A long, long time ago in galaxy far, far away, my ex-father-in-law was walking through Cabelas with me.  He was a rather frugal man and a good fisherman.  He looked over at a pyramid of tackle boxes displayed, and said snidely, “Geez, you should get you one of those monsters for all your tackle.”  It was one of Plano’s very large tackle boxes with the top that holds multiple small plastic boxes, along with three trays of tackle below.  My response was simply, “I just bought that exact one.” We had a good laugh.

For years, like my father, he had used a very small, simple tackle box that resembled a lunch box. It held a few jigs, some bottom bouncers, and a crappie rig or two.  I had been building my walleye and pike tackle to include about 30 different kinds of jigs and weights, spinner rigs, bottom bouncers, Lindy weights, spoons, slip bobbers, assorted terminal tackle, etc. so it didn’t take me long to fill the big box up, and it remains my primary box to this day.  It holds a place of honor in my boat, strapped to front of the port console on nearly every trip out.

When I got into fly fishing, of course, I needed the fly boxes, reel cases, etc. to do business with that method.  Bass fishing–same thing.  Muskies–well, that, too.  My few crankbaits turned into a hundred or so, and got a tackle bag of their own with several plastic boxes to sort and store the various types.  Another large tacklebox turned into my shore-fishing/catfishing box.  And the story continues.

Currently, my bass tackle is the most neglected in terms of logical storage.  Luckily, I have found that almost all of it is stored in Plano 3600 size boxes, so I just made the modest purchase of one of Plano’s new Fishoflauge tackle bags.  Where before it was in a variety of smaller bags, none of which were very effective, it is now consolidated.

My best advice for new anglers is to purchase tackle bags or totes that hold a common size of plastic box and then configure and sort according to the plastic boxes.  You can always re-configure as your needs change.  The days of dragging the old “lunchbox” with a top tray and its bottomless-pit bottom are over.

Last night, I was debating whether to buy a closeout fishfinder for my 14′ boat at my local Wal-mart store, when my wife took to the computer.  I was pretty convinced of what I was going to buy, but I thought, “Well, let her see what’s out there.” She has indeed found me some excellent deals in the past, including a $150 Milwaukee jigsaw for $50, among other things.  Well, she found me a fishfinder, all right, and the deal was too good to pass up.

The Lowrance Mark series sonars have rebates on them right now, and the Mark 5X DSI specifically has a $50 rebate.  Gander Mountain is on its last day today of a four-day sale online.  They are giving $50 off orders over $250.  And shipping is free on the Mark 5X DSI.  So, in total, the Mark 5X DSI that I just ordered cost $289 minus 50 for the Gander sale and 50 for the mail in rebate = $189 + tax.  Not bad for a little trip to the Internet by my excellent wife.

Now, if you get to the party late and you miss the Gander online sale, I would suggest you compare the Mark 5X DSI to anything else at around $250 (the Lowrance rebate lasts for a while yet).  It’s not color, but the images I have seen from real life tests of the downscan imaging will make people with much more expensive fishfinders cringe when they think about what they paid to get color and a slightly larger screen (now, granted, they are also getting side imaging, GPS, networkability, etc. for their money, too). 

To see some real experience with Down Scan Imaging on this unit, follow this link. Scroll down past their sales information and you will see comparison pictures of the Mark 5X screen and a much, much more expensive HDS-8 unit.  It will be fun to try out the DSI feature this summer on my favorite small-boat horsepower-restricted lake as I chase smallmouth bass and crappies around sunken boulders, timber, and brush piles. 

The down scan feature aside, if this 4,000 watt peak-to-peak unit functions like my other Lowrance units, I will be very happy.  Why buy a crappy resolution color fishfinder when you can get a monochrome one with good power and resolution for the same price?

This is my second Lowrance score in as many years–last year it was an excellent X-135 unit for $199 from Cabelas for my big walleye boat and this year it looks like another very good unit for my small boat.  I love it when I can buy good stuff cheap!  This deal is even a little bit sweeter, as DSI in this price range is relatively new to the market. Instead of a closeout, this is a current item.  I’m off to mount the transducer board on my little boat and wait by the door for the Santa in brown shorts!

