jace

Generally speaking, spooling high test gel spun lines on the bigger reels shouldn't be done at home anyways because you can't put enough tension on it, not easily anyways.

I've had some scotties over 10 years and they're good. There have been many times the rod was pulled down so hard i couldn't lift it out of the holder and they didn't break, in fact, i've only seen maybe 2 break and that was from bottom snags with heavy gear and 100-120# line. What's nice about the nylon build is it has some flex and bounce to take the load off your boat. I've seen metal flush mounts that ripped the boat apart because they don't move. so for me, the metal tube type mounts are rail mounted and adjustable types.

can't wait for Cabelas montreal to open..if that's still in their plans, i don't know.

yeah. that's the navigational difference as far as i know. And the other main difference is the POI's with icons/logos with their phone numbers and it can tell you what businesses are located at every address number even if it doesn't have an icon or logo. none of that in topo. They 2 different purposes with some overlap. topo will have popular offroad trails marked off and contours of the terrain. with city navigator, i can only get that by checking the altimeter.

unless something has changed in 2008, topo is not routable meaning turn by turn street routing which is why it's so much cheaper than "city navigator" series. You can't do a search for 12 main street. then hit go to, and have it tell you to turn left on king st, approaching next turn 100ft, turn right on queen st, approaching destination on left, arrived. and it'll let you know when you've missed a turn or go past the destination.

Yes, topographical mapping will have all the streets and highways but most topo maps are NOT routable including lowrance mapcreate. So this wouldn't be so good for the poster wanting to use it in the car/travel. ditto goes for garmin's topo series. I tried using metrowizz on out of curiousity and it worked for some and not others and the results were kind of wink dink weird compared to garmin city navigator because all the best urban features were not there. from my understanding of water charts, they all get them from the same sources, some are more up to date, some have more detail than other to determine map file sizes trust me when i say, these days, do not get any unit that does not use removable expandable memory cards. Almost all of the units that have big price slashes are either not color or they have fixed, limited memory...the biggest internal memory i can think of is 256M. for topo...this is diddly squat. For city navigation, you're limited to a larger but still very limited area. do not expect to have full and detailed mapping for travel across several provinces on a unit with only internal memory unless you want to rebuild maps along a specific roadway each time you travel or hunt/fish/hike. As far as mounting systems go, only get RAM/LEI mounts regardless of which brand you decide on. everything else is weak garbage. The most detailed maps i know of are from garmin. Unfortunately, they're only for the US. It's their US park series in 1:24000 and it includes lake contour info. Almost all units have a built in compass but they only work when you're moving. some have electric compasses that are on all the time, even when stopped which is handy. B&W screens are okay but most modern urban mapping will have navigation features that will be turned off and unavailable unless it's loaded to a color screen unit. i.e. know what you want from a gps. Obviously, gps technology is about to hit market saturation. With the convergence, we're not far from a time when it'll be built into everything for next to nothing. I've gone through a few brands and over the years and I can only recommend garmin to the casual user. Why? Support is EVERYWHERE. Check the forums and see how much help you can get for specific Bushnell gps. Go to a gps store and look for lowrance accessories. If you're travelling abroad, try to find maps for anything for a TomTom brand. Get a garmin and you can go to literally any store that tells you they have "gps" products and I will bet big money every time that 1/2 of the shelf is for garmin. If you want something for your garmin , you can go to any common store like CTC, walmart, radioshack, circuit city, any hiking store, any online retailer etc, and you can get mapping cds, various cords, cases, mounting brackets. In the end, they all have their market and they all have good products but know what you're getting into. Think of it like a computer PC vs MAC vs risc. Which is easiest to get support and products for? Where do i go to hunt down that cable for the Mac? Do they all the computer architectures serve their purpose similarlily, sure. The same goes for software. So i want graphics software and let's say they were all the same price, do i get Coreldraw, photopaint, photoshop or other? Adobe Photoshop kills them all in market penetration and support because i can go anywhere online or walk to any store and get help, plugins, instructional books, etc. Can i edit a jpeg with Photopaint? sure. If i want help on a creating a specific effect in photopaint how many places can i go to and what are the chances of getting a working solution compared to photoshop? This is why i stuck with garmin after messing around with the other brands.

I tie my own also but not using the knot in the OP, I find it puts too much twist in the line in the final loops. I usually make the top hook a sliding hook.

I enjoy cleaning fish. big or small. I'm sure it would be a different story if i did it for a living and had to deal with it every day. In the summers, I clean fish every day, at least 1/2 of it is for total strangers.

lake erie outside buffalo. garmin blue chart of the same spot. heheh.

Practice is definitely the key. Watching videos gives you some ideas but not the feel of the blade running along the back, skin, or ribs. Which youtube guys did you watch? There are 2 who are excellent, one seems to work for a commercial fish processor, or possibly a trawler outfit. Most of the youtube guys are mediocre at best but think they're amazing, and a few are just awful and have no place calling their video educational. The youtube videos are the first things I thought of after somebody made a comment to the effect that a lot of people think they're rapala's gift to cleaning fish in the fillet knife thread. ...I laughed out loud at one youtube guy showing us how good he is with his electric knife technique. I think it was a big crappie and he made crooked shallow cuts that left 1/2 the meat along the spine. it was hilarious.

that's the last thing you want to see in a baitcaster or any reel for that matter...I would avoid this model. I'm not saying only a bar stock machined frame is acceptablel, even if it's cheap cold forged or cast metal frame, at least it's metal. almost all shimano's, actually all small shimano baitcasters that I know of, are cold forged and cleaned up on a mill, at best. You have to get away from Shimano to get into all machined frames and bodies. I have a summit and it's okay, not the smoothest thing in the world but it's a good little reel and i would recommend it for the price. .

bluechart is primarily for the ocean charts and has extensive coastal coverage but for Ontario they have all the great lakes, st lawrence, and any lakes close to them like the nippising, st clair, kawarthas, rice, ottawa river, all the lakes and rivers out by brockville/kingston. It gets most lakes that most people in swo fish.

