Technology

New LiFePo4 batteries in the Ranger

For the last 20 years technology has really influenced the fishing world.  In my collection of early 1980's In-fisherman magazines feature articles and ad's that seem prehistoric with flashers, Color C Lector, temperature probes, it's almost funny.  Over the years most of these devices were part of my arsenal as in the early 80's I built my first Heathkit flasher, followed up by a Humminbird Super 60, then their Super 30 model.  When the first paper graphs came out the first one on my boat was a King 1060, amazing detail.  This was replaced with a state of the art Lowrance X15B, a 4 inch paper graph that I still have remnants of some of the fish I graphed on Lake Mille Lacs.  I started working with a company called Genetron that made highly sophisticated video (CRT tube) graphs, adapted from the pacific northwest, even in the embedded software manual, it talked about it's ability to sense the air bladder of halibut.  I simply traded manufactured parts for new units and still have one on my shelf.  Even though there were LCD units out there, they paled in comparison to the detail shown on the Genetron's.  Eventually the color LCD technologies caught up with the resolution of video and with current microprocessor and memory capability the graphs today are quite sophisticated, even at the small screen level.  Well all this takes power and even with the largest AGM style batteries, it would often happen that the battery would not provide enough power and then have enough left to start my motor.  Luckily the Ranger has a battery switch in it to allow one to turn the power off and switch in a trolling motor battery giving enough power to essential jump the dead battery and start the outboard.  Well today's technology provides at least solution for this in the form of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries.  Like modern devices that have lithium ion batteries, unlike lead acid type batteries such as my AGM's, they should only be discharged to 40% or it will significantly affect the battery life, their 100AH rating is more like 60.  Also AH (Amp Hour) ratings are based on a 20 hour load, so the 100 AH is based on a 5 amp load.  Well if you take all the electronics in the boat they pull around 8 amps, which effectively drops the AH reading to about 60 - 65 so the real amount of power available is maybe 35AH before you cause any premature damage to the battery.  Li FePo4 batteries however can be discharge to 10% without damage and whether it be 5 amps of 10 amps, it doesn't degrade the power ratings of the battery.  Deciding to pull the trigger on replacing all of my batteries, the cost is higher but the benefits will outweigh those costs in the long run as these batteries will last the rest of my life.  The bonus is the LiFePo4 batteries are about 50% lighter and have an 8 year warranty.  In one single move I lost 150# out of the boat, which is significant.  As well I am not worried anymore about running out of power.  In addition each battery has a built in Bluetooth communications path to a downloadable app on my phone.  It's easy to simply see each batteries condition, state of charge, and anything related to the battery.  They received their first test on Lake Erie and were very effective.  The secret is their built in Battery Management System (BMS) which allows the battery to look like a standard battery to everything that is hooked to it.  I can use my existing onboard Minnkota MK460PC charger to charge them, no need for anything special.  The real test will be in two weeks when our 48th annual Leech Lake Opener takes place.

Lowrance HDS 7

This week I helped my friend Adam Mayerich install his Lowrance HDS7 into the dash of a new to him Ranger 1850 Reata, a nice boat.  He bought it from a fellow Team Walleye guy but there was a lot to do so I decided to help.  Last week I gave him a great deal on my good but not new Interstate Series 31 AGM's that I took out of my boat.  They are definitely better than what he had in it as they were pretty well done for.  We also finished our strategy on onboard chargers and installed them.   Installing the HDS7 was interesting for sure as there was an HDS5 in the dash and there was barely room for the 7.  Deciding to make a spacer so the unit would sit into the dash better, using a 1/4 inch ABS sheet, we cut out the appropriate spacer then used it to mark the dash, the cutting began.  Using a Dremel tool we were able to make the cut large enough to allow the depthfinder to set almost flush with the dash.  There were some concerns about cutting too much from the bottom however after Adam ran to the hardware store to get 1 1/2 inch #6 stainless steel screws it came together pretty good.  The vinyl on the dash that was loose tightened right up. The gap in the bottom of the dash became solid once secured by the depthfinder.  It looked pretty good. 

