AKRISONER

I’ve chatted with gussy about his set up, he’s in the aluminum. rattle trap, it’s funny you say youll never switch back, I’m literally the complete opposite, now every time I’m in my old man’s alumacraft I’m certain I’ll never go back to aluminum. The only time I feel like aluminum is better is for 2 weeks each year in the fall when it’s snowing and blowing and downright miserable. Any other time id rather be in my glasser. funny everyone always talks about the big water capabilities of aluminum deep v’s over glass but the right glass hull to me feels better hitting waves Vs the aluminum. I think the only time it gets really bad is when waves are 6+ feet, but even then who truthfully isn’t quartering and running the troughs anyways when stuff gets that huge. Let’s also get serious here…once you drive a boat 65+mph, you don’t ever want to let that go 😂

sturgeon bay

watching the wired to fish video its from 2020 and you can see how even since then his sponsorship money has increased after he won on tellico in 2021. Intriguing, in that first video you can tell Jeff rigged his own boat and was using what was considered top of the line for the various applications rather than dealing with specific brands. One critique I have always had of the Lund Pro V's is that they are a little akward at the very nose of the boat and dont make for an ideal electronics set up. You dont really get to see it in that video because its clear he was down in florida pre-fishing for the first event of the year and he was still running the factory electronics! It will be very interesting to see what happens with Gussy next season, I could see some major sponsorship changes coming up for him, Everyone is going to be wanting a piece of the hot commodity. Your going to see his face on the bags of z man plastics going forward I am sure of that. Considering Jeff is the only guy running a Lund on the entire Elite Series, they bloody hit the jackpot with this win, Im thinking his deal is going to be a whole heck of a lot sweeter next season because you know Nitro is going to be knocking at his door. Im thinking Jeff might struggle a little over the next few elite events, his mind is going to be all over the place trying to manage his new found infamy. Couldnt happen to a better guy though!

Aluminum and glass will always have a totally different feel. But it was pretty calm yesterday, so that’s a lot less noticeable. it moreso is that his top end isn’t close to the glass rigs. guys run whatever boat they get the best deal to get into. Gussy and lunds relationship makes total sense given his locale. Zaldain was a skeeter yamaha guy for a decade and is now with bass pro/nitro/mercury. there is no actual loyalty, the guys are trying to make a living the best they can.

It’s on brand for him to run a lund being from kenora. I always joke, barrie is the “glass line” in North America. people still give odd looks when I drive around parry sound, in pointe au baril I was an abomination.

If he can keep the bags of 3lbers biting for three straight days he will take it. I saw he had a 4 mixed in there today too, just needs to keep it going. couldn’t happen to a nicer guy either. Jeff is as genuine as they come in pro angling

just throwing it out there, I never paid the tax on my 98 skeeter, i registered it with the feds, did the trailer with the province and as far as I was concerned I had gone fully legit. No one ever sent me anything saying otherwise. Different story when I imported one from the states, I had to pay everything up front at the border. Also, when I went to service ontario to do the trailer I think I told them the trailer was worth $1,000 the lady at the desk was basically like, what do you want to say this trailer costs? I probably could have told her $10 she didnt seem to care at all.

Multiple times I have gone in, and even when he discovered a problem with a powerdrive that was unfortunately not fixable he was adamant that he would not charge me because he was unable to fix the problem.

+1 for aikmans, the guy is a man of few words, but hes honest and does good work. Thats all you can ask for these days.

You are getting some really good info in this thread. In fact the motor suggested to you is sold out all of the time…there’s a very good reason for that. you could go to the motorguide booth and they will tell you their trolling motors are the best thing since sliced bread.

If you’ve got a cable steer style/wireless footpedal like the force…I’m going to recommend running the livescope and not worrying about target lock until some more time has been spent figuring it out. to not be using livescope=you’re missing out. get one for this upcoming season and never look back. Trust me, using it with a Garmin force…you will most certainly put more fish in the boat, it’s not even a question. in some applications, like fishing laketrout jigging in the spring when they are up in <50fow but are still not right to bottom? My goodness remember it’s not just about finding fish either, it literally feels like cheating when you can see the piece of structure you want to fish 30 feet in front of the boat. I think my last 4 tournaments I managed to catch a fish that I literally saw eat, we fished a rail piling on rice in October during a gale, it was effectively impossible to figure out how to approach the structure without live. you couldn’t go right on top of it, the fish wouldn’t bite cause the boat was going nuts in the wind and waves. I marked it with the livescope and got the correct angle with the wind and let the force spotlock and we proceeded to just toss baits at it all day.

The issue is that mega live is a far inferior product to livescope especially now with the LVs34 even the 32 is still better than mega live at current

Major deployment issues with the ulterra. Minkotta/Johnson outdoors are not known for their reliability in products. They have a few gems like the Fortrex and terrova, but buyer beware of a lot of their other stuff. the ultrex has essentially been a nightmare until the newer versions. Even then they wear out quick. Bushing, etc problems.

The concerns listed here about lithium voiding warranties is dead, all of the major motor manufacturers have changed their stance on lithiums.

