 it just looks like a swarm of bees down there. That is awesome. Welcome back to the channel Fish and Freaks. Last time I saw you, I was well here at Fun and Sun and we were getting a little sneak peek flash forward. I've already been to the Great Lakes, y'all. I'm not editing that series. It's a four-part series. You know, some of the Googes by guys, the guys that normally edit our videos, they're incredible. They're awesome. They're editing it, so I promise you it's going to be super tasty and the fishing was the best smallmouth fishing I've ever had, so it's going to be really good and other species as well. So while I was up there, Fun and Sun was getting my boat ready. The reason I'm standing over here in this little area, this is where I saw the boat the other day, but the first time I ever came up here, we were up here just kind of dreaming about getting a bass boat and at the time we had this little aluminum boat and there was this little red skater sitting in the corner and it had some rain on it and it looked a little damp, but it was a juicy jewel underneath and so that became old red as it was known. I eventually got another red boat and that's what you guys know as old red, but that was the original old red and it was a ZX195. So this is where I got my first bass boat. I've had, I think this is going to be my seventh boat, y'all. Incredibly blessed now to be a part of the fishing industry. Dabble and deep, worked with great partners, have great sponsors, great people like Fun and Sun that want to help me out and I'm excited to run some Mercury motors. I haven't had one in a while, but this one is going to be rigged up with the new ProXS. So I'm excited to have Mercury. I'm bored as a sponsor. I know some of y'all are thinking, LFG, the skater. What happened? Well, no more skaters. I've had many skaters. I have run a number of skaters and I will just tell you, I think they're good boats and they have evolved over the years. Here's the deal with skater, which many of you may not know. They're owned by Yamaha, so you will never find, almost never, you will almost never find a skater with a Mercury motor on it. If you do, that is referred to as an east Texas unicorn and they are extremely rare. Go ahead and just make a wish. It's like a shooting star. You'll probably win your next best tournament if you see one. I'm about to walk in here and we're going to see the brand new boat and it's also got new accessories on it that I don't really know. So we're going to take it out on the water today, get her fired up and then try out the new toys. I'm very excited to try out the Panoptix. Not really try out because y'all, I just got to use it for the first time up at the Great Lakes Game Changer. So this boat has it. I can't wait to fire it up and track them down. Cole, you're the first one in the driver's seat of the Silver Bullet. I've seen you around here a bunch, dude. Like, you're a bass fishing fiend. So uh, you want to give me the rundown? Yeah, so this thing is a, I was at 220 Phoenix. We have the Garmin Graphs on here, front and back. We have the uh, what is it? Alice 12 inch jack plate? Yeah. Alice 12 inch jack plate. We got the hot foot down here. Also running with the Mercury Pro XS250 power pole blades on it. Nicely done. Love it, man. I hope you have some Mondos. That is right. Cole, you really know. I would say you have a future in this industry for sure. The way you just settle that by just sitting down and just spilling it. So well done, my friend. That was well put. I don't know if I need to say anything else. I'm going to get it popping. I'm going to get it popping out on the waters. Y'all, I've got the hard dose of Texas reality coming back here from fishing the Great Lakes being, you know, 55 degree mornings, 78 degree days, maybe 80, and then come back here. It's like boom, 90. It's 7 a.m. We just pulled this thing out in the sun and it's a whole different bird, if you will. It's like it just spread its wings, opened up that flat gray. This is the man that designed it, Fane. This boat, dude, you did a great job. The silver bullet, truly living up to expectations here. How's boat salesmen this year with everything? Best year we've ever had so far. Not a problem. Last month, record-breaking month for Fun and Sun last month. You just heard Fane say, record year or record month. The corona thing has just, it's got everybody fishing. Honestly, it's been great for the industry. I know it's terrible. The more people fishing, the better. You know what I'm saying? The more danglers out there, the more the more our little world of fishing just ignites, turns on. Gonna put a little fuel in there. I'm excited to hear how it sounds. 