PENN 310GT2LC

One thing that I have been trying to do is replace the line counter reel that got stepped on in the boat when we were out on Erie.  The line counter broke off..  Having 2 set ups, these reels are used for lead line trolling.  The reel was a PENN 310GT2LC, one that my luck is unavailable these days.  The nice thing about this reel is that 1 complete spool of Suffix 832 lead line fits perfectly (all 10 Colors) on the reel, which is nice when having another guy in the boat, I can just tell him how much line and what color as they are both the same.  I know, you could simply just user the line counter but it is more illustrative with the exact setups.  So the manual says line capacity is 325 yards of 15# mono.  I picked up their new model that holds 320 yards of 15# mono yet it will only fit 8 colors.  I can make it work but it bothers me.  Having spook with PENN's Service department, they told me to send it in and they would take a look at it.  With a little luck they can fix it as the reel is just like new.  I guess time will tell, but it sure would be nice to be able to have matching reels again on my lead line setups.  I should know in a couple of weeks.  Leech Lake fishing opener is 2 weeks away and there is alot to do yet.  Clean the boat,  extract the carpeting, make sure all the live bait, jig, crankbaits for Leech are in the boat.  It's a busy couple of weeks for sure.

Quick Trip to Lake John

Satellite view of Lake John

Lake John is a small lake just west of Annandale, MN.  In the past 40 years it's been one of my favorite lakes to just go fishing for the afternoon.  Mark Taylor's brother in law, Tim Guzek introduced us to the lake back in the early 1980's, apparently he had a connection somewhere.  It's always been a good panfish and largemouth bass lake, they even stock walleyes however one has never graced the end of my hook.  The lake runs north and south with a long narrow bay extending from the northwest corner.  The water is fairly clear but has a lot of weeds in it these days.  Back in the mid 80's we made a cheap plywood fishing shack and pulled it out to the lake on a snowmobile trailer.  With a small wood stove it was pretty nice for a bunch of guys who couldn't afford much.  We'd light a fire then fish the evening bite with crappies our main target, and we'd always come home with a few.  In this part of Minnesota one has to have your ice shack off the lake by February 28th.   This was our second year of having the shack and not being too smart, there was a lot of snow on the ice which pushed the ice down.  The last time we fished after re-drilling the holes, the water came up over the floor by about 4 inches and subsequently froze.  Having come out the week before we had to have it off the ice to start the process of removing it, there was no way with 4 inches of frozen ice over the floor.  It was a plain untreated floor as well so the ice was very much adhered to wood.  Plan B.....go into town and get a 40# bag of water softener salt.  Returning we spread the entire bag across the floor and headed home to come out the following weekend to finish the job.  Upon returning we were pleasantly surprised the salt did exactly what we predicted, the floor was bare, not a bit of ice was on it.  The next job was to lift the house off the ice and load it on our trailer.  In our arsenal was a couple of long ice chisels as well as pry bars but to no avail, the bottom of the house was froze to the surface yet.  It was critical that we have it removed that weekend as the DNR fine was pretty hefty.  A guy walked by with a hunting rifle and suggested he could remove the house, simply shoot through the floor and the impact would crack the ice and all would be good.  Back into town to get a box of 30-06 shells.  Returning he began to shoot the bullets through the floor, all 20 of them.  It was pretty loud but seemed like a good idea as on the edges you could see the ice shatter.  With all 20 shells shot into the floor we again tried to pry the house off the ice but it still held tight.  With daylight fading fast, we decided it just wasn't worth messing with anymore and tore the shack apart, wall by wall.  We did get the floor detached from the 2 x 4's that were stuck in the ice and pried what 2 x 4's we could but I an sure we left a few reminders of our presence there, of course it was a good spot so those left over boards would be perfect for marking our spot for next year!  Our fish shack was now on layers stacked on the snowmobile trailer, we headed up the road and stopped at a friends house, he had a couple of acres.  He let us unload the heap of wood which eventually he ended up burning.  Portable shacks were just coming into play so that ended our adventure into what turned out to be our permanent ice fishing shack.  

