DRIFTER_016

I purchased mine through Hanson Rivet

Bass Pro carries Ande as well. LeBarons used to but I don't know if they carry it any more.

Yep, the longer the distance between the hitch and trailer wheels the easier it is to back up. In Florida I was the truck driving launch and retrieve guy when fishing with my buddy. His boat is a 20' glass bay boat and the trailer is quite long compared to my 18 footer back home. It backed up like a dream. Very smooth and easy to manouver.

Yes go with a 3 bank. Each battery needs it's own connection to the charger. Some will say you only need a 2 as your motor charges the 3rd battery but with a 3 bank you can be assured that your starting battery will always be fully charged. Even when the boat is not used for long periods. I have my boat set up that way and leave it plugged in all the time (the charger will only come on when the batteries need it). Because of this I leave my batteries in the boat all winter and don't have to worry about hauling them out and periodically charging during the off season. I know that when the snow finally melts here in the next 3 or 4 weeks that I will be able to pull the boat out and turn the key and it will start and be ready fer fishin'. Now the tons of dog hair from last year are another thing. When is someone gonna come out with an automatic dog hair removal machine?

You missed one key person needed in TO and that is a very qualified sports psychologist!!! If they had one on staff this year they may have been able to stop the free fall that happened after the all star break. We know that the team had skills as they showed it in the first half of the season but then they lost their confidence and had a meltdown. The reason they tanked was all in their heads!!! But that's just my opinion.

Yeah, there's a bunch of them. Crabby Bill's Locations

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40-70hp 4 stroke?

My 18' aluminum boat with a 20 year old 90 Merc gets about 5.5 MPG at cruising speed which is 26-27 MPH.