If you plan on using this portable gps for any travelling and road navigation, you should get a garmin. You can get topo and ROUTABLE street level maps with extensive POI's for just about anywhere in the world for a garmin. I don't think there's navionics for garmin, but they have their BlueChart, inland lakes, and maybe 1 or 2 more

anywhere from 100-300 depending on the area of the coverage.

this is where hooks made of stainless steel and corrosion resistant alloys are a bad thing. In fresh water, i think the idea that they fall out after a few days is way off the mark. In saltwater, lures don't last very long at all, i have boxes of garbage lures that are no good from a season of use in salt.

only 3 worth a darn that i know of. rodbuildingsupplies in BC. Andy is great to work with. shoot him an email with questions about his products or service and you'll see what i mean. reactionbaits also in BC. they're only a lamar dealer so it's not everything but lamar has some cool stuff john's fly tying materials in london. all 3 are online stores. the last 2 have the worst websites on the planet but it must work for them. the first 2 have toll free 800 numbers. Click away on reactionbaits links until you find "rod building" on the right menu to get to their lamar products.

Hhah. I laughed at that and another photo on the water where I'm guessing you got your name because you must be the only one paddling since she's sitting up in the bow and the other paddle is still strapped in under a cross-member.

looks like a good father's day. any day with a line in the water is a good day. i dig the gangsta way you're holding the musky.

some stand alone temparature probes are under $20 and the add-on probes for fish finders are generally $75 and less if you have one that has inputs for one.

the rod can make fishing certain ways easier but i agree with the first statement. I don't like noodlerods and i once went fishing with a friend on the bayfield. I brought a short, stiffest spinning rod i have just to make a point. I brought in the biggest fish of any we saw caught that day, a 9#-10# rainbow. As far as the cost, a big part of that goes to warranty servicing also, just like Sage. Although many companies have long term or lifetime warranties on their rods and blanks, from my experience, the higher premium priced rods/blanks have the most painless replacement process including expedited service. Just as normal shimano reels have good warranty servicing, but the top shelf reels like DC's include their lifetime Platinum service plan in the price

wow. don't see many catches as fine as that one. Not only does she fish but she gets in the water, handles the fish, and unhooks them herself.

I don't have one but i've looked at their rods recently and they use decent parts but the workmanship is a little sub-par. At the same time, for the price i saw on some of them, they are not bad as far as "custom" rods go. The blanks I saw were all the RX7 and other batson blanks but i only saw blanks from Batson's imported lines, nothing USA made models. The buttcaps and guides I saw were various Batson TiCh and some even had the batson vs3 guides so they don't skimp to save money that way. These are certainly better guides than those found on most factory shimanos. If you're going to get one, look carefully at the overall finish work on the corks and thread wrap epoxy. that's where the workmanship was the sloppiest. i should add that the rods i saw were all plain jane too, no decorative thread wraps, no butt wraps, weaves or even chevrons, so I don't even know if they can do them

I'm the exact opposite, I have a bunch of knives and none of them are short. I use 8 and 9" knives for everything including perch. I like to clean out fish in as few passes as possible, making as few cuts into the meat as i can and that's not possible for a lot of fish with a 4" knife. I used to have only 6 and 7" but then i started travelling more and getting bigger fish and it's just not practical to clean a 100# fish with a shorty knife. It wasn't long before i stopped using short knives all together. A cheap knife is all you need if you're a weekend warrior but a good knife with a harder steel is the only one that's going to hold its edge after a long day. Cheap knives with soft steel blades need honing to bring back an edge sooner than a harder steel blade, a steel won't grind out a rounded edge. And to make the hard steel blades more flexible, they go thinner.

it's definitely not cheaper on average, but it can be if you don't get picky and choose parts based on minimizing cost. If anything, your rods will get more and more expensive as you become more confident becuase there's not much point in putting on mediocre parts when you have the option to use whatever you want. It's easy to make a working rod, but it's not easy to make a well crafted rod. tons of pitfalls. Eventually, you can walk into a store, pick up a factory rod, even a topshelf rod, and spot a dozen mistakes or glitches in workmanship within a minute. And I mean any factory rod including $500+ rods. Most commonly, you'll find problems in the thread work, bulges or messy epoxy work, too much filler in the cork handle, seats that don't line up with the handle. You'll also come to recognize parts and wonder what's going on, like when you see a $200 casting rod with a $8 set of guides and a poorly fitted no-name seat with a wobbly hood..

I almost bought one of the anniversary edition PST's when i saw them about a month ago but i didn't think it was for me because i like to use my stuff and don't baby anything. I have mostly leatherman brand multitools. One original PST from about 15 years ago, maybe more. a PST2, Charge Ti, a micro, and a wave which is my least favorite..too cheap feeling compared to the other full size models. I tried 3 Gerbers and i won't be trying another, one full size and two pocket size. The only one i can name is the keychain model which is the Solstice. Gerbers okay but don't feel as solidly made, i don't think any of the imitation brand multitools are as well made/designed as a real leatherman. just like Visegrips and Channel-locks, nothing equals the originals. I forgot about swiss army. good knives but i'm always so disappointed when a plastic side broke, cracked or started chipping or wearing away which happens to all of them. The metal sided models never appealed to me. One day when i have a bag of money to blow, i might be tempted to get a super geek novelty model that i saw on tv, it has absolutely everything and it's about 5-6" wide.