HDS 12 Live

My neighbor Tom Olson asked me to go with him in his boat which was nice as I  didn't have to do anything.  We did catch a few bass on a wacky worm set up which was one of the original intents for going to Lake John, try for some bass.  Unfortunately it was quite windy, coming out of the west as 15 - 20 mph.  our plan was to fish the edges of the long east to west bay where the wind would push us along the shore.  Within 5 minutes there was a small bass on my line.  Maybe 13 inches, not enough to take a picture.  A few more were caught before Tom caught this really funky looking bass.  He threw it back before I had time to snap a picture so no proof of our limited success.  Drifting the north side and casting for crappies, one finally hit my jig, maybe 9 inches, good enough to keep but it would be hard to work that area well so it went back.  It was just too windy to fish comfortably so we headed back to the landing.  It was still nice to fish a lake that I had not been to since 2015. 

Last fall I traded with Bill my HDS 12 Carbon for his HDS 12 Live, a newer unit.  It has some interesting features you can use like Live Sight for looking forward for fish.  Garmin has really set the industry ablaze with it's Panoptics system which people rave about for ice fishing.  Lowrance has some catching up to do however if and when they do I will be ready.  It's still a process to get everything changed over and working as their a little changes done every time they change models as well they have software upgrades to fix issues that were missed.  It's an easy process, simply download the update to your computer then transfer it to a miniSD card, insert the card and through the menu system find the upgrade then install it.  Admittedly it's nice to have everything talking to each other and working but sometimes it would just be nice not having to worry about it, like the good old days!  Oh well.  Yesterday Bruce Wiley flew me to Siren, Wisconsin's Burnett County Airport.  There we filled the plane up with their cheaper 100 octane low lead airplane fuel, punched to code in for the main airport building where we signed out the courtesy car and headed to Burnett County Coop to have lunch, buy some of their delicious cheese, and pick up some spotted cow beer for the neighbors.  That is always a fun couple of hours for sure. This new format is going to be the death of me!!!!!!

One Week And Counting

HDS Carbon 12"

Well we are down to the final countdown.  The Okuma Coldwater 350 reel came in on Monday but not before a trip to Cabela's this weekend to use some points and find a nice matching rod to create a effective combo.  Got the reel loaded with my favorite line, P-Line CX, which tends to be one diameter less than most mono's so 12 pound test is about the same diameter as standard 10 pound test which has an effect on both the amount of line one can put on the reel as well.  In addition most trolling depth charts that give you the depth a lure will run vs the amount of line you have to let out is based on 10 pound diameter Trilene XL so the charts will be pretty accurate.  This will come in real handy when we eventually get to fish Lake Erie or do some long line trolling on Mille Lacs.  Admittedly it is pretty slick setup and I am anxious to try it next weekend.  It's getting harder to get all the things done that one needs to and luckily I can peck away at it an hour at a time.  Doing my usual horse trading with my friend, I have just got done reinstalling my depth finders in my boat before upgrading all of the software.  This takes alot of time as the entire system is networked together with either ethernet cables or via the NMEA 2000 network.  Basically I have 3 GPS/Sonar units in the boat and they are all interconnected.  This means that everything can be controlled from each unit provided they are talking to each other.  One of the issues is that it's been a year since these were last done and try to remember how it goes can be a real challenge.  Not to mention the new software upgrades have changed the menus as well as other subtle changes.  After getting everything installed, updated, connected, it was time to try and see if it all works.  Plugged my Ipod into the audio inputs and nothing.  Doing a network check it showed nothing was networked in.  Now what!?!?!?!   Well after you upgrade the software one should go into the network menu and refresh everything.  After doing that still nothing and the though was I guess I know what I am doing this weekend.  It took about 10 minutes but all of a sudden everything showed up that was networked in to my relief.  The music started to play, I sighed a sigh of relief!  Interesting conversation I had with a friend of mine's son, David Grant.  Letting him use my FL28 for a lake trout ice fishing trip to Canada about a month ago, he brought it back.  It was stupid but he commented why I just don't use my phone for the music.....Well, I don't want to use up all the memory...........which he grabs my phone and showed me where to add a high capacity microSD card for more memory.  Dang kids anyway!!  Ordering a 256gb microSD card, it's next on the list of things to learn and do.