Berkley has a bunch of new colors out for the re-introduced Flicker Shad.  One of the Fleet Farm exclusive colors is Circus Star, which is recognizable to most of us as “Wonderbread.”  It’s a great color pattern, so I had to pick up a few.  They’re pictured with one of my Wonderbread Reef Runners.  The Next Bite’s website has a chart of all the new Flicker Shad color patterns.

I found this video on Fox News.  Apparently, American Idol judge and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler has inspired feathery hairstyles for women that are sending beauticians to the fly shop for hackle.  Maybe next pheasant season I should weave some downed birds into my hair and wear my prey in a celebration of the hunt.  I could be a trendsetter.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Muskie opener in Minnesota is still a couple of months away. Sigh.  At least in North Dakota I can be hunting pike after ice-out and shake off the cobwebs and make sure the gear all works.

The pictured setup is my newly put-together low-budget light muskie / northern pike setup.   $45 Ambassadeur 6600 BCX (on clearance at Walmart), Shimano Beastmaster rod that I picked up from a friend for a song, and $1.99 Cabelas muskie bucktail (I bought a half dozen of those that day for that price!).  If the reel lasts, it will be well worth it, but it is kind of sad that there is now a classic Ambassadeur round reel that’s made in China and not Sweden.  I guess that’s the way of the world.

Wholesale Sports is one of my favorite stores in Fargo because it’s not the over-inflated ego of our local sporting goods titan’s statues of U.S. Presidents or ferris wheels inside the building, and it’s not the cheap tackle of Walmart.

From this weekend’s pass through the aisles, my haul looks something like this:

2 Plano Pro Latch 3650 tackle boxes, $2.66 on sale and part of a buy one get one free special, reg. $4.59 apiece,
1 Bianchi Accumold holster for 1911, $19.99, on sale from $29.99,
and 2 20 ct. bags of root beer 4″ Yamamoto grubs, on sale for $4.00 each from $6.00.

Let’s see, do the math and I paid roughly 31 dollars for 51 dollars worth of stuff. Not bad for a 20 minute pass through the store.

Every once in a while while I’m putting in or taking out at the lake, someone asks me about the splashguards on the back of my Lund Explorer. I always take the time to tell them I got mine from Whitecap Manufacturing. I have six seasons on mine now, and I can’t say I’ve ever been disappointed. They fit perfectly, were easy to install, and give me another surface to stick decals on!  They were also significantly cheaper than their more heavily-promoted competition. Since my boat is not as deep as, say, a Lund Tyee, I think they also give the kids a little bit of a feeling of security and allow them to feel “enclosed.” I love ‘em because I can backtroll in some vicious chop and they keep my bilge pump from working overtime. I may be a little bit crazy, but I’m also considering them for my 14′ Sea Nymph with its 16″ transom.  I just haven’t finalized what motor/trolling motor combo will end up on that boat yet.

If you like to backtroll and you’re used to taking a bath, do something nice for yourself this season and install some Whitecaps.

Like the looks of the boat?  Check out my last post on the Lund Explorer series.

I’ll admit right up front that this first post–in what will be a series of profiles of fishing boats–is biased. I own a 2004 Lund 1800 Explorer and it fits my multispecies fishing needs perfectly.

For 2011, Lund has updated the Explorer series. From what I can tell in comparing the features to my boat, the two changes that stand out are a center rod locker up the middle and a baitwell insert in the front livewell. I’m sure there are some other minor changes (such as changing the name to 1825 Explorer), but the white boat in the following video with dual consoles could be easily mistaken for mine.

What I love about the Explorer series is wide open layouts and windshield options. They are also not an extremely high-sided boat, as with the Fisherman and Tyee series, so they do not get pushed around as much in the wind. For a multispecies fisherman, they are ideal because they have plenty of room to work from the bow, stern, or in between, and they have lots of mounting options for accessories with the Sport-Trak rail system. My only criticism of my 2004 is that the driver’s console could use a little bit more room for mounting multiple displays (such as a full size fishfinder + a full size GPS/chartplotter (I like to be able to see my screens from the back of the boat, since I run a Yamaha T8 kicker with tiller steering).

I had the fortune of seeing one of the first 20′ Explorers when they came out (I was having a custom cover built for my boat when a prototype came in to the tarp company for measurement). For anyone who fishes big water or needs a huge amount of space in the boat, they are one of the roomiest, nicest laid-out boats I have been around. For most purposes, I prefer my 18′ rigged with a 150, and chose it over a 17 footer because the extra foot lies precisely in between the first and second row of seats. I consider my Explorer to be a practical man’s Pro-V. Rigged with some splashguards and a kicker motor I’m sure a lot of walleye tournament fisherman could use it every bit as effectively as boats that cost half again to twice as much.

