Quote Originally Posted by ebijack View Post
"im thinking with the open bow boat it wont be that big of a deal to put them out and bring them back in"
Once you figure out where you want the bags to ride in the water by adjusting the lead rope length, you tie a smaller rope to the tail end of the bag ( if it doesn't have one) and tie that rope off aft of your cabin area, with plenty of slack, then retrevial is easy as is setting the bags, you never have to go up front at all, just toss the bags over the side, and if set up correctly, both the forward and rear retrevial ropes doen't even have to be untied if that makes sense. Trolling in really big waves, bags do help with the surging.
you put down just what i was thinking. i went out on a charter this year, and he used bags with his open bow boat. he just pulled the bags in with the rear rope and placed them down in the side of the boat. and i found a good set of trolling bags in the road up at geneva this year, they have the rope at both ends. but i think i can just tie them to my front cleats and just leave them tied off. but i really want to see if it improves the handling of the boat.

i do love my easy troller plate. but with the prop wash hitting the plate it may be hindering the steering some. with the bags the boat might just respond better when you turn the wheel. i,ll find out for sure next july when i go to geneva fishing. and if it slows the boat when the waves hits us from the rear i can loosen up my divers just alittle. the way it is now if you run the divers to loose then you get alot of false releases. so we tighten them down.

i dont worry so much about the divers tripping when a fish hits, because i use the lite bite slide divers. i have them set where even a white perch will usely trip the diver. but if the front of the diver is tight it makes it a pain sometimes to get them to trip from the boat. anything that makes fishing more fun and less trouble is for me. so i really look forward to trying the bags next year. and i will still have my easy troller on the outdrive just incase i dont like the bags. and i found the bags so they didnt cost me anything. next year i,ll post which i like the best. as i am a diehard easy troller, if i switch to the bags you,ll know they work good.
sherman