I hate to admit it, but I don't care much for consumer trade shows. There's never enough time to see everything, and to be honest, sometimes the personnel manning the booths don't know the products that well.

But in our home area of Southern California, the Fred Hall Fishing Tackle and Boat Shows (one in Long Beach, and one in Del Mar) traditionally mark the start of the new "fishing season", so I feel obligated to walk the aisles and take a look. I usually collect catalogs, look for interesting products, chat with people I know, and follow up later on the interesting stuff.

So...here are some items that caught my eye as having some particular appeal to Ocean Skiff Journal readers, that may not have caught the eye of the regular Press:

Boating Products

Keep an eye on Honda's line of mid-range outboards. Their revamped 90 HP (actually released late last year) looks to be a real winner. It is light (only 35lb heavier than the Evinrude E-TEC 90), and has all of the trademark Honda features that have garnered the Japanese giant a loyal following. Conversations with the Honda factory personnel revealed that their 115 HP outboard is due for a similar facelift this summer. That could be the hot ticket for a Toy Boat 2 repower story.

Torqeedo electric motors - Advanced electronics, state-of-the-art propeller technology and improved battery technologies have made it possible for Torqeedo to design 24- and 48-volt electric motors that are rated in horsepower, rather than pounds of thrust (yeah, yeah, I know HP and pounds of thrust do not represent the same thing, but that's how the products are marketed). Torqeedo electric motors generate 2 - 8 HORSEPOWER on 24-48 volt systems. Yowza!

Evinrude's E-TEC 15 HO is an interesting purpose-built engine. At first blush, it's a mistake - a 15 HP engine that weighs 180 lbs?? But as you might expect, there's a reason for it. The E-TEC 15HP HO looks like it was built to be the ultimate slow/back trolling engine. Precise RPM and speed control, heavy duty brackets (for when the engine is used as an auxilliary motor on large high-speed boats), a special prop that enhances backtrolling performance, and a tiller handle that can adjust horizontally +/- 20 degrees (to make it easier to use when mounted off-center on a bracket).

Fishing Products

Shimano has revamped it's popular Baitrunner spinning reels. The models have been renumbered to match the other Shimano spinning reels (i.e. 4000, 6000, 8000, 12000), and now feature a number of upgraded components to make the reels much more effective tools for handling heavier Spectra line (Editor's note: don't forget that Shimano recently purchased PowerPro, maker of one of the more popular Spectra fishing line brands). Beefed up gears, cold-forged instead of stamped aluminum spools with improved lip and skirt designs, enhanced bail/bail roller, improved spool oscillation, smoother baitrunner feature with lighter drag settings, and machined rather than cast handles.

Why do we care? Now that spinning outfits have the line capacity and drag capability to handle 20 - 50lb line, coffee grinders have become viable solutions for offshore fishermen. In fact, it seems like a properly configured spinning outfit like this could be very close to that one "all around" outfit that could do almost everyting you need to do offshore, from fly-ling small baits to deep-jigging to throwing heavy jigs and poppers.

And lest we forget, other companies offer similar products: the Okuma Bait Feeders, Diawa Bite'N Runs, and Penn Slammers have similar features. Be sure to check them out.

PowerPro has added downrigger replacement lines to their product lineup. Spectra in 150, 200 or 250lb test makes a perfect replacement for braided metal downrigger cables. Spectra does not generate electric currents when dragged through salt water, the ultra-small diameter causes minimal blowback, and PowerPro's dark color will not spook fish. Downrigger cable replacement line comes in short (300 or 450 foot) spools.

Well, we got the bad news from Boat Depot...it was not something simple or cheap. Apparently the engine's EMM is bad, and must be replaced at a cost of $1,300. That's about 20% of the cost of the motor when we bought it new. Unfortunately, the motor is out of warranty, so we'll have to cover the whole cost.

We were not able to get any definitive answer as to what caused the problem, or how to prevent it in the future. We're OK with paying for the repair, but it would be nice to know that it won't happen again in 3 years. BRP Tech Support suggested that perhaps our battery caused the problem (too small, and a deep cycle, rather than a starting battery). But considering that the motor has never had a problem turning over (once we got through the water in the fuel issue), and can run without a battery, it seems unlikely to us that those could cause the EMM charging circuits or software to go south.

Remember that the motor runs fine, even with the defective EMM - it just doesn't charge the battery.

Went out yesterday with Scott Leon (Paradigm Shift Charters) on Toy Boat 2, looking for tuna, yellowtail and dorado. I wanted to test out a couple of short offshore fly rods from Sea Level Fly Fishing for our sister site, Beyond The Breakwater.

Well, the fishing was slow, other than this 135lb marlin that hit one of our tuna spreader bars. The fish was roughly 10ft. long, including the bill. My second marlin ever, and my first local fish, from my own boat, too!

Kudos to Scott, who drove the boat and leadered the fish. I mostly cranked and kept my fingers crossed.

