TubeBabe's New Motor

[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]TubeBabe and I originally planned to hit Knight Hollow on Starvation on Thursday. Figured that would be long enough after the holiday hammering and the weather front to generate decent fishing potential. But...a fellow BFTer begged me to change it to Tuesday. He had never fished Starvation and just hadda do it on Tuesday. Made plans, loaded the car on Monday...and then he bailed out of the trip. But...we went anyway. Shoulda stuck with plan A. Maybe some day I will learn to rely on my plans and not change to accomodate somebody else.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Calm and clear when we launched at 7 AM. TubeBabe was first launched, with her newly registered trolling motor on her tube. I launched shortly afterward and we were enjoying the clear, calm morning. 53 degree air temp and 65 water temp. Looking good.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Took some searching before I finally found a few fish on sonar in 26 feet of water. Dinkster walleyes. Ten and eleven inchers. Got several as I moved around looking for bigger fish. No perch. Finally got into some 13 to 15 inch walleyes in about 18 feet of water. Got a few more under-footers too.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]TubeBabe scored some dink walleyes too and finally got a couple of teen inchers for the fillet board. We both caught a couple of small smallmouth. Feisty little buggers. No trout caught today but when the lake went flat calm there were rainbows all over the surface slurping up buggy remnants from the night before. A bubble and fly might have got some attention.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Caught one ten inch perch and had several rattle rattle inquiries that I think were perch. But no schools or concentrations of toad perch.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]When the lake went calm the walleye shut down too. I searched all depths up to about 35 feet without any more hits. Then I came up with a brilliant idea. Over the walkie talkie I suggested to TubeBabe that if we could get a light breeze to riffle the water that the fish might start hitting again. Like magic, a breeze began sweeping over the lake. The surface rippled...then turned quickly to small whitecaps. HEY!...Too much of a good thing.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]By shortly after ten the "breeze" was too strong for us to hold with our tubes and we missed several bites because we lost "touch" with our lures. My policy is that once I can't maintain "finesse" I am done. So, I powered in to shore and wrestled my tube through the chop and the rocks to dry ground. Then I waded out to assist TubeBabe, who had never experienced setting up and taking down a motor on a float tube. Kinda tricky the first time.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]As we finished getting our gear in the vehicle the wind picked up even more. Didn't look like much chance of sticking around and getting in some more fishing later. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]TubeBabe was glad just to avoid the skunk. She got enough to make her happy with her new toy. [/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]I probably caught about a dozen walleyes...of which only about a half dozen were worthy of the fillet knife. Still, better than some trips. But four hours of driving for three hours of fishing....DOES NOT COMPUTE.[/#0000ff]
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[wagdog]

I'm going to cave one of these days and give in to peer pressure. The tube/trolling motor setup sure is nice. Do yall keep the smallmouth to eat out of there? Glad to see you still managed some fillet knife participants!
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[Bassassin714]

Glad to see you and tubebabe got out regardless of the rug bein pulled out from underneath you guys. Seems like a huge commitment, at least there was no skunk in the air. Whats the trick to haulin all that gear? The more creature comforts I add for the water the less manageable on land. I've been contemplating on building a cart of some sort but just adds another 5 pounds of PVC to my haul.[crazy]
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[idahoron]

Man that water looked choppy. Good day tough. Ron
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[idahopanfish]

Isn't it nice to have power when you need it[] Yeah I understand the long drive for a short day of fishin. As they say it makes the good days feel better[]
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[TubeDude]

"Do yall keep the smallmouth to eat out of there?"

[cool][#0000ff]On a slow day (like yesterday) we will keep a couple of the smaller ones...under 12". There are no official slot limits on Starvation but we release the larger fish. The lake is actually overrun with "rat" smallies so removing a few only helps the food chain. They dine heavily on crawdads and the flesh is great eating.[/#0000ff]
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[TubeDude]

[quote Bassassin714]Glad to see you and tubebabe got out regardless of the rug bein pulled out from underneath you guys. Seems like a huge commitment, at least there was no skunk in the air. Whats the trick to haulin all that gear? The more creature comforts I add for the water the less manageable on land. I've been contemplating on building a cart of some sort but just adds another 5 pounds of PVC to my haul.[crazy][/quote]

[cool][#0000ff]Our fishing vehicle is a GMC Jimmy. With the back seats folded down there is a surprising amount of cargo space. It easily holds both tubes (deflated), motors, batteries, frames and all of the other gear we need...with some clearance to enable me to see out the back.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Generally we try to find either a ramp or a spot where we can drive up to the water, unload and set up our tubes. But we also have a few spots that require portaging our gear a ways to our chosen launch spot. For that I have made a couple of different designs of "tube carts".[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Here is a link to a past post [url "http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=453725;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;page=unread#unread"]CHOPPER CART[/url] and some pics of a PVC version using the wheels from a golf cart.[/#0000ff]
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[peter805]

Great report TD !
Hey, 3 hours of fishing is better then NO hours []. Now
drive for 4 hours and fish only 3 hours kinda sucks but
at least your lady got to try out the motor.

Peter
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[TubeBabe]

This newest add-on opens up a whole new angle to my fishing world! While I propelled myself most of the trip, it was fun being able to move from one spot to another quickly and it definitely helped while trying to get back to shore in the wind ... although without the motors, I don't think we would have stayed out as long as we did. Love it!
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[wagdog]

Dang it! Yet another reason for me to hit up Starvation. I can't convince work to let me go yet.

As much as I hate to admit it, I've never caught a true smallmouth. I've caught plenty of largies and spotted/guadalupe bass in the 12 and under range. Those are delicious but they aren't a bronzeback. I would be happy to remove a few of those "rats" and release them into the grease. Especially since they have a diet of crawdads.

I have fished Texas waters that had plenty of crawdads. The bass out of there feasted on them quite a bit and the resulting flesh was fried candy.
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