 15 fish, I used my new secret weapon.

Yup, one of misfish's creations. I tipped it with a small shiner, a couple of pieces of split shot about a foot above it. Dropped it down to bottom then lifted the split shot just off the bottom. They were inhaling it, I easily caught 4 to his one.

Yikes. I'll stick to AGMs.