I just posted the first tide and current charts for 2009.  I will typically post weekly updates on the Tide & Current page for the weeekend days and any weekdays that I will have the luxury of fishing.

If you need a chart for a specific day feel free to e-mail me and I will try my best to get it uploaded in a timely fashion.

I saw a few searches lately for the Shurhold Buffer.  I guess a bunch of you saw it a while back on ShipShape TV.  It is finally listed on Shurhold’s web site but is only available for pre-order and should be shipping in the next few weeks.  It looks to be a decent unit at a lower price point than professional, random orbit buffers.  According to the ShurHold web site it retails for $149.98 so I would imagine that the street price would be anywhere between $100 and $129.  I was hoping it would be released prior to my spring launch as I am in the market for a new buffer but I guess I will have to wait till my mid season haul out, painting, zincs and cleaning in June.

You can sign up to Pre-Order and be notified when the buffer is ready for shipment, have a unit reserved for you and receive a free bottle of Pro-Polish.

We used Pro-Polish for the first time last year and were extremely pleased with the product.  Diesel soot easily washed off of Mark and Tommy’s boats after an offshore trip and the finish held up all season long on our boats and made cleanup very easy on my boat as well as the others that used.  I highly recommend this polish, the best thing about it was how easy it went on and off in 35-40 degree weather.  All of us usually go in the water in February/March and it has been a difficult procedure of polishing our boats in cold temperatures until we discovered Pro-Polish.

I just finished updating all the old posts.  All the content from my old blog is now here and searchable.  I still have to finish, more like start importing all the old pictures and inserting them into the corresponding posts but at least the import stuff is here.

I have been an XM subscriber for many years. It seems since the merger the service has gone down hill and fast. I now have no signal in places I never had a problem before, the commercial free music now has rambling idiots which are just as bad as commercials and the customer service when you call in is terrible. If I wanted to listen to Carol Miller, Denis Elsas, Cane, Bodhi, Jim Kerr, Meg Griffin, Eddie Trunk or any of the other NY area DJ’s I can listen to them for free on FM. And god forbid having to listen to Dusty Street ramble about nothing, I would rather watch paint dry while removing my finger nails with a pair of pliers.

I am not sure what the powers at be were thinking when they allowed the merger of the two companies eliminating competition. There is no one to switch to now just the same bad service by another name.

To top it off they are jacking up the pricing now and removing services. I think at this point I am going to cancel my subscriptions and buy an HD radio that also has some sort of portable drive for digital audio.

I just can’t imagine that dwindling customer service, rising prices and offering less features will keep customers that were used to something they are no longer getting.  What are you experiences with either service?

It is a really neat little piece of engineering.  The amount of drag and the capability of such a small reel, you really have to admire what the folks at Avet achieved with this one.  But how practical is it really?

I picked one up last season and was a little disappointed in the line capacity.  It states on the web site and the box 220 yards of 20#.  I have tried twice now to pack 65# or 50# braid on it and can barely get 200 yards on it.  Not because I don’t pack it tight, I have ruined a pair of leather work gloves both times, just about cutting through the fingers the line is packed so tight.  With either size of braid I should be able to get much more on there as the 65# is supposed to be about 16# mono.

I was really hoping to use it on a Shimano Trevala jigging rod as a workhorse, multi-tasking rod, jigging for tuna, tiles, striped bass and deep water wreck fishing (offshore sea bass, cod and pollock).  With its limited capacity I think I am going to end up putting it onto a Shimano Tescata or a Lamiglas Tri-Flex 7040 and get either a Shimano Tyrnos 16 2 speed or an Avet LX 2 speed or HX (only comes in 2 speed).

What are your thoughts?  I am curious to see what everyone else has been using the SX 2 speed for.

My new site is live and just about finished.  I have a few more past posts to upload and then re-add all the pictures within the posts. 

There is also a special format for mobile devices which strips down some of the content and reformats it so it is easily read from a phone, PDA or other mobile device.  Pictures  and galleries are still available through the mobile version as are the links and resources of the site.

I hope you enjoy the new format.

Had my first real world testing this weekend. The red LED on the way in Friday night was great. The crew was able to sit at the dinette with the light on and it did not affect my vision at all. It made them happy being able to find munchies and beer, read, etc. and I was not blinded in the process.

The white LED lighting was great at night cleaning up, reading, and in the morning making coffee and breakfast. It is not as bright as incandescent bulbs but more than enough light for my needs. I accidentally left the cockpit lights on from when we got into the dock around 7 PM until the next morning and my battery voltage at point had barely dropped overnight…only a few tenths of a volt.

I will be changing out my navigation lights this winter to LED’s as well.

I gathered up all the leftover parts from projects over this season and returned them to West in exchange for a second Dr. LED Mars Dome, the 1 watt/3 watt white dome. I powered it up with a 12v power supply in the basement with low light in the room and total darkness. I was very impressed with the light output of both the 1w and 3w settings.

I was skeptical about LED replacements, and frankly the more common replacement bulbs seem to be very weak but the Dr. LED products with their built in drivers are awesome. It will be nice to be able to leave the lights on all night or for even several hours at a time now and not worry about draining the battery. I always hated turning the lights off and coming back to dark boat and straining to step on in the darkness.