Several years ago I was lucky enough to meet a couple of really great people on my annual trip to Alaska. One of these people was a dude named Brian Epperson. He has been hounding me to come visit him at his place in Tampa so this year I booked time to go and visit him and his family to soak up some Florida sun and maybe do a little fishing. Did I mention Brian is a licensed captain and fishing guide? Now getting to Florida from Yellowknife is a PIA to say the least. Day one: hop on a plane in Yellowknife and fly to Edmonton where I change planes and fly to Toronto where I had a 9 hour lay over. Got a bit of sleep in the airport before boarding my flight to Tampa. It was much easier when I lived in Ontario. I arrived in Tampa just after lunch and picked up my rental car and headed off to grab some lunch before meeting up with Brian. He told me about a place called Crabby Bill's so I headed there to start the relaxation. I ordered up a rum and coke and some seafood while waiting for Brian to finish his charter and come by. The view from the patio at Bill's didn't suck at all. That night we would head out on the first of two tarpon trips. The tactic was to tie off under the bridge and sight fish to fish cruising just inside the shadow line. Usually at this time of year Brian spots about 100 fish a night and hooks up 5-10 times. But this year for some reason the fish weren't in yet and we only spotted about a dozen fish over the two nights hooking up only once. The following day Brian had us going for redfish but first we had to go catchus some bait.I only ended up with 4 redfish bites that I managed to farm off. As the sun got higher the redfish disappeared as they usually do during mid day so we headed off to get a couple of bat wing rays to use as shark bait. Then we set up in Brian's favorite sharkin' area but the sharks weren't cooperating which probably had something to do with a pretty lousy tide. Saturday was a day off fishing and I had plans to drive to Orlando and pick up an order I had shipped to the BPS store there. Man they don't mess around down there with their BPS stores, it had to be at least 3 times the size of the Toronto store!!! I picked up my goodies and a bunch more before heading back to Tampa to meet with Brian. Got me some more fly tying materials too. Saturday nights plan was to hit up the good ole hockey game. I had purchased a pair of tickets to the Lightning/Jets game and the seats were by far the best I have ever been in. I could never afford these seats in Toronto when I lived in southern Ontario, but in Tampa the seats were much more affordable. My tics were 7th row right on the Winnipeg blue line. One really cool thing at thier arena is up in the ceiling they have two big tesla coils that they fire off at the beginning of the periods and after Lightning goals. They shoot giant lightning bolts 10 foot long or better. Really cool idea. Their sound system kicks donkey too!!! Sunday we headed out for some black drum fishing. These things hang around the bridge pilings and average 40 to 50 pounds. Brian would manouver the boat up to the lea side of the pilings and I would pitch live bait to fish sitting there waiting for some hapless fish to drift by. While we put baits in front of about 40 of these things I only had one hook up which I fought for several minutes before having it get into the pilings and break me off. The next trip was my best of the week. Brian had arranged with a buddy of his Greg to do an off shore trip on his 25' center console T-top equipped with twin Optimax 150's. The plan was to head out and fill the bait well before heading to some waypoints out in the gulf where we would anchor up and fish for snapper, grouper, amber jacks...........etc. Our first stop was a drop off about 20 miles or so off shore where we caught a bunch of gag grouper. Which was great except the season was closed on them. I got a couple of nice ones but the only photo was terrible so I'm not gonna post it. I did get a bunch of good shots of my new friends though. Our next and best stop was way out there nearly 50 miles from port. It was a ship wreck in about 100 FOW. As we pulled up on the wreck there were fish everywhere!!! We got anchored up, got the chum pot in the water and baits set out. We had schools of snapper, amber jack, jack cravelle below the boat as well as the occasional giant school of roving barracudas on the surface. At one point a school of about a dozen sharks swam past the boat as well. The cudas and jack cravelle ignored all baits but we managed one amber jack and a bunch of snapper, some red grouper and a single yellowtail for the fish box. From left to right Greg's buddy Chris, Brian, Greg Brian hooked up on a big ray which was fun. While Brian wasdoing battle with the ray Chris was hooked up with a good fish. Turned out to be about 300#'s of nurse shark!! My turn for a decent fish 200+#'s of Goliath Grouper. Chris got a good one too!!! I got out with my other buddy for a few hours of flats fishing for reds, trout and snook but only managed one small red on top water. Here's a shot of my buddy Sam on our way out to the fishing grounds. While the fish didn't completely cooperate during the week a fun time was had. I even got out and watched Brian's daughters play softball several times. Seems baseball/softball is thier version of hockey down there. All the kids play and the diamonds are way better than anything I ever played on in Ontario in my younger days. It's a good thing I decided to get back on Good Friday because it has taken until today (Monday) to recover from my vacation!!!

Thanks Mike. Will you lend me your copy?

Who cares they're only 40 bucks!!! :rofl2:

Mike Just pick up one of THESE and you'll be good to go.

No need to worry Mike the Loons and Ducks vaccume them all up.

$1.88 pkg #'s differ by size.

They come in B, BB, 3/0, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2 (smallest to largest).

I just buy up a bunch of Water Gremlin (without the wings) from LeBarons when ever I start to run low.

Mike The Canon Powershot D10 is supposed to be a good all weather camera as are the Panasonic Lumix TS series. You already know about the Olympus Stylus series (they sink!!!) LOL :rofl2:

Price of gas in Leduc Alberta this morning was $1.169/L. Seems pretty cheap these days. Price of fuel here in Yellowknife is unchanged @ $1.389/L which is where it has been for nearly a year.

Last Wednesday we used $330 worth of fuel on our offshore trip. 25 foot center console T-top with a pair of Optimax 150's. I know I couldn't afford to own that boat and go running around the Gulf of Mexico chasing down fish.

Forget any spray clear coat or the 3M clear adhesive film gravel will just blow it off like a sand blaster. The only thing I have seen that will withstand a good gravel road is truck bedliner (the liquid stuff). You can take your trailer into a place that does the spray on bedliners or do it yourself with the kit below. I know a thing or two about driving on dirt roads. You can also get tinted/colour matched bedliner. Truck Bedliner

Just means I have to come back Bill.

Nope. Bottom stick with 80# mono.

Tarpon fishing blows right now for some reason Bill. We have only seen 12 tarpon on 2 trips. Should be seeing 100 per trip right now. Only one jump off.

Yup.