OhioFisherman

My dad had a 16 foot Sylvan with a 25Hp Evinrude on it, it was the worst boat I ever tried to fish out of. It was all open with no deck on front, no amount of adjustment and even adding a whaletail wouldn't keep the bow down. When I took it up north a hunk of carpet in the bow and a search for some heavy rocks to place on it was my first project, that or having the bow rise so high I couldn't see. If I had someone up front it wasn't as bad. Options on a prop? Basic on a small motor like that? I don't believe spending a ton of money is going to get you much difference in speed? Like others have mentioned, a bow mount electric is probably a better idea as the price for trim an tilt is more? With the trim and tilt you may need a separate battery anyway for an electric motor if you decide to use one? A deck and battery for the trolling motor, weight of the trolling motor up front should keep the bow down if you fish alone?

Congrats!

Great pics, nice fish! I don't recall ever seeing perch that fat on Lake Erie here, or anywhere else here.

LOL, yes Lew, playing in it you can set your own hours? Early April bass tournaments here were always like gambling, pay your entry fee a couple of weeks in advance and hope for the best? I have seen some pictures, I can't imagine trying to fight a fire in it!

http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/fishing/more-freshwater/where-fish/2014/03/suckers-fishing-spring%E2%80%99s-most-overlooked-species In the spring here a lot of Lake Erie tributaries had sucker spawning runs, some streams and rivers seem to hold a population of them. Changing times? The spring sucker run seemed like it was a bigger deal years ago? My grandparents on my mom's side were Czech, and my dad was a depression era kid, they used to cook suckers or pickle them like herring? Of course when I was young a lot of people in the neighborhood had pigeon coops, and not for sending messages! Squab! It tastes just like chicken? LOL

LOL, Lew, I remember dressing like that for work to try and stay warm, and they were paying me!

Good luck and take care, the weather might be a bit sketchy?

http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/13/news/economy/jobs-at-risks-robots/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_money_pool&iid=obnetwork " The Bank of England has warned that machines could take over 80 million American and 15 million British jobs over the next 10 to 20 years. That's roughly 50% of the workforce in each country. " Picture the world if this comes to pass? While the article only mentions the USA and British, is there any doubt it would spread to other countries?

I used to hear guys complain about that all the time Norm, I never broke one on mine, and I had a half a dozen of them.

The server needs a foil hat?

I am 64 Dave, and they had Nike missile sites all over our area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nike_missile_sites#/media/File:Cleveland_Defense_Area.png

I went to a grade school that was pushing 80 years old, once a month or so we would have a bomb drill. Every one would get out of their desks when the alarms went off and follow the teachers down into the catacombs ( basement) under the school, duck and cover, and kiss your butts goodbye! They repeated it in earnest for the Cuban Missile Crisis in Junior High school! Do our kids live like that now?

I used to fish for my own bait all the time here, and in Ontario when it was legal for us foreigners. Unless you live near a lake here with a muskie or big cat population it is hard to find big bait fish in bait stores, even the golden shiners some bait stores here sell as bass minnows seem to be on the small side for bigger bass. A lot of our streams have a resident year round sucker population, I assume it is the same in Ontario? Take a small hook, size 12 - 16 was my choice, flatten the barb with a pair of needle nose pliers to make hook removal easier, it helps to keep them alive. Light line, it can be hard to get anything over 6# test thru some of the eyes on those small hooks, and you really don't need anything stronger. A small piece of worm and a split shot, a small slip float and let it drift thru the pools. Suckers have their mouths on the bottom of their face, so keeping the bait near the bottom or drifting across it works best for them, big chubs are more apt to take it if it is off the bottom. That said? I have had much better like with big chubs and big silver shiners I have caught, suckers work well in lake Erie for walleye, but not much else, it probably has to do with the walleye spawn and sucker spawn being so close together here. Pike fishing? any of them should work OK, especially dead.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/11/02/Asian-carp-creep-closer-to-Lake-Michigan/5731446488661/?spt=hs&or=sn

I see some wiggle warts in the box, hard to tell what size they are. Back in the day Storm made wee warts and wee steelie warts, the only difference seemed to be that the wee steelie wart had a bigger and stronger hook.

As I recall we did the same thing, they just were hungry. We started giving ours baby food on the advice from our doctor at a younger age than normal. Puppies might help? LOL

'51 for me, the old vets are few and far between these days, may they rest in peace.

Lew, like me you're one of the older kids here, back in the day it wasn't hard to find anyone dad's in the neighborhood that saw some action. WW2 Korea and even Viet Nam.

Lew, my dad was 101st airborne, it was hard to even get him to talk about it, and watching some of those programs certainly explains why. Not just ww2 though, war is hell.

I am not sure if the shortening of daylight hours or water temp is the trigger for their movement, I avoided going out on real cold days, but still managed to catch them when the temps were in the 50's and 60's. The warmer weather may still have them at the mouths of the rivers? They were not usually what I was targeting though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrQZcweHkU Pretty amazing to watch what our fathers, grandfathers and servicemen had to go through.

In the fall here on Lake Erie vast schools of Emerald Shiners congregate along the rip rap and break walls at some of the river mouths. Those same areas seem to be where steelhead also congregate before entering the rivers. I used to keep a steelhead a year in the fall for a dinner, when I cleaned them they were full of emerald shiners, small shad, and small perch. The lures I used to catch the steelhead, white tubes, small chrome and black crankbaits, and jigs with a white twister tail imitated baitfish. It stands to reason minnows should work?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/texas-pastafarian-license-photo_n_3816839.html LOL