Now I just need to get a motion sensor activated light for when I arrive to the boat in the dark.

I tried a couple of less expensive models out from Ancor and others available at local marine supply stores but they are nowhere near as bright or burn as cool as the Dr. LED lights. After doing some research I decided on the Dr. LED line of fixtures and replacement bulbs. I found the Dr. LED products to have the brightest light, in most cases, the least amp draw. I have installed their MR 16 Magnum Ring to replace the halogens in the v-berth and they are great – bright, cool (no longer burn yourself touching the fixture to reposition it) and plug directly in with no modifications needed. The light is a little different from incandescent or halogen bulbs, the LED’s are much whiter light…excellent for reading…at least for me. I am going to try out their nav light replacement bulbs over the winter.

This weekend I replaced a dome light with a white/red LED dome light, the Red Mars Dome. Unfortunately it was bright and sunny so I am not really sure how well it is going to work yet. The v-berth lights are actually brighter than the old halogens, they don’t get hot and hardly draw any power, so I am hoping the dome light will be just as good. The addition of the red lamp will be great as my crew regularly blinds me on our way out turning on the light to find things, getting rigged up or choosing which donut is next on their menu.

I was unable to test it at night as I did not stay over this weekend but during the day the white light seemed just as bright as my other incandescent dome light. Next time I stay over I will report on how the white and red light was at night.

Saturday I headed right for a wreck on the Axel Carlson. I made a couple passes drifting over it before anchoring to test the waters. On each of the two drifts I caught a couple shorts and put a keeper sea bass in the box on each pass. After anchoring up and getting in position over the portion that I wanted it was non-stop action with short and keeper sea bass and a few short tog with one keeper about three pounds. The bergals were not too bad, had about a dozen of them as well as two would-be keeper fluke at 22 and 23 inches that were released for next season. I also gave a couple of rock piles a shot, they each produced keepers and shorts as well. Upon returning to the Inlet I was greeted with acres of bunker with nothing working them, they were just flipping and being playful.

Sunday I got a late start leaving the dock about 7 AM and decided to head back to the same wreck since it was producing so well. It did not produce as I had hopped. I guess the swifter currents of the full moon on a day and stronger winds had put the fish off a bit. I moved around to the rock piles and began picking at fish with keepers, shorts and tons of bergals mixed in. I decided to call it a day early as the winds picked up a bit. Approaching the bell buoy there were fish busting everywhere. I grabbed the first rod rigged with an artificial which happened to be a bunker colored rattle trap. I immediately hooked up with something small…it turned out to be a snagged bunker. I knew there was something under them this time as they were spraying out of the water and not just being playful. Second cast I hooked into something much bigger…it turned out to be a four pound bonito. They were everywhere and I had one on with every cast until the fleet showed up speeding right through the breaking fish putting them down in a matter of minutes.

I can’t wait for cooler temps to weed out the fisherman that lack both proper boat handling skills and proper etiquette when fishing bunker pods or schools of breaking fish. It is very frustrating and you can’t explain to them that they will catch more fish if they adjust their methods as their way is the only way and no one else knows what they are doing. All-in-all it was a great weekend on the water with fish in the box two days in a row and sore arms.

If you have a fishing or boating related question give me a call using Grand Central from Google. I would be happy to help my fellow boaters and fishermen as best I can.

My everyday watch recently started to self destruct. The rivets are popping, buttons falling off and needed another new battery. I decided to finally replace it. After some hunting around I found a really cool watch. I did have to give up alarm and countdown timers but I think it was well worth it.

I went with a Timex e-Instruments Time and Temp plus Compass. It has a compass, temperature sensor and tide clock, as well as the usual time and date features. It is water resistant to 100 meters and has a back light for low light conditions. Now I will always know what direction is home and the tide stage!

I am not sure how many of you have Keurig brewers…we are devote fans. We actaully have two…long story. Anyway, they recently came out with a hotel model, the B130. It does not keep any water in it after brewing and has a very small footprint. Best of all it consumes half the power of thier smallest home brewer. The bad news is that it will not be available for home, boat or RV use until the fall…but it is coming and we can’t wait.

I hope Santa was good to everyone. He was good to me…although he did not bring a new 4 man offshore life raft he did bring a few new things for the boat. For starters he brought a Fluke mini infra-red thermometer. This will come in really handy in reading surface temps at any speed, especially with my transducer thermometers on the fritz.

I also got a new horn for the hailer and a macerator pump. It will be so nice to not have to climb halfway into the fish box to clean it out anymore. And also not have to remember to put the plug in so the blood, guts, scales and regurgitation does not end up in the bilge.

The 2008 tide and current table books were also under the tree, but not Eldridge this year…somehow left it off my list. I did get some money for Christmas so that will be one thing it is used for.

One of the stocking stuffers that I can’t wait to try out is a new pair of gloves…they are supposed to be waterproof. We will see. I have tried probably two dozen so far that claim to be waterproof and are not. So far the best for warmth and being completely waterproof are the Kenai gloves from Glacier Glove. They are a little bulky and slight pain to take off and on when you need to tie knots. But you hands will never be cold and wet with them.

Merry Christmas!

Testing out blogging from my PocketPC phone. This will enable me to update with up to the minute fishing reports this season.