I have considered getting a flogger ( http://www.lurecraft.com/Flogger/productinfo/2X145/ ) for several years now. I heard about Pipkens slaying them in the BFL up on Burt and Mullet using one. In fact, he may have manufactured the one above. Not sure if that is true or rumored. They have one on Amazon that is almost exactly like it, picture wise for half the price. Anybody have any experience with one. Zona had it on his show recently with Aaron Martens.
I have used one and it is fun. A little bit bulky in the boat. I remember wishing it was longer so I didn't have to lay down on the boat to use it.
Please note I do not allow links from that website you originally referred to anywhere on GreatLakesBass.com. Thanks.
I have a Flogger I got directly from Lurecraft. Real helpful at times. You can see quite a bit better by breaking the water surface glare with it. Sometimes the difference is pretty amazing.
One suggestion is to paint the Flogger black after you get it to block out more of the side light. You can see even better. Something I keep forgetting to do. On real bright days light coming through the orange cone hampers some of the underwater vision.
I can't be 100% sure but the product on Amazon does look like the same product. Can't be absolutely sure without seeing one live. Odd that they have 2 products on Amazon both from European manufacturer Nuova Rade that look exactly the same but one is less than half the cost of a Flogger and the other one is almost twice the cost? Don't know if that means anything though when I look on the Nuova Rade website they only show one version of this product. They do show another product but it appears to be much smaller and square/rectangle shaped. Could be one of the products on Amazon is showing the wrong picture, or someone is really marking these things up!
The original story of the Flogger goes something like this - Chad was using a scuba/snorkel mask and dipping his face into the lake to see deep beds. It worked but their little group of anglers decided to try to find something that worked better. One of them found the 'Flogger' product on a European website for products for viewing saltwater habitat among other things. They got their friends at Lurecraft to have some delivered here and found them much easier to use than a snorkel mask and sticking your face in the water. Chad went from kicking butt up North to kicking more butt!
I'm guessing Kim Straley at Lurecraft decided she should sell some to others and it has grown from there. It's possible that Nuova Rade is the actual manufacturer of the device. I do not know if there is any difference between the original device and the Flogger being sold by Lurecraft. It's a fairly simple device. As long as the plastic/glass at the bottom has good clarity and optics, and doesn't leak it should work.
Amazon also sells a short tube viewer too but the field of vision may be much too limited reducing how much you can see at one time. Even the Flogger has a fairly limited viewing field but better than a tube I have to believe.
A few people have made their own. Again, the keys being good seal at the bottom, comfortable viewing port and good optics of whatever clear glass/plastic you have at the bottom. Blocking side light helps too. I have seen one person who homemade a real long tube so he could actually stand on the side of his boat and look down the tube without laying down. Saw him using it up North one day years ago. I never got a chance to ask him about how much he could actually see though looking down such a much narrower field of view like that. I would think he would only be seeing a very small part of the bottom at any one time but I can't be sure without actually trying it. Because of balance issues I've had most of my life I actually feel a lot less likely to fall in while laying on the deck looking in the Flogger versus standing at the edge of the deck staring down a tall,narrow tube. When I've tried to approximate that action I had a hard time being sure while doing it that I wasn't starting to lean one way or another in a manner that might have me ending up going for a swim. That's just me anyways.
If I didn't have the balance issues I might want to try a long tube that I could use while standing up on the deck expecting that I probably couldn't see a lot at any one time though. Plus, the long, fairly big tube is even worse of a storage hassle compared to carrying the Flogger in your boat. It looked like he used 6 inch PVC pipe maybe. That's a big, heavy hunk of device to even get it in and out of a rod box if you have one open enough to stick something that long and big around in there. Also, just a general rule of optics and viewing through a tube is having a long tube of a 1 to 1 viewing ratio tends to mean the image at the bottom/end of such a tube looks even smaller than it would if you looked at it directly. Probably another reason the Flogger is much wider at the bottom than at the top. It might be possible to add additional mirrors in such a tube to make the image large like a zoom lens but that would be much more complicated than I want to get, and it would even more greatly reduce your resulting field of vision just as a zoom lens or binoculars do.
One other note, unlike that website I don't allow to be mentioned on here, I do have an agreement with Amazon. If you are going to shop there PLEASE click my Amazon link on the right edge to go shopping there so there is a chance this website will get a small credit for the referral (something that other @#$%#@ website will not agree to do). Thank you.
Point taken about the other website. Sorry. I will remember to refrain in the future. I just wanted to have a picture of the product in case someone hadn't seen one.
You can put up the link from Amazon or Lurecraft for that.
Got my https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JGNPOOS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc= today. Very sturdy. Heavier than I thought it would be. That's a good thing though because the water holds it up anyway. The weight will help keep it from blowing around the boat. It's imported from Italy. About $45 Tried it off the end of the dock and it's definitely a thumbs up!
Paint it Black. You can see that orange all over the lake. Other guys will know your spots.
May have to do that, but I don't fish tournaments anymore and am not real concerned about gawkers. It's like an underwater camera, which would be more discreet and maybe easier to use, no lying down. Looking forward to trying it out this week.
Quote from: Dan on May 20, 2017, 10:01:31 PM
Point taken about the other website. Sorry. I will remember to refrain in the future. I just wanted to have a picture of the product in case someone hadn't seen one.
Do it again Dan and we may have to flog you! :-)
I did look at my 'Flogger' and it does say Nuova Rade on it so I guess it is the same device. I used to think anglers were painting their's black so it wouldn't be as obvious (and that is part of the reason) but the real reason is as I said above - painting it black helps you see a lot better by cutting the ambient light shining through that bright orange reducing glare quite a bit.
I painted mine black the other day and used it a little yesterday. Even on an overcast day the black coating reduced the glare and ambient light quite a bit from when I've used it in the past.