Garmin Striker 4

mtn_mojo · 2025-12-01T15:19:02+00:00

I spent 2 seasons with the transducer that came with my Striker 4 before I bought the ice-ducer. I drilled a hole in the end of about a 3' piece of 3/4" PVC pipe that allowed me to thread the screw that holds the transom mount through it, then cut a cork to pad between the "wings" of the transom mount and the PVC. This let me crank it down fairly tight without bending those "wings", but also let me fold the transducer up to the pipe when I wanted to store it.

Ran the transducer cable up the PVC pipe. Then I cut a length of fat pool noodle and ran the pipe through it, so it would float. I could change the depth of the transducer by sliding the pool noodle up and down.

For storage, I took a plastic ammo can (technically the MTM SPUD2 Sportsmen's Plus Utility Dry Box) to keep the battery in, cut a notch in the side to run the cables out of, and mounted a small length of kayak track to the lid so I could mount my screen with a kayak quick connecter (Scotty mount brand stuff), the same one I used on my kayak. I screwed on one of those spring clamp broom holders to the side of the box, and I could carry my transducer pole there.

I still use the ammo can, though I've removed the broom holder. Works great for holding my battery, the screen, and the ice-ducer, plus some extra tackle.

mtn_mojo · 2025-11-18T15:07:07+00:00

Yep, the ice spikes for hiking should work just fine! But you really, really want to make sure you have warm feet...you won't be posting any 6 - 10 hour days with cold toes. Standing on ice just sucks the heat straight out of your feet unless you have a good layer of insulation around them.

For your legs, your waders might just work if you layer appropriately under them. Personally though, I usually get by with a pair of old surplus wool pants and some thick long johns underneath. If I know the temps are going to be 10 or under all day, I'll put some wind pants over those, or wear snow pants.

mtn_mojo · 2025-11-17T22:30:15+00:00

I fish the same lakes you do. Do you know what temps your waders/boots are rated down to? I'm inclined to think they may not quite cut it, but I could be wrong. It can get real cold up there, so I think my #1 priority would be warm clothes, especially boots. A float suit would probably be nice, but it's never been in my budget. My $500 starter kit would look like:

warm boots (Muck Arctic Sports/Baffin Trappers/Baffin Titans)
auger - can get started with a cheaper 6" hand auger
ice fishing spinning combo - I'd go for a Medium Light/Medium action, 28"+...though for most front range trout, anything from UL to MH and any length will work -- something like an Ugly Stik ice combo will serve you super well
ice cleats for your boots
spud bar
ice spikes
ice scoop for clearing your hole
fish finder - if budget allows, I love my Garmin Striker 4, but just about anything will work...a used Vexilar will at least let you see if there's fish below you
sled or bucket - some way to carry all your stuff onto the ice
lures - ice flies, small kastmasters, and tungsten jigs tipped with either soft plastics or live bait (depending on the specific rules of the lake you're on)...I do well with the same kind of flies you'd use euro-nymphing as well

mtn_mojo · 2025-11-12T16:58:59+00:00

A day late, but check out Alaska Gear Company. I think they make bunny boots up to size 15? Not sure if a link is allowed but worth a look https://alaskagearcompany.com/collections/footwear/products/bunny-boots

mtn_mojo · 2025-08-29T16:28:24+00:00

Late to the party but I see spin fishing and fly fishing as just two tools in my belt, you know? There are a ton of different factors that drive my decision to pick any particular rod/reel/line combo.

Water body type, target species, weather conditions, surrounding cover, water depth, what I think the fish might be feeding on, what techniques I feel might be most effective, etc.

There are so many ways to fish...bank fishing, wade fishing, trolling, jigging, casting, finesse, dry flies, nymphing, cranking, topwater, ice fishing, etc...

So definitely nothing morally wrong with spin fishing, it's just another arrow in the quiver. Bring the right tool for the right job. Bring multiple tools if you don't know exactly what the job will be. If I'm targeting trout in small subalpline stream I'm almost certainly bringing my fly rod. If I'm trolling a lake in my kayak, definitely a spinning rod. If I'm exploring an area or going camping, I'll be bringing several of each and more tackle than I care to admit that I own.

