I have a tag for the first time in a number of years. I won’t get out to put up my blind until Friday but hopefully I can seal the deal Saturday morning. The weekend weather looks like its shaping up to be good. Excited to hear some gobblers in the woods!

Certainly wasn’t a surprise to see. Disappointing though. I personally don’t care and am of the opinion that something else will get me before eating fish. But at the same time I have young kids at home.

The past few years the prime permits have gone fast. At this point without knowing if you plan to go through outfitters or on your own I think I would try to narrow it down to would you like to go to the Ely area, Tofte area or Gunflint area and then see what is available for permits. I’m not sure there is a “bad” entry point. I say throw a dart and start planning!

I would do my best to stop out! I live in town and have even caught some nice crappies on JJ’s plastics.

Deep Survival – who lives, who dies, and why – Laurence Gonzales. I am about halfway though it and it falls under the nonfiction category. Its about true stories of endurance and sudden death – and the science/psychology of why that may have happened. Its a bit in depth in some cases but I have to say it has been interesting so far.

I’ve re-armed mine and have a replacement CO2 cartridge and bobbin –

Am I missing something but if you replace the bobbin won’t that cause the CO2 cartridge to discharge?

I generally keep my inflatable in the truck or in the closet in my house to help combat any issues with moisture/humidity.

Do you guys lose a lot of plastic baits while bass fishing? I use a number of different styles on walleye and panfish and aside from a lost tail piece here and there I generally pull off beat up plastics and toss them in my trash bag while fishing and don’t see losing a whole bait? Are whacky rigged senkos pulled off frequently?

I have a LX7 that is just a year out of warranty (2.5 ice seasons?). It can no longer mark a jig in water under 5fow :(. I want to sell it and swap back to a vex or garmin ice bundle but I can’t bring myself to dump it on another sportsman. And you can’t stop into their place since Covid so the only option is to ship it in. Definitely disappointed. Main motivation to get it was my FIL and fishing buddy both got Marcums and didn’t play well with my OG FL-8.

I appreciate the responses. I definitely went in thinking there was a good chance it wasn’t going to make it but figured for the price I should try. I made this decision after a trip where i thought I had brought plenty of ah and got stuck unable to drill more holes – likely due to it being -10 to -20 out when i had only used them in warmer weather.

The only good piece to come out of this is that these batteries will still power a regular drill or other lower amp draw items. Maybe i’ll get lucky and they will honor a return – if not it will be my dedicated weed whacker and sawzall battery for the future.

B-Man – the first thing I would do is look over your W2s from last year and this year and look at the withholdings. Did you have any job changes? Withholdings are not where you claim 1 or 2 or 0 anymore you have to actually calculate out what you need to do.

But it would make a lot more sense if you noticed that you had a lot more withheld in 2020 than in 2021. Its definitely over complicated best of luck getting it straightened out.

Head unit = Echomap 93SV UHD
Brand = Norsk 20.8 14.8V
Type = Lithium Ion
Ah = 20.8

Run time estimate would be more than 12 hours but not sure how much. I haven’t gotten to fish enough this winter to fully drain it. Yesterday I ran it from 1-6pm and without any charging it is still at 14.7V. My longest run time has been from 8am-5pm on 100% brightness and it had no issues.

Probably would have went with an Amped or Dakota LiFeP04 battery but got this as part of a deal setting up my kit.

Sportsman’s rack sells wax worms at a solid price too. Now I just wish more places carried spikes!

I bought a set of 4 a couple of years ago and they have been great! I gave 2 as a gift and 2 I use myself. They come balanced and ready to fish! Definitely like how these ones fold up too!

I was able to locate some using the ammoseek website and ordering online. Not sure what you think about ordering online but I have struck out at Scheels and Fleet farm etc. for the past month. If you are ordering for next weekend I think I would make an order sooner than later though.

Thanks for all the responses BK.

I was under the assumption that after 2-4 years (i forget what the manual says) that you needed to replace the cartridge and the bobbin. Which is the reason that I didn’t just order 2 at a time when I replaced it the first time!

I will have to order an extra cartridge and bobbins then!

If you were on the river I think I would guess gar… I have seen them stacked suspended behind a wing dam kind of like that picture. Managed to catch one to confirm it too.

I guess I was just surprised as it was in a dry boat and in the garage and not stored below deck. I have never had an issue before. Love it and wear it every time im in the boat (especially if I’m alone!) but frustrating that it costs $20 every time it goes off or needs to be replaced.

Mine normally gets set on the captains chair or sits beside me in the vehicle. I often get halfway home before I realize I still have it on.

