Seth

I'll throw a pink worm all day long when it's putting money in my pocket! It hasn't been worth a flip for a while though since the largemouth fishing has gone down hill so much on the Gasconade. It'll catch smallmouth, but it shined on the largies.

I recall hearing about a few lithium battery fires in boats several years ago, but nothing in several years.

Just offering some advice to try and help guys like you not lose all those fish from break offs. It doesn't matter to me if you listen or not. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink, or something like that. 🙂

There are a ton of videos on YouTube comparing every knot you can think of. It ain't hard to figure out which knots are the best for an application. Even knots like the FG aren't hard to tie with a little practice. I'm always hearing about guys breaking fish off and it happens VERY rarely to me and I attribute part of that to choosing the right knot for the application. I'm also using a spinning rod and lighter gear than most much of the time so my chances of breaking fish off should be even higher.

What model is your MK charger? You can use a precision charger set to AGM, but I don't think any of the digital models will work with lithiums. This will also limit you to using 12v lithiums. The 24v and 36v in one batteries requires special chargers for those voltages.

Rub it on a rock or a piece of angle iron like you find on a dock. The results will be the same.

I've ran mine hard all day long in riffles chasing summer smallies and during high water while targetting Taneycomo trout. They were still as strong as the end of the day as they were at the start. My lead batteries, even when fresh, would be noticeably weaker by the end of a day like that. I'm not sure how much more real world it gets than that. 🤷‍♂️

That's why I went the 100AH route myself. The 50s would have probably sufficed. Now I can go multiple days of fun fishing without having to worry about charging the batteries up. That's handy when you're on a trip somewhere and the hotel doesn't have good access to external an external power outlet.

I've had too many weird break off with straight braid. Touch a taught piece of braid with a sharp knife and then do the same thing with mono or fluoro and see which one cuts the easiest. The braid will cut with hardly any pressure and the fluoro/mono takes more effort.

I find myself using 15# mono more and more these days on my casting gear for the same reasons you've mentioned. Once I use up the rest of my 10# spool of Trilene 10% fluorocarbon, I will probably go with Trilene XT or Maxima Ultragreen and start using that for my leaders on my spinning/braid combos.

3lbs Maxima is all I run for my jig setups. Throws like 2# with the strength of 4#!

This is how I figured it as well. If my lithiums lasted 6 years, it would be a wash on the price. That doesn't take in to account the performance improvements and weight savings. If you've never had issues with your 31s getting weak, you could probably go with the 50AH models. They are about half as long and cheaper. A 50AH lithium is very comparable to a 29/31 series lead battery in run time.

I'm sure it would be fine. I know plenty of guys running a single 36v battery in their river jets and they haven't had any issues.

I use a Sandiego Jam Knot for my spinning gear and a double Sandiego on my heaver setups when using Fluoro. I've always heard a Palomar was a no-no for fluorocarbon. Break offs only happen if I do a slack line hook set with a short amount of line out. The only time that really happens is when a smallie darts out and bites me right at the boat and I get a bit too excited. I'm not a fan of straight braid simply becuase it's not nearly as abrasion resistant as fluorocarbon. Plus if I break off, I rather break off a leader of fluoro versus a length of braid and save the braid. There are a few instances where I will run straight braid though. If I'm throwing a big whopper plopper or frogging/punching in heavy vegetation, then I will run straight 50-65# braid.

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.