Badbaggers SeaArk 1872 Modification & Restoration Project

TinBoats.net

Help Support TinBoats.net:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Hey thanks Lowe. I looked at various units and when comparing them for the price difference going with the HDS 12 just made sense. I thought the Garmin was big when I bought it lol and ya gotta have a compass as you well know.
 
Well just back from a run down to St. Marks and Shields Marina. I brought them 5 pages of type written instructions lol, yes I AM ANAL. Met with the owner who is a hands on guy and great to deal with. Went through it all from soup to nuts and they'll start on Sunday and be done during the week at some point. He took one look at the boat having seen it before and said "WOW"... then he looked at the rigging work and he's someone who knows what it takes and said
"You've got a LOT of time rigging this"... boy you ain't kidding. He told me that people just don't comprehend that it may take 40 hours to completely rig out a boat when they're buying a new boat and it's NOT cheap! Glad I did what I could and sure have learned a lot and saved a LOT of cash by doing it myself.
 
Badbagger said:
Well just back from a run down to St. Marks and Shields Marina. I brought them 5 pages of type written instructions lol, yes I AM ANAL. Met with the owner who is a hands on guy and great to deal with. Went through it all from soup to nuts and they'll start on Sunday and be done during the week at some point. He took one look at the boat having seen it before and said "WOW"... then he looked at the rigging work and he's someone who knows what it takes and said
"You've got a LOT of time rigging this"... boy you ain't kidding. He told me that people just don't comprehend that it may take 40 hours to completely rig out a boat when they're buying a new boat and it's NOT cheap! Glad I did what I could and sure have learned a lot and saved a LOT of cash by doing it myself.



Of course he said "WOW" =D> =D> =D>
 
Glad I did what I could and sure have learned a lot and saved a LOT of cash by doing it myself.[/quote]


You got that right, most of the guys that I know that rig boats for a living start at 25$ an hour......it adds up real quick.
 
Indeed, this is a pretty big marina and they pay their mechanics very well. I'd be the shop labor rate is $65+ per hour at the minimum.
Have a look, beautiful place: https://www.shieldsmarina.com/custompage3.asp?pg=marina
 
Badbagger said:
Indeed, this is a pretty big marina and they pay their mechanics very well. I'd be the shop labor rate is $65+ per hour at the minimum.
Have a look, beautiful place: https://www.shieldsmarina.com/custompage3.asp?pg=marina

Wow that is beautiful,
I want to drop a live shrimp on that point on an outgoing tide. :mrgreen:
 
Country Dave said:
Badbagger said:
Indeed, this is a pretty big marina and they pay their mechanics very well. I'd be the shop labor rate is $65+ per hour at the minimum.
Have a look, beautiful place: https://www.shieldsmarina.com/custompage3.asp?pg=marina

Wow that is beautiful,
I want to drop a live shrimp on that point on an outgoing tide. :mrgreen:
Dave, I am sure there is a big ole hardhead waiting for your shrimp....some day I will show you how to catch that snook. :mrgreen:
 
bigwave said:
Country Dave said:
Badbagger said:
Indeed, this is a pretty big marina and they pay their mechanics very well. I'd be the shop labor rate is $65+ per hour at the minimum.
Have a look, beautiful place: https://www.shieldsmarina.com/custompage3.asp?pg=marina

Wow that is beautiful,
I want to drop a live shrimp on that point on an outgoing tide. :mrgreen:
Dave, I am sure there is a big ole hardhead waiting for your shrimp....some day I will show you how to catch that snook. :mrgreen:


Big you’re too funny bro,
I will save all the cats for you brother. :LOL2: Hey were is that new avatar you mentioned with a reel snook………………………. :LOL2: :LOL2: :LOL2:
 
What is going to be the main use for the depth finder fanciness? I have only flats fished, we used the depth finder to catch baitfish. Lol
 
That's a LONG answer but I'll try to keep it simple. Here in N. Florida we also fish the flats in search of Speckled Trout, Redfish and also troll inshore for grouper. Skinny water just like deep water has shape and that includes the flats... shape as in bottom shape. It has holes, edges, slopes, coral, wrecks, mounds of rocks, crab pots and so on and so on. Shape pretty much means changes and change means bait as you'd referred to. When you have bait, you have fish.