I like to chase catfish and walleyes on the river – I am getting better with the SI but I plain and simple just don’t get out enough. If you happen to have a good example of cats vs walleye on SI I think that would be helpful. I can usually find a lot of fish but I have a hard time telling more than this is a larger fish or this is a school of baitfish. I guess I have had some decent shots of sturgeon and paddlefish.

Is it safe to assume when you are specifically looking for fish you are running the 455 frequency and then running a slightly higher contrast to get those fish to pop a little bit more?? What is your preferred distance to look e.g. 60ft? I know this is a loaded question as graph size etc. might change that too.

Well we got out and hunted Thursday Friday and Saturday last weekend. Only one grouse to show for it but it was my first – and first upland bird of any kind actually.

We saw about 10 birds in 3 hours the first day – but spent quite a bit of time chasing the pointer who was new and overly excited to be in the woods. This would end up being true for most of our hunting. Second day we had rain and only hunted for a couple of hours and then Saturday we left the pup at home and that is the day I actually got the bird. We did have an old 3 legged Vishla with us that day but he was more on a walk in the woods than hunting.

I will say the 1 year old pointer did really well when he would stay close enough to hunt with but when he took off we kind of quit due to worry that he would just run off through the state forest. Overall it was a fun hunt and a new experience for me!

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I did save the Lazy ikes and poppers to put up on display – I have them on a shelf near my boat in the garage. I’ll try to grab a picture of that.

Anyone know what the strange shaped silver spoon is? That is not something I had seen before.

That big 3″ beetle spin is actually headed up north with me to Grand Rapids area this weekend and I will see if it can still catch fish!

I would check Craigslist in the cities you are close enough to drive to – still quite a few listings on there.

Awesome gesture Randy – hope you are able to fill the spot quickly. I can’t wait until my girls are old enough to join us in the woods. Hopefully they will have interest! I have always enjoyed listening to the stories from our first time hunters at deer camp.

Its easy to find on a computer I am guessing you are accessing from a mobile or tablet device?

Hit the menu button and you have to scroll all the way to the bottom.

Thanks for the reminder! I will definitely be using permethrin on my clothing. I had a BWCA trip a few years ago where I recommended my canoe partner to treat his clothes. He forgot (or neglected to) and I didn’t. One day we cleaned fish on a weedy shoreline and did some fishing there as well. I had 0 ticks that night and he pulled at least 20 off…

I’m headed up the weekend after this and this will be my first time grouse hunting! We have a number of spots picked out and hope to cover 7-12 miles a day for three days. We will be hunting Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’m just looking forward to the new scenery and we will be brining a new pointer up for his first hunt.

Good luck to those trying over opener!

Thanks for the replies – I did try toggling the transducers on and off manually through the menus so I don’t believe it was that. I also don’t know 100% for sure when it quit working because it interfered with my humminbird so I had been running it with sonar off for some time due to that too.

Fishlectronics seems like it would answer my question except they are not overly close and I would have to unscrew 5 panels on the boat to get at all the wires. I’m probably just going to cut it off at this point.

I’ve done both… in some situations there is not a fix to get away from using 2 anchors. I have also had good success using either a drift sock or a trolling bag. I don’t think you necessarily need a large bag to help hold you but it seems like if you let a little extra line out it tends to hold more steady.

A month ago I was fishing on the main channel on pool 4 and the flow was so low that even with a drift sock out I was getting blown back upstream with a light breeze. Only using 2 anchors kept me in 1 spot.

I use one for a 75h Yamaha… It didn’t have the traditional transom saver when I bought it and I didn’t like relying on the little metal clip that you flip over.

I would just call the marine dealer you are wanting to order from and they would be able to tell you which transom saver would work for your motor. I had ordered a MY Wedge originally but I needed a different type based on my motor.

I’ve had no issues in 2 years of use – mostly been on 40-80 mile trips.

Definitely a sacm – no way a $1k + graph is going out for that. Heck I still see used Helix 12 G2s getting a fair resale price.

I wouldn’t paypal unless it was to a person I know or a reputable business.

I’m still learning but I have been out 2 times in the last 2 weeks – once on pool 4 and once on 5a. We have gotten a few fish but it has definitely been slow. Last night me and a buddy were out with 4 lines running creek chubs, bullheads, shad and cut creek chubs. We ended up with 5 fish 8-930 and that was it. We fished 8pm-1230am. My observations were that there are shad literally everywhere. Running with the spotlight after dark they were jumping all over the place. Another challenge is that there is almost no flow. I used 2 anchors to keep the boat positioned as I would have drifted all over the place with the predominant wind blowing upstream. The fish we did catch came all on the cut baits including a flathead 34×20 (all others were channels). The other surprising thing for me was they were all caught in probably 5fow or less as the spot we wanted to start at was being fished by some crappie fisherman and we didn’t get to move into it until dark.