24 pitch crop, that's a lot of torque. That's a lot of getting out of the hole. And they say this thing runs like a scalded dog. Hey, howdy. It is a certified Texas steamer out here today, ladies and gentlemen. So just got the golf cart, got a bunch of the tackle in here and we're gonna start transferring over. It's time. Life jackets, all that good stuff. Can't forget that. Can't forget the jackets. Don't forget your throwable and your rope, all that stuff. The flat gray mixed with the pinstripe black and then the silver coming through looks really cool. Obviously it matches the motor. It's just sick. Time lapse of transferring tackle and let's get this motor started and wing. Engine's dirty. Engine's dirty sounding. What did old Tim Allen used to say? Home improvement show. I grew up with Hal Louia. Thank you, Tim Allen. Go ahead and smash that like button. You know what I'm talking about right there. That just power. Feels good. So shiny. So shiny. There's something about a shiny object that sounds just mean, muscly and goes fast. The drain plugs way up underneath. I don't have the drain plug situation with the the the OS moment. Drain plug situation got manually do it. So I probably won't be taking my drain plug out nearly as much on this boat. What was that? Yeah, I got another thing. There was one other thing. To spark my memory, I'm just going to get it up on pad. I need to break in this motor. I'm really not going to idle too much though. I'm not going to fish too much. If I turn on the graph and I started looking at the pan optics, I'm going to get lost. I really need to like seal the rings on this thing, get the pistons hot, get it broken in. So just go ahead and just rip it around for a little while before I do much idling. So let's just go ahead and do that. First impressions? Yep. I like it. Just went ahead and did her. You know, I mean, if she's going to break, she's going to break on that first try, right? Not just kidding. Read your manuals, do your thing, but I just like to hit the gas hard. The organization is way better on the new Silver Bullet here. We have a sliding adjustable tray. This goes up and down. I've got it separated right now into, you know, jigs, plastics. I've got all the cranks and all that up there. You know, you got your like a mini day box in that sliding situation. You put your money bags full of your good and baits on the sides right here and you're good to go. Love that aspect of it. Oh, and it also has one of these little foam dealies. That seems like a small deal, but I mean, I throw jigs and spinnerbaits a lot and they're kind of hard to store. The jigs aren't to store. It's really just a spinnerbaits, but hanging them up really helps, honestly does. Just the overall layout, little things that are considered, I think are better than the skitter, I have to say. The net is actually up under here. It's up under there. I like the old traditional rod box. We're going back to carpet in here. I like the carpet better, to be honest with you. I didn't like the drainage in my last boat. Things got pretty crusty. You still got to let this boat dry out too and it doesn't have the dry dock. Doesn't have the fans that run through. So that's a downgrade, but I just like the organization. I can get a lot more rods in how that rod rack is in there. I just like it better. It's a single one. And then you're pretty much just open to store whatever in all these other boxes. So they're deep. It's good. I like the organization. Seats are great. I really like the center console. The center console allows you to store things in here. You know, your phone, your wallet, things like that. And it's also got little storages, little things like this. We've got your die. I got your oils. That's what I put in there. Just little things, you know, just little hook, whatever. This whole entire passenger rod box opens up. So you can open that store stuff and that. And of course, you've got storage boxes back here. This is all the same. This actually has five batteries in it, y'all. There's five batteries. And it's kind of hard to see back here, but trust me, there's five in there. So there's one just for running the electronics. These big old grass they make nowadays. They suck a lot of power. So one is just for the motor itself. And the other one is for power poles and electronics, stuff like that. You know, we got the power pole blades on there. Look at sick. Look how nasty that motor is, just the reflection off the water. I'm not used to having a black motor without a cover. So that's pretty solid right there. I'm going to have to keep that thing clean. Hydraulic jack plate on this one too. I missed that two boats ago. I had a hydraulic jack plate. I really like that. And one of the guys there that was running one of these, he had the exact same thing. He said, best performance is that really two and a half, you know, what you get up on pads. So that's where I'm keeping it. I don't think the handling is as good as the last silver bullet, you know, the Skeeter. I like the handling, feel more comfortable with that handling. I'm used to that style. I mean, that's like switching from Porsche to Ferrari. There's things that are different. And then if you don't know what China walking is, when you get really fast, we're talking this boat goes fast like 75. You know, Skeeter was like low 70s on a good day. But it'll start doing this right here, this number, like kind of, kind of walking on you. And that gets a little squirrely. It feels like you could lose control. And so you really have to, you know, you got to have some motor time. You got to know how to drive that thing. Fortunately, I got a little experience with it. Oh, here's one of the things I didn't like. Besides the drain plug being up in 10 buck to on the butt crack of the boat over there. Little boo boo here. I don't like this. I don't, I don't like the attachments right here. I would have hoped they'd been over here so that, you know, when you're having to lift up your box, you know, you got issues, you got issues going on. So I'm