I cant believe some people still hadn’t heard of the fishsmart app until IDO used it. I’ve been using it for over 2 years now. Navionics is garbage! I’ve had my helix 7 for 2 years now too and i love it! It’ll be interesting to see how many Marcum fanboys switch to humminbird now that IDO is using them as well. The LX7’s and Vex’s are old as mold and outdated. If you take care of your stuff you don’t need anything to be “bulletproof”. I’m ready to move onto livescope. I hope the price point gets more manageable sooner than later!

Talk about a rhetorical question!!! Can’t beat a braided line to a SeaGuar leader using a double uni knot!

I feel everyones pain! Same thing happened on Lake Mendota in Wisconsin last year. The lake doesnt usually freeze over until January and last year it was a little later than usual, January 16th or so was when it locked up. Had about 4″ of solid ice on it and then 2′ of heavy wet snow. Even the polar vortex couldnt penetrate through all that snow insulating the lake. If there was a silver lining I think it helped the perch population…

I’d use Otter no matter if they are a sponsor or not because they are quite simply the best shack on the market period! Anyone who sells their Otter to pick up an Eskimo just because IDO is using them is just a fanboy! I’m not knocking Eskimo either… Otter is just better…

Yeah I was surprised too! I thought for sure that I would have to be doing a little modification. It honestly fits better than my camo canvas which was a little on the tight side.

Old shack

Attachments:

1. 

   20191120_174443.jpg
   

…

Attachments:

1. 

   20191120_182739.jpg
   

I can confirm the xt1200 fabric fits my old otter wild black camo sled (cottage). Super pumped!

Attachments:

1. 

   20191120_182803.jpg
   

Yeah ur right the dual layer on the 650 is better than the old school black ice camo. I just took a $75 shot in the dark and ordered the xt 1200 cottage canvas for a replacement on my otter wild camo. It says it was for the pro sleds and I have the wild sled but I hope it fits. After doing a little more research i found a bunch of sites that had slightly different sled and setup dimensions for the XT Cottage and Wild Cottage… It seems the wild cottage setup is 2 inches taller than the XT cottage (with the pro sled) but the wild sled is also 2″ taller taller than the pro sled so I assume that the framing poles are the same dimension and that the new canvas should be able to fit over it. FINGERS CROSSED!

The XT650 canvas is only thermal on the top though isn’t it? (says that on the otter website) I have the old black camo otter wild cottage with the thermal top and was looking to buy the xt1200 fully thermal replacement canvas but the dimensions for the xt cottage shacks were 54Lx77Dx63H… Meanwhile the old black camo otter wild cottage was 54Lx79Dx65H. Kinda sucks that the older otters were bigger than its successor! If it was the other way around id be ok with it being a little loose but I don’t want it to be too small. I also don’t want to buy the thermal top canvas even if it is only $75. Otter just wants me to go broke on the new x-overs apparently

I switched from a Jiffy Propane to the 40V and that cut 11lbs and it was unreal how much of a difference it made on my motivation to punch more holes. So I would say another 3lbs would be all the better!

Well there goes my idea!!! Although, I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t drain your battery, I’ve been wrong before. Virtually all digital screen flashers today become paper weights really fast without a good lithium battery. Also it sucks you would need a separate battery for every tip up/down hole. I’m not willing to spend $100 to try it out until I see some more reviews this season. I guess ill just have to invent a better, powerless, ice hole cover! lol

Just bought the strikemaster 40v this season and im very impressed so far. I was skeptical about electric for the longest time. Never tried trophy strike before but you definitely cant go wrong with the strikemaster!

I keep my back light at 5/10 pretty much all the time unless im hopping around outside the shack on a sunny day. For half the season last year i was using the stock battery and was getting roughly 8hrs of use. Midway through the season i upgraded to a 12v 10ah duracell SLA and was getting close to 12hrs of runtime. Now i just purchased a Dakota lithium 12v 10ah for this season and I think that will be all the juice I ever need. I plugged it in and the battery readout on the bird said 1083987% battery life lol. Not sure if thats normal but I wont complain unless it breaks. The Helix 7 is the best fish finder for the money imo. But now I want to save my pennies for panoptix.