On the negative side, both of our batteries went dead, despite the engine running most of the time. We discovered this after we stopped the engines to fish a kelp paddy, and couldn't get the motor going again. We were lucky in that after letting the batteries rest for a few minutes, we were able to scrape out enough juice to turn the E-TEC over once or twice, and the engine started right up. Of course, the motor did not get turned off until after we got back to port...

At first, my initial suspicion was that there must be a significant short somewhere in the system. After all, what are the odds that both batteries would be dead, especially with our nifty battery combiner setup?

In order to have drained the batteries with the engine running, the short would have had to have been pulling a lot of amps from both batteries, and/or both batteries would have to have been damaged and unable to hold a charge. However, none of the circuit breakers tripped, and there was no sign of smoke or overheated circuits.

I was pretty sure the batteries were OK, as I had load tested both batteries a few month earlier, and they checked out fine. After I got home, I recharged the batteries, and load tested again. They were still OK.

This left the battery combiner as the only thing (other than the on-board charger) that was connected to both batteries and ground. It did not appear scorched or overheated, but I pulled it out, just in case.

Then I checked the alternator output from the E-TEC. After all, with 25 amps of capacity, it should have been more than capable of keeping everything charged and running. So I pulled the boat out into the driveway, hooked it up to a hose and started the motor. When I put the multi-meter on the engine lugs in the transom, it said that the alternator was outputing 12.6V. This seemed a bit low, but not unreasonable.

After a couple of phone calls to both BRP and our local Evinrude dealer, I was advised that only way to be sure about the alternator was to drain the battery below 12V, run the motor, and check both the output voltage and current.

How do you check the current running through the battery cables? You can use a device called a clamp meter. It uses induction to allow you to monitor the current going through an unpaired wire. I bought the MA220 from Extech, for under $100 on the Internet.

I left the lights and other electronics on until the battery was drawn down below 12V (the MA220 can also function as a simple multi-meter, it said 11.5V), and started the engine again. Actually, since a 12V battery with only 11.5V of output is almost dead, I had to put the other battery on-line in order to get enough juice to start the engine.

After it started, I switched the second battery off, and used the clamp meter to measure the alternator current and voltage output. The alternator output voltage now read 11.3V, and only 1.6 amps of output! Under these conditions, the engine should have been putting out the full 25 amp capacity of the alternator, at something over 12V. I took the engine out of gear, and throttled up to 1,200 rpm, with no change in output.

So....back in to the shop! I still think the battery combiner is involved in some way, as there is no way both batteries could have been depleted at the same time without something connecting them both shorting out. Perhaps the battery combiner failure also damaged the engine charging system?

Boat Depot is taking me this next Tuesday, with the intent of getting the boat back to me Wednesday afternoon. Got to get that last tuna trip in before the Winter rains come!

The March 2009 issue of Trailer Boat Magazine featured an article titled "Bright Thinking" by Jim Hendricks, which described how to use battery-powered stick-on LED lights as dome lights for his boat. He happened to use Sylvania DOT-it Lights, which retail for around $8.00 each, but they're available from a number of companies. A little expoxy secured the lights to clamps which he used to mount them on his Bimini top.

Mustang Survival announced the "Rescue Stick™", an innovative throwable Personal Floation Device (PFD). Designed to be compact (14”) and lightweight (just over 1lb) it can be easily stowed. When the unexpected happens, the unique design allows it to be thrown with considerable accuracy and quite a distance.

The Rescue Stick™:

• Can be thrown up to 100 feet – twice the distance of a ring buoy or rope bag
• Provides 35 lb. of flotation in seconds – triple that of a ring buoy
• Automatically inflates in seconds upon contact with the water
• Extremely easy to use – anyone who can throw a stick can use it
• Simple to repack and reuse – insert a new bobbin and screw in the replacement handle containing the CO2 cylinder

With an MSRP of $159.99, the Rescue Stick™is definitely wirth a look. You can also visit the Rescue Stick™ website to see some video and more specs.

After a week of hot fishing reports for tuna at the 182 fathom spot, we went out with Capt. Scott on TB2. Scott had been successfully guiding people to the tuna all week, but of course, did not fish himself. We were both expecting great things, but the combination of an unexpected wind front and heavy boat traffic shut down the fishing for pretty much the entire fleet. We eventually ran inshore and did some fishing for kelp bass, where Scott managed to land a 4lber, and we managed one around 2lb.

We've decided to convert TB2 over to XD-100 oil, so we were running the tank down as far as we could. It was pretty bumpy all day, and we did get several "Low Oil" alarms, but these were clearly real low oil alarms.

TB2 started without a hitch again. We've come to the conclusion that it might be tied to using an AGM Deep Cycle Battery to start the motor, so we'll try paralleling-in the "House B" battery when the engine is cold. Of course, the engine ran flawlessly after it started. Mileage for the day was around 3.5 mpg, but this is because we spent almost the entire day at 7 - 8 knots trolling, which is the most fuel-inefficient speed for the boat.