Round 1

[AvgJoe]

I was lucky to be invited to fish with Esad this morning on a shakedown trip of sorts.

You see, Esad managed to get a screaming good deal on a nice boat with very low hours about a year ago. Since then he has chopped parts out and moved seats around plus added: mast, boards, grill, custom hinged lure holder, rocket launcher, 2 more down riggers, troll control, heater, fish hawk, rear curtain w door (self sewn),and the crown jewel.... cable autopilot w remote. Everything installed or built himself, labor costs saved are reinvested as new gear.

We headed out of Converse early into more wind than preferred and after motoring to the grounds spent the first hour fighting wind. Things laid down by 8am and the bite was on until 12pm when it went totally dead. Trolled the abyss to new water and started picking up fish again.
Breakfast was nice hot burritos and lunch was juicy ribeye's which were interrupted by a laker as soon as we sat to eat.

It was a board and stick program with 2 colors of lead. One single rainbow trout rapala (size F7ish) took 75% of the fish and a proper beating. Other sticks and lures were hit, but that was the lure of the day and of course the only one of that size and color we had. Same size in brook trout was second best. We ended the day with 16 landed, 6 dropped, and a handful of hits with nobody home. Best Salmon was 3.5lbs, and best laker was 7lbs.

Oh ya, and everything on the boat worked perfectly!

Round 2 with Reelax and crew tomorrow, hope to see you out there!

Joe

[AvgJoe]

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[Reelax]

Wow what a shakedown. Esad has done an amazing job in one season out fitting that boat like a trollers dream. It took me 6 seasons to install all those bells and whistles in Reelax I still haven’t gotten to installing my rocket launcher that is in the box still.

Looking forward to round 2 in about 6 hrs:)

Fish on!

[Gecha (Gerry)]

That's a great shakedown on a very well equipped vessel.
This looks promising for the start of the spring season.
Thanks for sharing, nice pics.