A good example of the shape of the bottom can be seen when you're fishing the flats. Flats are basically large areas of shallow water – ranging from 5 feet deep, to 1 foot. Although we've caught fish in less than a foot of water, it's usually about the limit. If you put a 25 lb bigass redfish in 12 inches of water, he doesn't have to 'tail' to stick his back out of the water – it's out of the water all by itself even though his belly is scraping the bottom. Tailing is where you can see the tails of reds sticking up from the water surface.

The best way to fish the flats is to find holes and where Side Imaging will shine as it will "see out" 150' from each side of the boats current position. Down Imaging and traditional sonar is useless in 5' of water. Fish prefer shaped (un-flat) bottom conditions, even when they're feeding on the flats. That includes drops, holes, rocks, channels, oysters, patches of grass, something that changes the 'shape' of the bottom where they live. You will see fish in those holes - or near that structure - and you will find it much easier to see bait when it's on the flats near the holes. They hang out there most of the time.

Grass & more stuff....Grass grows on some flats and not on others; at some times of the year and not at others. A good bit of grasses grow on many areas of the flats here but not all and not all are the same and it grows in various depths.
you can easily find water that's six feet deep on average, and has a rug of grass two and three feet deep on the bottom. You'll also find grass that's only six inches tall growing in two feet of water that's just as productive as the deep and thick growth; it's all structure, food, and tidal movement when it comes down to it. Not all flats that produce fish are thick with grass; some with patches here and there and large areas of bare sand. In spots like that, you're more likely to find the fish near the patches and not in the large open areas. There are bigger fish lurking around, you know, and snook, tarpon and big *** reds aren't exactly stupid.

So in a nutshell being that fish are structure oriented, finding variation in structure is "the place to start". Lowrance & Simrad both have SI, DI and Structure Map which will allow you to produce your own structure maps of your fishing grounds. Structure mapping is basically the ability to overlay the side scanning or viewing imagery onto the units GPS map in real time.

Attached are some pics taken from an HDS 12 Touch that are actual size. You can clearly see the crushed scaffolding in the Side Imaging view as well as the Down Imaging and also in the 2D Sonar. There is a structure map image and you can control the transparency of the overlay of your structure map so that the contours etc. of your mapping - Navionics etc appear through the map. These can all be saved to your SD cards for review on any given day since they're recorded permanently.

I'm only scratching the surface of what these things can do but hope this explains my theory!
As for the Garmin GPS, I'm only using it for the GPS. It has the ability for a sounder but I've got the Lowrance for that.
 

Attachments

  • 360_sm1.jpg
    360_sm1.jpg
    238.1 KB
  • CrushedScaffold_zpse70139ab-1.png
    CrushedScaffold_zpse70139ab-1.png
    985.2 KB
  • structurescan_480.jpg
    structurescan_480.jpg
    130.9 KB
Well they should have hopefully started to rig today but I KNOW that the weekends are really busy, tick tock tick tock lmfao.
 
Hey you did a great job of explaining that and besides all that, maybe the most important thing of all is “it’s cool” :mrgreen:

No seriously you pretty much said it all. When I’m up skinny “and that’s most of the time” we look for the sand holes, the reds trout and alike love to lay in them and ambush the bait as the swim over. Funny thing is the potholes may only be a foot or two deeper but the water temp can be as much as 4 or 5 degrees warmer and that’s another factor that attracts them.
 
Country Dave said:
Hey you did a great job of explaining that and besides all that, maybe the most important thing of all is “it’s cool” :mrgreen:
No seriously you pretty much said it all. When I’m up skinny “and that’s most of the time” we look for the sand holes, the reds trout and alike love to lay in them and ambush the bait as the swim over. Funny thing is the potholes may only be a foot or two deeper but the water temp can be as much as 4 or 5 degrees warmer and that’s another factor that attracts them.
+2...I have the Humminbird version which is called Side Imaging (si). While you can spot fish and bait balls, off either side, these units really shine when locating structure. When fishing the canals around here, I can see stuff lurking under docks....might be a mullet, might not. Just have to throw something in there to see what happens. The 10"screen helps these old eyes too. :)
 

Latest posts

Top