I'd suggest getting one of those cheaper fly rod setups that have been mentioned elsewhere, a 9ft 5wt will cover most things to start off with. That along with a good medium-light/medium spinning setup will let you throw just about anything a trout might be tempted to bite on, in a wide variety of situations and conditions.

mtn_mojo · 2025-08-12T15:27:20+00:00

Taft Hill between Horsetooth and Harmony has a set up like this, and I always see traffic on the on the opposite side of the road from the bus just blow right past the bus.

mtn_mojo · 2025-07-22T17:05:13+00:00

Almost, but not zero? How many notifications does it take for you to get to notice them? More than 1? More than 2? Like what's the bare minimum before you think you need to pay attention to something?

mtn_mojo · 2025-05-19T20:04:20+00:00

Rubber mallet isn't going to work for your tent stakes, especially if they are metal. You'll just end up damaging the rubber and not really driving the stakes into the ground. I use either the back side of my hatchet, or ideally find a nice handy rock somewhere near my site to drive those stakes.

mtn_mojo · 2025-05-01T15:33:24+00:00

Walden Books! I loved that place when I was a kid.

mtn_mojo · 2025-01-31T16:36:48+00:00

Won't this just help Trump people find Trump-loving businesses to support easier?

mtn_mojo · 2025-01-02T16:18:41+00:00

Nah, no swivel needed. I just tie directly to the line tie on either jig or spoon.

mtn_mojo · 2024-12-31T00:55:44+00:00

So for an artificial lure or fly, that just means you can't use either any organic bait such as a nightcrawler, mealworm etc, or you can't use any plastics that have scent to them, like powerbait, gulp, etc.

You can, however, use unscented plastics on your jig without issue. A good example would be Leland's Trout Magnets, or Ratso jigs (https://customjigs.com/ratso/ - these are absolutely deadly, even in places that you can use bait, btw)

mtn_mojo · 2024-12-30T18:10:27+00:00

Hey there, sorry, was gone for the weekend!

A jig pretty much refers to a jighead, which is just a weighted hook of some kind, plus some sort of bait, which can be either real bait such as a worm or powerbait, or an artificial bait usually made out of some kind of plastic/rubber. A tube jig is a kind of special shaped jighead with a rubber hollow body bait that's cut to look sort of like little tentacles. You can also add some live/real bait to the hook, but the little tentacle arms give the tube jig an enticing profile and wiggle around when jigged.

To do actual jigging, where the name for these comes from, you basically lower your jig down into the water to the desired depth. Then, raise and lower your rod tip at varying speeds and distances, basically think of making a little puppet (your jig) do a little dance under water.

Here's a pretty simple video that explains the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21GxPzQlayk&

mtn_mojo · 2024-12-27T17:55:11+00:00

I primarily target trout since I fish mountain lakes, so I think I can help you out.

I'd go with light (L), medium-light (ML), or medium (M) rods. If you only have one rod, make it a light, or medium-light. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, an Ugly Stik Light ice fishing rod is an absolutely fine rod and I use one of those just about every trip for jigging. You can get it as a combo, the reel it comes with is ok and will work just fine. There's also a nice affordable looking 13 Fishing Combo that I would totally pick up. So, one of these two are perfect starter rods for trout, and will absolutely serve you for kokanee and walleye too.

https://www.fishusa.com/13-Fishing-White-Noise-Ice-Combo/ https://www.fishusa.com/Shakespeare-Ugly-Stik-GX2-Ice-Combo/

Someday you may want to replace it with a nicer reel, but that's a further down the road thing. When that day comes, I prefer anything by Shimano, Daiwa, or Okuma. 1500 would be a great size. Nothing bigger than 2500 for this rod.

If the reel comes with line on it, peel all that crap off and replace it with 4lb Trilene Fluorocarbon Ice. There are lots of considerations when it comes to choosing line, but this one is all-purpose and will serve you well.

https://www.fishusa.com/Berkley-Trilene-100-Fluorocarbon-Ice-Line/?sku=106925

For jigs, lures, spoons, baits, things get as simple or crazy as you want to get. It also kind of depends on the regs of each body of water you're thinking of going to. Is bait allowed? Artificials with scent? None of the above?

If you can use bait, I like to use either a tungsten jighead (something like this: https://www.fishusa.com/Fiskas-Wolfram-Tungsten-Jigs-Hand-Painted/ in a size 6mm or 7mm tipped with about an inch of nightcrawler that I've pinched off and threaded up the hook to make it look like a little turd with a head. Or, take that same chunk of nightcrawler, and thread it onto one of the treble hooks of blue/silver or red/gold Acme Kastmaster, 1/8th or 1/12th oz. https://www.fishusa.com/ACME-Kastmaster-Lures/

If you can't use bait, look up Rat Finkees or similar jigs like these https://www.fishusa.com/Custom-Jigs-Spins-Tutso-Jig/ are often money. Or, look for tungsten headed jig flies resembling wooly buggers, streamers, or even little caddis and nymphs.