Terrova 24v ipilot without a single doubt if money is no issue, get a Garmin force, probably way overkill for your application though

Personally I’d talk to Pete Hoffman a former regular around here with the screen name “Fisherpete” Not sure if anyone here is still in touch? I’ve misplaced his phone number

I’ve noticed the total degradation of those tanks since when they first opened. There was a time that they held seminars and had a multitude of species in the tanks, now it’s just a bunch of a smallmouth and a few cat fish. Kinda sad to be honest. honestly I would not be surprised to see the store close in the near future. It just doesn’t have the same crowds that it once had, and truthfully it’s due to how poor their business model is designed for people that fish. when bass pro first opened it was essentially the buy whatever you can think of from any brand as it relates to fishing store, that quickly changed to the buy xps or Berkeley store real quick. It’s not a good look when a guy like myself that fishes as intensely as I do really struggles to find absolutely anything worth buying in your fishing store. At the end of the day it’s better that I shop at pro j and Peterborough pro tackle anyways, but when fisherman are very particular, especially ones that fish a lot, we are not going to buy bass pro knock off baits, and if that’s all you are offering to your primary consumer you aren’t going to move much product. I can’t speak on the hunting side.

the price of these things is collapsing, I somewhat regret going with my 4 AGM's but I couldnt get the price where I wanted it at the time. I wish I could run two 36v lithiums and then have a stand alone 12 for my electronics. We will see how my cranking battery holds up this season, if I start running into issues I may be forced to make the switch anyways.

looks like youve caught the swimbait bug? or were you pike fishing?

God I hope you are right, I’ve been there almost 3 years now and haven’t seen a co yet. Saw them every fall and winter up in pointe au baril in the shawanaga.

I’m a tournament bass fisherman, so yes I absolutely have bias, however I’m also 99% of the time exclusively a catch and release angler. I can tell you right now, that the responsibility of keeping your catch alive during a tournament is paramount to all participants. Moving bass tournaments away entirely from catch and release is not the objective to save a resource, there are plenty of studies conducted by texas fish and wildlife on how tournaments impact fisheries, at such an higher level of depth than gord or anyone at the entire MNR can even fathom. Share lunker and their entire scientific approach to growing bass fishing in the state of texas makes our entire program a complete joke. people tend to forget entirely that tournaments are always held with your catch and retain limits in mind, therefore every single angler was within their rights to literally kill every single last fish that they weighed from the particular body of water that day. Now I understand that everyone loves the concept of MLF where you weigh your fish at the point of capture, however you forget that every single boat then requires a Marshall with a high end scale to record the fish. Also, guess what, MLF just moved back to a 5 fish weigh limit this season because they realized the appeal had taken a significant hit. I guess there is no need for a tournament blast off, or official weigh in…jeez this is all starting to sound like taking away a bunch of the appeal of tournament fishing. Maybe you can’t appreciate it, or don’t understand the appeal. anyone that does can tell you that there aren’t many feelings like blastoff and running a bass boat full bore to that honey hole and catching a big one. If that makes me wrong, then I guess I don’t wanna be right lol. I guess you can ask the entire economy of tournament bass fisherman to entirely move over to a catch measure release tournaments, to me it starts sounding a heck of a lot like our recent gun laws, making up rules targeting people that do things legally and doing nothing to stop guys like crow’s neighbours. crow we have a similar problem up at our place, there’s a very strict fish sanctuary in parry sound, most people appreciate the border, but my neighbor have now started downrigging the fish sanctuary pretending that they are “salmon fishing” they then proceed to post pictures of their laketrout catches on Facebook. That one irks me so bad. I’ll add, I sure as hell also hope that they don’t open up the pre-spawn season to tournaments, leave that be, you can allow for guys to go target some pre spawn fish and snap a picture and measure their trophies, but we definitely don’t need guys livewelling during that time of year when there are no retention limits in place. I guess the kayak guys woulD be happy. also why in the hell is the province not doing anything about getting tournament directors to direct their funds back to the resource. That one drives me nuts, some of these guys are operating corporate cash cows with no need to pay back into the resource. The other one that bothers me is the complete lack of weigh in standards in bigger tournaments. It’s one thing for 5 boats at my local clubby to weigh fish, it’s another to have a disaster like B1 pulled off a few years back with awful holding tank procedures which resulted in a gigantic die off, the guy then stole a bunch of money, just craziness.

I’m gonna assume that it won’t be easy with the recent storm snow.

just watching bassmaster live today and it occured to me almost every single pro in this event is running lithium batteries, I think 5 years ago? Not a single boat would have been running lithium? Lead acid is basically quickly becoming a dinosaur. Unfortunately I needed new batteries last year and couldnt front the bill for a new charger and batteries to go lithium, but im basically 100% certain when these ones go, ill be making the switch. Ive made the switch for my ice fishing eletronics, to say that im blown away with the performance would be an understatement. I ran livescope and a 10 inch screen all day last weekend and was still reading 13.1volts at 5 in the evening.

Glad to see this it’s about time they figured this out because the current rules are as ambiguous as all heck. the one that bothers me the most is the practice of people using stringers as their livewell I see that junk all of the time, just brutal.

problem with snowmobiles is they are so friggin inefficient because they dont really roll well. Id rather push my truck down the road than a skidoo. Man, could you imagine how friggin snappy that throttle would be though? Holy cow.