The fishing was brutal today, with a big swell when I launched, I copped a few  over the yak. The water was full of weed, there was a lot of weed on the sounder between the 5-10 metre mark too, and rubbish, including someone's fence, but no fish, on the rare occasion I saw a small arch of fish they wouldn't bite, could have been the moon, the Waxing Gibbous is a bummer, I finished with a couple of 35cm snapps, but I worked for them. 

Nice work Dave.Saw you come up past here and was going to open ranch slider and yell out. But couldn’t as have a kitten in here and is literally like living in Fort Knox with wife who is keeping it inside for month and then going to put an apple tracking device on it after that. At least she is not putting one on me. He is sliding down my legs now trying to sleep. Quite cute really. 

Hard Yakker wrote: Gee it was nice this morning, yak fishing is the best when the weather is great, the water and the light were stunning, even the seagulls sounded happy. My fancy new Garmin clapped out and can't be fixed, so I fished with a dropper rig with a Gama 5 recurve and cubes of kahawai and pilchard, no fish finder and one rod with one hook, why didn't I think of that before:) Well

 

Yeah pretty sure technology is overrated, probably holds you back with marlin and gurnard. You can see gurnards on bottom here but only when anchored a while. Personally always turn fish finder off when anchored for snapper and gurnard. Puka if trying to stay over piece of foul in 200m yeah handy, or jigging 40m for kings off one side of a pin. A good fisho on local grounds fishing gurnard and snapper, shouldn’t need a sounder,  is nice to have but not necessary to secure boat or yak load of fish.

what was it you reckon that caused the FF to fail, guessing terminals ?

I had a mid range Lowrance elite hdi that packed a sad like that, water ingress thru the outer casing, prolly thru the sd card lid..... bought the yak as 3rd owner with fishfinder & got 3yrs out of it

Ive had my Helix 7 for 3.5yrs, 3 of those years contained within the rob fort cover, seems to be ok
The biggest problem Ive read on the net is water ingress & damage to the terminals
On day 1 of the purchase of my Helix, I slapped on di-electric grease... havent touched it since then

If you have added maps on a micro sd card, it pays to use a wide strip of insulation tape over the lid thingy

cleaning with ipa ?
Thats a new one, I can recommend Montheiths version of ipa, surely you're not using beer as a cleaner