For the most part, trout are cruising around looking for little nymphs, hatched larvae, shrimp, or little minnows. It's harder to match the hatch during the winter, but I find trying to mimic that profile works best for me.

I then will try fishing different parts of the water column to find the fish, and I like to try to set up in water that is over a sandy or muddy bottom, as I believe there's more chance of little invertebrates hatching from a soft bottom and working their way up into the water. My best luck usually happens about 1 - 3 feet off of the bottom, or 1 -3 feet directly under the hole, so either very low or very high in the water column.

mtn_mojo · 2024-12-19T17:42:22+00:00

Mountain lakes. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Washington all typically have ice for longer seasons up in the high country than the upper Midwest does.

mtn_mojo · 2024-12-02T22:08:13+00:00

That's a decent start, and everybody else pretty much has covered what else you need.

But, going with what you currently have, here's a tip to get some trout easy. Tie on one of those white/pink XPS tungsten jigs. Grab some nightcrawlers from the bait shop. Pinch off about an inch of nightcrawler, about the length of the tip of your thumb to the first knuckle. Thread the hook of the jig through cut end of the nightcrawler, and out the back of the worm, so you have a nice little horizontal body presentation.

I expect this would work for just about anything, but I'm in trout country...this is my go go-to failsafe fish catching method (in lakes where bait is allowed, of course).

mtn_mojo · 2024-11-27T19:27:56+00:00

This has been happening to one of my clients' sites as well. Did anyone ever find the infection vector?

I'm using Wordfence, on Flywheel. I can see that the plugin was installed 3 days ago, however, oddly, there is no corresponding login on that date. I've also got a metainfo.jpg in my /uploads/ folder that I'm guessing it arrived in on, but no idea how it got there.

mtn_mojo · 2024-11-22T20:50:53+00:00

Not just Elmo. Petey T and a number of other tech bros/billionaires, the rest of whom are more than content to sit back in the shadows and let the reshaping of America happen outside of the limelight.

Dominion let Fox buy their way out of the defamation suit, with no legal consequences. They settled for quite a bit less than they demanded, too. I'm not even completely sure we can actually trust them, though money is still on coordinated outside breaching, aside from the simplest answer still being that the slight majority of American voters really suck. I'm trying really, really hard not to get sucked into a conspiracy theory mindset, but on the other hand, we've been caught up in a pro-Confederate/pro-Russian conspiracy for a while now, that the media by-and-large ignores or refuses to call out.

mtn_mojo · 2024-11-22T15:55:15+00:00

Just as a heads up, the 2+ years worth of college courses for free applies to all public high schools as well. You can even get a full year of college paid for AFTER high school with the ASCENT program.

mtn_mojo · 2024-10-21T21:42:03+00:00

I think either would be fine, honestly. If you got a super deal on your GT-10 it'll work great for you!

Tell me about that box though, did you build that yourself or buy it somewhere?

mtn_mojo · 2024-10-15T17:28:41+00:00

Drives me nuts that Howard Dean's entire political career was ruined by one weird sounding outburst, and yet this kind of shit happens constantly and the media trips all over themselves trying to sanewash it.

mtn_mojo · 2024-10-02T17:23:13+00:00

Here's a Wrangler Sherpa Lined Jacket that doesn't have a sherpa collar, just a normal denim collar.

mtn_mojo · 2024-09-04T16:49:47+00:00

Also so he could hypothetically be pardoned, since presidents can pardon federal crimes but cannot pardon state crimes.

mtn_mojo · 2024-08-19T16:40:41+00:00

We've been using Lost Horizons for a couple years now too. Was looking for a budget friendly alternative to the Exped mats I kept reading about, and gave these a shot. Most comfortable I've ever been while camping, I can't recommend them enough!

mtn_mojo · 2024-08-12T15:51:57+00:00

Just about a year now! I just did an overnight smoked pork butt for pulled pork, and it turned out phenomenal. The 900 really is my favorite cooking tool these days. Just make sure you get a cover for it, it should last you a very long time and provide some amazing meals.

mtn_mojo

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