Zach Matthews
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What do you do with the birds while you have them at home or whatever? Feed them? Put them under a light?
Zach
That’s awesome Travis. What kind of motor are you going for? Mind posting some real world draft stats?
I noticed the price is not posted on the website. Do you mind giving us a ballpark idea?
Zach
Hey Clay –
Re: Jon’s point with turning around–you might be able to use a thick pad, like one of those rescue throws you’re required to have in a powered boat, and sit on that comfortably.
But as far as standing goes, you just need to try it and find your sea legs. It helps a lot to have a paddle down in the water at first to give you something to focus on – I find that *not* thinking about standing makes it easier for most people to let their natural sense of balance take over. Spread your legs shoulder-width but no wider. Stay square in the canoe; if you position your feet along the keel it will be much tippier than standing athwartships.
Think of it much like downhill or water skiing: keep your knees bent a bit and flex with the boat. If you lock your knees up you essentially become a mast rooted to the bottom and if you begin to topple, you won’t recover.
Eventually I promise it will be second nature to you to stand. Most of the guys I’ve encouraged to do this wound up making huge strides after a while as they grew comfortable.
Zach
Hey Clay –
Sitting in the back of a two-man canoe alters the pivot point on the boat, moving it very close to you and sticking the nose out in the air. It’s realllllly easy to pivot a boat like that, which can be advantageous, but usually you’re wanting to be more stable.
If I were you’d I’d consider retrofitting with one of these:
or these:
That will move you to the middle of the boat and when you’ve got Bryce, you’ll be able to use it as a convenient work console.
Alternatively — and this is what I do — you could work on standing up and moving your position closer to the center thwart. That will distribute your weight evenly enough to stop the pirouetting.
There are lots of great knot tutorials on Youtube. For conventional fishing you’re probably good with a plain Duncan’s Loop. If you go to the videos section of this site, I’ve got an extensive series there including one 15 minute video on setting up a fly reel from the arbor all the way to the fly. That video has been very popular on YouTube actually.
Not sure on the waterproof camera. You’ll probably get comfortable enough to just use an iPhone or whatever here pretty soon. I keep mine in a waterproof radio like this:
They show up on sale on Amazon for as low as $40 some times (that’s what I paid). The advantage of that system is that it’s a waterproof, dunkable, floatable box for the phone (it accepts all cell phones), with a clear front so you can read it, and it also serves as a boombox for listening to Braves games or podcasts or music, *and* it’s very easily accessed so you can grab the phone out in a hurry. I’ve been really pleased with mine doing duty both as a dry box and an actual radio. I can get about one complete Braves game out of a phone charge, and the boombox batteries last forever – probably like 25 hours of playtime at a modest volume.
Zach
Great trip report, Travis! Your daughter is cute.
another filming a show, left the tarpon to chum for sharks to salvage the show.
That’s hilarious.
Zach
The width on the platform was 22 inches and I just cut it out of leftover 1/2″ marine plywood with a circular saw. I used a jigsaw to cut the notches for the frame after modeling it in posterboard. I just used like a paint can to make the circles. The cuts on the wood are actually better than those in the foam – I used scissors to do that.
The foam is an ultra-cheap yoga mat ordered off eBay for like $15. The board itself probably would cost $20-30 in a store, but you don’t really need marine plywood so long as you seal it. I used polyester resin to seal after staining with ordinary wood stain. That’s necessary to prevent swelling/rotting, especially since this will be in the ocean.
I glued the mat down with Goop, applying a lot of pressure with a flat board and iron weights on top while it dried.
Zach
Finished.
Slightly rough around the edges but overall should be extremely functional. Added weight isn’t that much of a factor with an inflatable which rows like a tub anyway. I am not sure whether I’ll use the seat or not – I’ll probably experiment both with and without it. It’s not overly stout so I am not sure what I really gain.
The advantage of having more platform space (and traction) is the ability to dance around a little. In the waves that’s inevitable. When the waves get too strong I just kneel and keep fishing.
Zach
Artist Bob White discusses his thought process in capturing lifelike sporting animals and scenes, and also tells about the changes he’s seen in three decades of Alaskan guiding.
As of today, 06/10/13, the striper above is the only one I’ve caught this year. Our fishing has basically sucked – I got stormed off the water on Sunday.
If you look at this table, you can see why:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=rainfall_scorecard
Last year Atlanta got 37 inches of rain all year long. The year before we got 39. Both were good striper years.
This year we ALREADY have 27 inches, or 73% of last year’s TOTAL and we’re not even to the summer solstice yet.
Consequently the stripers don’t seem to have moved up in big numbers. It also has yet to truly get hot. I’m pretty much hearing the same report from all other Georgia striper anglers, but I’d be interested to know if anyone out there is having a banner year.
I for one am starting to question whether stripers exist.
Brett those are sick. You should send that top one to Kristen Mustad at Nautilus if you haven’t already – he was looking for product shot assistance a few years ago (which was actually when I first did this).
So just so I’m clear, all you have is a softbox on a strobe on the left and on the right, with a posterboard below and behind the subject? How do you eliminate the horizontal line where the edge of the table falls off?
Are you knocking the strobes up to like +3.0 and then underexposing through camera or what? I’d love to see the EXIF date on that Vanquish shot. The problem I always had with this was blowing highlights when I get the rears to blow. In fact, I’d love to just see a PICTURE of the studio.
Great discussion guys; thanks.
Zach
Travis –
I’ve been working on the mobile version but I’m at the mercy of the volunteers who write this software for a working solution. I am probably going to have to have the board detect mobile browsers and point to an entirely different theme, which I’ll need to customize myself. They need to get with the program on mobile.
In the mean time if you hold the phone horizontally you can usually get enough layout space to navigate.
Zach
I honestly just really like the name Ant King. In my mind, the Ant King is probably superior to the Loomis model just on strength of character.
🙂
You’re going to need to be a little more specific, Joe. What are you after? Trout? Murray Cod? Queenies?
Zach
Nearly done. Got a Crazy Creek chair in this morning. I’m concerned it won’t provide enough support for actual rowing so I may just do without – I only need to get this thing through the front breakers and then I can drop anchor and stand.
Oh and PS that’s Gretchen, my wire-haired pointing Griffon. I gave her a haircut for the summer since I live in Georgia, USA (hot climate).
Ben –
At one time I had three SB-600 flashes that I could slave but for various “life reasons” I am down to two. I have the ability to elevate one via a dedicated tripod, and then the D600 has your standard prosumer Nikon on-body flash, which isn’t all that powerful.
To set these up I put out a table with a draped sheet laying over it. The sheet needs to be ironed. I put the product on the table then elevated and angled each flash so they were firing down from about a 60 degree angle on each side at the product/sheet. I am using a 60mm Micro-Nikkor lens and a shutter delay or remote trigger (for which I need new batteries). So I basically had to hold one flash up. Both are slaved via Nikon’s Commander Mode.
I had the camera body set to manual and was controlling for aperture and ISO primarily. I could have achieved the same thing as the ISO variable with shutter speed. Aperture on the Micro-Nikkors is tricky as I am sure you know, since they can go all the way down to like f/60 and they will pull even what seems to be items in exactly the same plane out of focus if you set it wrong (see the handle on the silver reel above).
Anyway I’ve managed all of that before. The hardest part though is getting the shadows to work and avoiding cutting off parts of the bottom of objects when I set it in the somewhat soft sheet. As David and you were both describing I think the solution there is mechanical; I believe I need some sort of post or pedestal to elevate; either that or separate the backdrop from the table itself, which fortunately is also white. (I could also paper it.