Hi Lake Link friends, I appreciate the suggestions. In some of my fishing situations mostly early spring and from late September until I quit open water fishing, last year nov. 6th, a bow mount with spot lock would work well. I spend quite a bit of time slip bobber fishing and want to have the boat anchored with the waves hitting the boat broadside. With one or two people in the boat having the bow into the wind would be OK at best, most of my guide trips are three and me. Anyone who has fished with me in the summer knows I like to have as many rods in the water as I can. Spot lock is not ideal for how I fish. Another big factor is doing shore lunches, a bow mount motor is very cumbersome for customers to get out on an island for lunch. The boat must be nosed into shore, sometimes rather abruptly, I had an 8' keel guard installed for this purpose. I use an 80 lb. thrust Minkota vantage (transom mount). I like it a lot. If I were to by a bow mount with spot lock for spring and fall, I would look at what the Mercury marine engineers came up with, for their motorguide, before I made a decision.
Not leaving much room for a fishing report.
The fishing this week has been fantastic, I won't often spout numbers but in the last 6 days have cleaned 156 fish for customers, mostly perch and walleyes also bluegills, pike, smallmouth, and even largemouth ( I'll do a separate report on these critters).
Fitting in with the above conversation, today was one of my favorite fishing conditions of the year. We have a short summer up here, not sure what the temp got up to low 80's? The wind was 20mph the wind and hot sun felt good. I asked my customers, Doug and Roger, if they were adverse to the waves, with a favorable answer we headed out to the big water side of the TFF. There was a nice 2-3' slip bobber chop. We started out fishing smallmouths for the first half of the day, 6-8' humps with stumps, hard bottom, counted 20. In the afternoon we did the best on walleyes in 10', suddle humps with wood and firm bottom, leeches and crawlers. I have shown a lot of customers how to use a dead stick, a lot of our sm came on our two deadsticks with big leeches.
Today, in the afternoon ( when conditions were prime) the anchors pulled out a couple times when we had less the 100' ft. out, I dropped a buoy and put the anchors out 130-140' south of the target. Navy anchors and a lot of rope were how we put walleyes in the boat today. Could it have been done another way? maybe, you have to do what you enjoy and what works for you. How many boats did we see on the big water side today, on a Saturday? not many.
Thanks for reading my reports.