At any rate, check out the Lund video below, and if you would like to see how my boat has been rigged, there are some pictures on one of my other posts.

Woody EX Pro flanked by my Irish Setter hunting boots (L) and LaCrosse Insul-Pac (R)

For sporting men and women everywhere, boots are arguably the most important piece of gear we rely on.  As a North Dakotan who may encounter wetlands, snow, mud, rocks, and generally unforgiving conditions in the outdoors as the temperatures might range from 100 degrees to 60 below, I willingly admit that I don’t spend enough on footwear.  On a recent trip to the Boundary Waters, I very unwisely did not pack hiking boots in an area that turned out to have very unforgiving rocky terrain.  I lived through the trip and didn’t turn an ankle, but it was summertime and the stakes were not as high as they are on some of my trips.

In the wintertime, my footwear has to keep my feet dry and warm. Period.  I have been known to wear Sorels rated to -60 for ice fishing, LaCrosse Insul-Pacs in wet snow and for hunting when covering scent is an issue, and my favorite pair of Irish Setter hunting boots for late fall and winter conditions when the snow isn’t too terrible.  For any pair of boots, the maximum amount of money I have spent has been probably 60 bucks.

Enter the Muck Boot Woody EX Pro.  When I got the opportunity to do this gear review from my association with the Outdoor Blogger Network, I told my wife, “Well, my Insul-Pacs are getting a little bit long in the tooth, so it can’t hurt to try them.”  I was a little bit skeptical about the street price at close to $200, thinking “How can a rubber boot cost that much?”  Keep in mind, I grew up in Montana wearing four buckle overshoes that retailed at probably $5.99.

Although it is spring in many places, it is still basically the end of winter in North Dakota.  Since obtaining the Woody EX Pros, I have used them for chore duty, blowing snow, extended plowing sessions on the four wheeler, and shoveling snow.  When the mud appears, I am sure I will post another account of how they work in the spring.  And if they work the way they have so far, I’m sure it will be a positive account.

Over the last few weeks, I have worn these boots in 20 below weather all the way up to about 35 above.  The first thing that struck me was how easy they go on and off.  I am used to practically prying off my boots, but the designers of the Muck Boot deserve a lot of credit for shaping the ankle area perfectly for easy-on, easy-off.  I have not had to enlist my wife once for a tug of war session, or had evil thoughts about removing the boots with my pocketknife.

The insulation in the boots is rather brilliant, combining a breathable mesh with arctic fleece for a comfort range of -40 to 60 degrees F, according to the manufacturer.  Not once have I felt my feet get cold, even when outside for extended periods of time.  My feet sweat less than with traditional rubber boots such as the Insul-Pac, which I have always regarded as a good boot, but does fall short at the lower temperature ranges I experienced with the Muck Boots.

In addition to the most important features of waterproofing and insulation, I like many of the other design features of the boot.  It is a nice length, a couple of inches taller than my old Insul-Pacs.  That certainly doesn’t hurt in the winter time, and a couple extra inches doesn’t hurt when one steps through ice into a slough or puddle.  The soles have an excellent lug pattern which seems to self-clean (this will be a feature I will have an eye on when the mud comes this spring).  In addition, there is reinforcement at the heel, toe, and even the shin area on this top-end model.

Finally, the comfort level in the boots is unmatched in any of my other boots, including my favorite pair of Irish Setters.  They have an insole that has me feeling springy even after shoveling snow for over an hour.

Insul-Pac sole (L) and Woody EX Pro sole (R)

I have found nothing to complain about with these boots, and can unreservedly recommend them for everything from turkey hunting to chore duty.  My biggest question for the Muck Boot company is if they are going to enter the wader market.  I’d like to see something that feels this good on the bottom of a pair of hip boots or chest waders, and I would gladly pay the price.

Disclaimer: I received the Muck Boot Woody EX Pro boots mentioned in this post free of charge for review. No other compensation was paid in exchange for the review.  The opinions expressed in this post are my honest, independent thoughts and experiences.

From Al Lindner’s fan page on Facebook comes a great video of crappies schooled up.  Click the image below to view the video from the Angling Edge page: