Seth

Brrrr! I can't even stand to wet wade in Taneycomo for more than a few minutes so I can't imagine going all the way in like that! Ya'll are tougher than me!

I'd still run a pair of 24v or 36v wired in parallel for redundancy. If one fails, you're not dead in the water or running to Walmart for new batteries. If you're running 12v, you can still swap in a 12v lead battery to get you by.

Win enough in tourneys to pay for most of my fishing is always a goal and I usually accomplish it or get pretty close each year. My main goal is to get out and fish with dad as much as possible though. We always have a good time and catch a few fish while we're at it.

I've been running a pair of 100ah AmpereTime (now LiTime) to power my 24v 80# MK Ultrex for a few years now and they have been great. The days of a weak trolling motor at the end of a long day of fishing are gone. The biggest drawback with the cheaper batteries is that you can't charge them in below freezing temps. The more expensive batteries usually have a battery warm or low temp protection built in to avoid damaging them. They are light enough that it's not a big deal for me to pull them from the boat, bring them in doors, and charge them with a cheap lithium compatible charger than I bought off of Amazon. For most fun fishing trips, I can go multiple days without worrying about charging them anyways.

100%. I've caught a lot of cold water smallies on football hair jigs using crosscut rabbit for the body and pine squirrel for the tail. Black and green pumpkin/olive/sculpin are the only colors I mess with.

Time to break out the orange head jigs again! I seem to always do better with them when the water has that darker tint ot it versus crystal clear.

I'm going to be down for tournaments the weekend before and after. I'm not sure I can swing three weekends in a row so I'm a maybe at this point.

i’ll be up in northern MO on the weekend of the 9th to help out with the Missouri Disabled Sportsmen antlerless hunt and I was planning on fishing the Hooked on Vets tourney on Taneycomo the following weekend so I won’t be able to make it.

That's a good point. I'm mostly a river rat so I don't utilize LINK, but I'd have it in a heart beat if I was spending most of my time on bigger water.

I'd look at used Humminbird G2N or newer gear. I bought a Helix 9 G2N with mega SI for for $600 off Facebook last year to replace my old 998 hdsi. The detail in my SI images are leaps and bounds above with the newer unit. For bow electronics, you could probably get by with a 2D unit if you're going to be fishing deeper water. For network two units, you would just need the ethernet cable and possibly some adapters depending on the graph model for humminbird. If you have more than two units then you have to add an ethernet hub. I believe Garmin is similar and I'm not sure about Lowrance.

You know what I find funny is that I did Top Golf with some buddies last summer and I was sore in spots I hadn't been sore before. I guess I was twisting and using stuff I don't don't use doing other things.

Maybe I need to take up pickleball. I chipped my humerus up by the shoulder playing softball two weeks ago. Me and another guy were going for a fly ball, got there at the same time, he went low and I tried to jump over him and clipped him, tilted forward while airborn, tried breaking my fall with left arm and it got me. First time I've ever fractured anything. Last year I tweaked my other shoulder diving in to a base. Things are starting to hurt the closer I get to 40 (currently 37). I'm still able to run really well so I'm learning to not go 100% all the time the hard way. 😁

We were pier fishing by Fort Morgan our last day of the trip and a guy was throw netting mullet to eat. Said he loves them deep fried.

I went to Gulf Shores earlier this year for my first time. We caught some vermillion snapper, trigger fish and pompano. The vermillion snapper were about like white bass. Pompano and trigger fish were VERY good with trigger fish being my favorite by a small margin. I grew up eating small drum that we'd catch on the Gasconade and Missouri River. They were delicious!

The only time I've used SI on Taneycomo was for when I was trolling. I went through and graphed the big trees and then made waypoints so I could avoid them. That's it though. Never messed with it on the Gascoande.

My SI ducer stays flipped up and I run the console graph at times for the mapping after a big flood event. My Livescope setup has been sitting in the shop collecting dust since May. It'll get used again this winter though when I get after the crappie. I am curious about using the FFS in some of the wintering holes on the river though. That'll be the only time I ever mess with that stuff on rivers.

I like this uber for deer idea. Dragging deer SUCKS! 😁

Lots of guys swear by nose hooking a fluke,which essentially all a banjo minnow is. Lose more baits, but get better action and hook up ratio.

I'm not sure why your waypoints would be off that much. I do run an external GPS mounted back near my transducer on my Humminbird SI unit at the console so that my waypoints are more accurate. Even if it were mounted at the console, you SHOULD only be off by about 10'. You'd just have to make sure you come towards the waypoint at the same angle that you marked it or else it will be off to the side instead of in front or behind the boat. Prior to owning FFS, I'd mark the brush on SI, turn around, switch to 2D, drive over brush and toss out the buoy as soon as it started to show on the graph.

That's how I am with bass. I enjoy fishing the river bass tournaments, but I RARELY fun fish for them. There are several other species I'd rather chase if I am fun fishing. People act like using bow moutned sonar to target fish is something relatively new. People have been drop shotting on fish for a LONG time using 2D sonar. The difference now is instead of having to be on top of them you can see them out front and can throw at them. IMO, the biggest advantage of FFS is being able to visibly target the bigger fish verus just hoping the big one bites. I bought a Livescope setup last spring and used it for crappie and snagging paddlefish a few times. Snagging with it is almost unfair once you get it figured out. As for crappie, it really shines when fish are deep and/or in open water. A lot of my friends and family arent' able to dock shoot so I'm looking forward to being able to put them on some open water crappie that they can effectively fish for. FFS is a nice addition, but it's not even close to being as much of a game changer for me as going from 2D to SI was. I'd give up FFS in a heart beat if I had to choose between it and SI. SI finds the cover and fish while FFS just helps me make the perfect presentation.

I never bought any Banjoy Minnows, but a buddy did and we caught a lot of fish on them. There are several guys that I know that swear by a nose hooked fluke, which is essentially what the Banjo Minnow is. Dad bought me three of the "TV" lures when i was younger as presents. They were the Helicopter Lure, Flying Lure and I believe the Swimming Image. The only one that really didn't work for me was the helicopter lure. It got bites but I could never hook the fish. Probably wasn't using proper tackle. The Flying lure caught a lot of fish for me. IMO it was just a backwards rigged tube anyways. The swimming image came with a hard swimbait/wakebait and a bunch of soft plastic bodies. The soft plastics didn't do much for me, but I hammered fish on that hard swimbait until it fell apart.

There was a beef cake of a rainbow hanging out across from the boat ramp between Fall and Short Creek last Saturday. I saw it cruising by while idling the boat. I spot locked just above it, had dad throw his rods out towards it and he caught his big brown 10 minutes later. I'd guess that bow in that 8-10# range. It was visibly bigger than the 5.3# brown he caught.

Dad caught this one on Taneycomo this past Saturday shortly after noon. A bit over 23" and 5.32lbs.

I have a 150 first gen and am in the same boat. My dealers last true Etec guy moved on and I don't trust the new guys. My motor has been great, but if I don't have anybody I can trust to work on it then I may have to bite the bullet and move over to one of those black things simply because every dealer has somebody who can work on those.

I enjoy fishing bass tournaments. Outside of a tournament, I'm going after trout, crappie, hybrids, whites, catfish, pretty much anything besides a bass. Maybe it's because I REALLY like to eat fish and I'd rather eat all of those over a bass. Don't get me wrong though. A mess of 12" largemouth or spots out of cold water in the winter/early spring is pretty darn good!