Norfork Lake Condition and Fishing Report by Scuba Steve from Blackburns Resort and Boat Rental (click here for comment)

I just had some people just cancel a vacation this week because they had a trolling motor that would not self-deploy and it was the holiday and they could not get anybody to work on it. I asked if it could be manually deployed and they did not know. I do not know much about self-deploy but I remember when I was deployed overseas and I did not like that very much. People do not have to know anything about fishing anymore just buy your way into it. What you need is a live scope to find the fish and a locator with 3-D side imaging and gps that puts your boat in auto pilot and has a remote and automatically take you to a desired location. The trolling motor must self-deploy and have a so called anchor or spotlock that keeps you in one place all the time even if the wind is blowing. A remote is also necessary so you do not have to get out of the boat seat or have to pull the trolling motor in or out of the water. Then you can locate fish and drag an umbrella through them until a fish bites.  They need to take it a little farther and have self-deployed rods and reels into a rod holder that automatically reel in fish with a robotic arm that swings them into the live well that automatically sets water temperature and oxygen level. The fish locator must find the fish automatically and interface with the trolling motor to stay on it no matter where it goes and sets the boat speed so the umbrella is constantly on top of the fish. This way the so called fisherman does not have to do anything except sit in tha captain's seat take a video of his catch so he can brag about it. He does not have to know anything except make them bite and nobody has figured that out yet but some are much better than others. I catch a lot of fish and do not have any of these things. I still use a marker buoy to mark brush piles and let my line out to the bottom and reel it in one turn for 2-feet to set my depth depending on my reel ratio. Nothing compares to the initial bite, setting the hook, bringing a fish in on light line, catching fish when nobody else does and letting them swim away. I will never cancel a fishing vacation because my trolling motor will not self-deploy. There must be a manual way to get them down. My goodness.  Trolling for fish is hit and miss anyway. It is like carpet bombing.  I use mine to stay in and out from the bank or on top of brush without using my big motor. I fished for years with neither a trolling motor or a fish locator and did quite well and nobody even heard of remotes. We had to get up to change the channel. Knowing when to go, where to go, what to use for bait and how it is presented will always be the most important.