Trapline Gopher Traps are Very Effective

Our guy did a great job on Team Walleye's hat's this year, they look fabulous.  The goal this weekend is to get the entire yard fertilized as it is supposed to rain on Sunday.  As well the outboard motors on the boat need to be started, I will probably simply use earmuffs around the water intakes and start them in the driveway.  That should work OK.  Besides spring being the time for fishing opener, it is also time for pocket gophers to be on the move.  Those pesky animals tend to move out of their winter hibernating areas to look for new ground.  You can easily tell where they are because in their process of making tunnels they create these rather large mounds of dirt on the surface.  Back home the farmers hated them because when mowing hay the hay sickle would hit those mounds and dull the cutting blades.  When I was you I used to get $0.50 a gopher from the farmer and another $0.50 from the county as there was a bounty on pocket gophers.  Back where the honeybees are there were a number of new mounds.  Digging my traps out it was time to take action while they are still active.  The Trapline style of traps has been my favorite method as if I say so myself, I am pretty good at this.  The process is to find a fresh mound, find the plugged hole and using a spade dig down till you find the main tunnel.  These traps fit perfectly in the tunnel and I usually put one into each hole, 2 per set.  The final nail in the coffin is to put some peanut butter on a piece of cardboard between the traps then cover the hole with something that keeps the light out.  The gophers smell the bait and being almost blind they walk right into the trap!  After work yesterday I checked the set and to my surprise I had one in each trap, I don't recall ever getting a double.  Thinking maybe of starting my own local Pocket Gopher trapping service, $5.00 a gopher....cash!  Oh well, I'll bet last fall I got over 10 of them on the property.  We'll see.

Inbetween

Lowrance HDS 9, Gen 3

We are in the "Inbetween" time that begs you to get some things done around the house before everything starts opening up in April.  The garden needs to be cleaned up, the apple trees need pruning, the accumulation of the winter junk around the yard needs to be picked up. it's a perfect time to start working on the boat as the temperatures are not that bad out.  As well, ice fishing season is done and it's time to put all of that stuff away in it's proper place and get my Salem wheel house cleaned up and ready for storage.  Mark Mayerich and I are tasked to get our Team Walleye hats on order so we have them in time for the May 13 Minnesota Fishing opener, I guess there is no end to the list.  One of the nice things is that we did not have much snow this year so the ground isn't so sloppy.  I hate to take the snowblower off the lawn tractor quite yet, I remember a few 12 inch April snowfalls but the long term forecast looks pretty good.  Having worked my deal with the electronics on my boat I successfully got my old Lowrance HDS9, Gen 3 installed in Bruce's boat, a nice upgrade from his older HDS7, Gen 2 that I fixed him up with a few years ago.  Bruce and I fish Lac Seul quite a bit and I enjoy helping him to upgrade his systems for a more enjoyable experience.  The map chips of Lac Seul and the integration of his trolling motor to the depth finder really makes for a safer trip as one has a better reference for the routes and hazards of the lake.  In addition, the Gen 3's latest upgrade allows one to make your own maps of the lake via the Navionics Chip and it's SonarChart Live feature. This will be really nice for making your own 1 foot contour maps of our favorite fishing areas on Lac Seul.

