Make my life easier

[Destroyer]

(RW, Willy, CaptP and Lumber, this is a great one for the Shrewsbury River)

Sorry, no pics of this, but something I do for bait for the spring Flounder run is make my own chum logs. Before you could buy package goods in bars in NJ you had to buy beer in a take out container. The container was a round can made of white cardboard with a lid that fit over the top and was one quart size. A lot of food places still use the half quart size for hot take out soup. Most bars still have them available, as well as chinese food places (rice) and lots of other places (soup). The trick is to find a source for them. (There's a place not far from me in my town that actually makes them, so that's where I get mine.) Once you do you can make your own chum logs. I cook rice, mix it with mackrel or blue fish ground up in my Grandmothers old hand meat grinder, add some cat food and niblets corn. Mix the whole mess up and pack it into those paper cans and put them in the freezer over the winter.

Come springtime, the water warms a little and the flounder wake up and come up out of the mud in the rivers where they were burried during the winter. You take one of those chum logs, peel the paper off the hard frozen log and put it in a chum pot you hang over the side of your boat. The beauty is that the chum log is exactly the same size as your standard chum pot, so it just fits in nicely while frozen without a lot of mess getting all over your hands or the boat. It will take several hours for the really cold river water to thaw out the log, and while it's doing that the natural rocking of the boat on the water is shaking tiny little pieces off the main frozen body and making a beautiful chum slick that the flounder follow right up to your baited hook(s). It's just a little thing, but it saves tons of time and cleanup and gives you more time for fishing.

[tsubaki]

reels engine support for trailering.
http://www.wellcraftv20.com/communit...ad.php?t=17155

[tsubaki]

Stinks destinker, I mean bidet.
http://www.wellcraftv20.com/communit...ad.php?t=17199

[reelapeelin]

Originally Posted by tsubaki

reels engine support for trailering.
http://www.wellcraftv20.com/communit...ad.php?t=17155

Glad you can use this, tsubaki...hope it works for lotta folks...PVC was mentioned for this, but I doubt it'll last long...

Easy to make and install...you know what they say...from simple minds come simple products!!...

[jeffmo]

this one isn't new but it's worth a repost.when i perch fish on Lake Erie,I sometimes have to try several spots before we get onto the fish which means setting and retreiving the anchor each time(too poor for a windlass!!!)Since it seems like I'm always the only one on board who is willing or able to crawl up onto the bow,this ladder setup makes doing it very easy.

http://www.wellcraftv20.com/communit...ad.php?t=15367

Another thing that helps with anchoring and knowing how much rope I have out is simply marking the anchor rope.from the end of the rope at the anchor chain i used a big black permanant marker and made a wide mark on the rope every 10 feet and put a red one at the 50 foot mark.

Hull cleaning after the boat has been docked for a couple of weeks on Erie use to be a very tough job until a friend who has been fishing Erie for many years gave me this tip.mix up a solution of "The Works" toilet bowl cleaner and Hydrogen Peroxide at a 50/50 mixture and put it in a spray bottle.spray it on the scumline,then use a heavy towel to scrub the scum off.it makes the job VERY easy.I was told by my friend to try it on a spot that isn't very visible just to make sure that it wouldn't react with the finish first.I did and have had no problems at all.this really does make the job very easy.this year was the first i fished in the water where the green algae bloom was thick and that stuff covered my hull but this solution took it right off!

My anchor rope storage container is simply a cleaned out 6 gallon plastic syrup bucket that i drilled holes in the bottom of to allow the water to drain out of. the rope coils up into it very easily and dries fairly fast in it.

[tsubaki]

http://www.wellcraftv20.com/communit...ad.php?t=17314