Panther Martin Electro-steer with Remote

Tonight I am heading to the Northwest Sportshow to get a number of things taken care of.  Frankie's Marine is my boat dealer and I need to see him about getting my rig in to fix the kicker motor starting issues and to schedule a Bimini top installation.   Also my 9.8 hp kicker motor is tied to my big motor for steering and it can be difficult to steer it without the big motor turned on.  The big motor has power steering to make it easier to turn the wheel, and if you simply turn the key on, it will engage the power steering however because the ECM (Electronic Control Module) is water cooled, if you don't have the motor running and pumping water, it can overheat the ECM and burn it out.  Instead I am going to do is have installed a Panther Martin Electro-Steering device on the boat with a remote control so I can steer my kicker a lot easier.  I really like to troll crankbaits and up to this time it's been difficult at best as my 250HP runs at 3mph and my kicker runs OK but it is awfully hard to steer.  Many guys on the forums state that one should steer with your front trolling motor but I've tried that with little success unless you have a big radius to turn, it's pretty slow to react.  As stated in previous posts I head to Naples to Grouper fish on Sunday, which should be fun.  Hopefully I bring some fish home and now that I've caught a 200 pounder in December, I don't really need to do that again!

A Week Off

Ardent Tournament APEX Reel

Last week's trip to Anaheim was long and really didn't do my weekend well for fishing.  I did get a few things done around the house however no fishing.  One of the things I have been dealing with is helping my friend Mike Grant's son David, on getting ready for the upcoming fishing season, one where he has joined the High School Fishing League and was looking for advice on rods and reels.  I have been talking to him a lot lately and been pushing his need to get a real man's casting rod and reel for pitching those worms and heavy plugs for bass.  Besides they also make a great walleye trolling rig that tends not to tire one out so fast.  He has already bought a spinning outfit yet I have been pushing him  hard to join the ranks of the professionals and be a real fisherman so I checked out my collection to see what I had extra.  Sure enough, I had one of these laying around that I picked up on a fabulous sale a few years back.  It's really a pretty good reel and matched up with a 6"6" medium heavy fast tipped graphite rod, this should last him a lifetime.  Now the only issue is me teaching him the nuances of setting the right tension for the lure, the right spool brake needed in combination with his ability to "thumb" the spool when casting.  This takes practice as lighter baits or lighter line can be problematic!  I know, as there have been many a reel that had to have the line cut off and replaced. Casting a reel like this can be easy with the right line, lure, rod, settings, and feel yet if one of those isn't exactly in the plan, here comes the bird's nest. These newer reels really help by adding sophisticated centrifugal brakes to help slow everything down in a logical matter yet about the minute you get cocky, away goes the spool and one starts over again.  Bottom line is once a guy get's the hang of it, it becomes second nature and under the right conditions, you can look like a pro! I use these for casting heavier rattling crankbaits on the river for Smallies and heavy plastics for largemouth.  As stated earlier, they work perfect for long line trolling walleyes with shad raps or fishing catfish on the bottom in the River.  I already have about 6 of these rigs so it will be good to see this reel get some real workout!

Sonar Chart Live Function for Lowrance HDS Units

There has been some interesting events that have happened this week.  One of the more exciting things was the much anticipated software release of the Lowrance operating system, version 4.5. These are applicable to my HDS Gen 3 units that are currently in my boat and really adds some great features.  The one I am looking forward to is the Navionic's SonarChart Live, which allows the ability to make real life depth maps of a specific areas under your boat.  Like the picture to the right, one can see the contour lines being drawn as the boat goes over a specific area. This function should be very useful when I go to Canada, especially some of the points that I like to fish, it will be interesting to look at the areas that we fish and try to look for other like areas.  It would also be nice for mapping the River for smallies.  There were some other interesting updates like a lot of them in the past, they enhance some of the features shown on the screen.  There is a lot of work to do before one get's proficient at running this new software however one has to start somewhere. Apparently Lowrance have improved their StructureScan 3D however I have not tried very hard to learn how to use it, time always seems too short to spend time on the water learning a systems verses time fishing.  It is probably a useful tool and this year I am going to try to understand it more.  Maybe this weekend I can get out and try to catch some panfish, something I haven't done yet this year.  Next Friday is the Perch extravaganza which should be the last wheel house event of the year.