going to get on the motor and break it in a little bit more before I start dabbling with the electronics. By the way, I want to do this right now and get spending a little time with it. Because tomorrow I'm leaving for a trip, me and Stephanie. It is our five year anniversary, y'all. A lot of y'all have been here since the whole time, since the beginning, five years. So thank you guys for hanging around. We met around water. My life has been around water. Steph loves the water, too. And we're not taking Amy with us. It's just going to be me and Steph. So we're going to take the boat and we're going to have a good time out there on the water. She has not fished with me in over a year or so. But anyway, we're going to get a little dangle time together, which has been a rare occasion over these last few years. Been busy, y'all. Been busy. Okay, let's fire her up again and just take a listen from right here in this seat. When it hits, it's dirty. It is just dirty. Okay, I'm going to put the old LJ on. We're going to get to rip it. Let's drive totally different. For any of you that are curious, these are the top two boat brands, I would say right now, that get sold the most. This boat right here, great on top speed, great on tackle organization. I should rate these things. Taking waves, I would give it like a seven, you know. It just, it doesn't take them like that, that FXR. Now the FX, a little bit different story, but FXR took the waves really, really well. The Skeeter's more like driving a high speed pontoon, to be honest with you. It's got those sponsors in the back. There's just a lot more control, whereas this boat, it's just, it's just more visceral. You hit a wave, little side chop, you're, you know, the boat's going to the side. You got that more V action, and it is fast. The motor, the whole shot is okay. And then when you get like mid range, and you hit it, it's like, boom. Like, I want to say this thing is a V8. I could be lying. If someone's out there that knows, just viscerate me in the comments. But I think this is a V8. It even sounds like a V8. It's just dirty. Top speed is crazy, even with that 24 pitch prop. The boat's going to take a little getting used to, but it's not terrible. It's really, it's not bad. It's just, it's just different. These are different boats. I will say this one is, I think, better laid out for the tournament angler. Like, just the way the boat sets up, it's a little bit better for the tournament angler. If you know, if you know how to drive a boat, and you know what you're doing, and you like to go fast, I think this is your boat. I have not even talked about the electronics. I have not even talked about the trolling motor. I've never even put this trolling motor in the water. I don't even know how to use it. Garmin up until, you know, these last couple years, I thought all they did was make navigational devices, watches, and big old electronic units for offshore boats. But turns out they make just about everything. This hair's crazy, y'all. Haven't got a haircut since quarantine. And I don't think I'm going to. Steph really likes it. I'm kind of digging it, to be honest with you. You know, long hair. Don't care. Fish, just be aware. Okay, folks. Now I just want to play with the pan optics. Look at these fish off to my right. Look how many there are. Look at this. Look what is going on here. This is dang near cheating. Or if they don't buy it, it's just called frustration. Oh, but I'm already hooked up. So that's not what's happening. Oh my, what do we got here? Have we failed to hook a daggum? Oh, geez. My goodness, we got the Monde Whiteys out here. I always like to break in a new silver bullet with a good white bass sesh. I really just want to learn these pan optics. Check this out. This is where the pliers and everything go. Kind of concealed up under there, but we'll do. Back in their hole. I can't get the spot lock engaged until I calibrate the remote control. By the way, y'all, this trolling motor, look at the ease. It's smooth. Super smooth. Hyper smooth, I would say. And it's gone. Look, look at the fish swimming up out of the school. Oh my gosh. This is incredible. I've heard that the pan optics for crappie fishing is, is so, so effective. I see why I got to do this a little bit for walleye. Spoiler alert on the trip. And I'm doing it right here. I'm just messing around with colors and whatnot and literally trying to learn this thing. See if we can see that fish go back down. So you can see fish swimming here. There's one coming up. That is right below the boat. So where is my lure? That's what I want to see is where is my lure? This pan optics unit is the shizzy. And check this out. When I lift up the trolling motor, watch this. It just assumes the position. That is the easiest thing ever. So there's no like getting it straight with the foot. This is the transducer, which I can adjust outward or straight down, just kind of depending. So I'm going to adjust it like that and see what happens. See if I can get my straight down performance. Oh, look at these fish right here. Gosh, look at the activity now. So I just said where I can see more straight down. Oh my gosh, you can see them coming up. This is and they're literally coming up right in front of the boat though. Look at that. Look at that. This is insane. Look at them now. We're covered up. Got him covered up in their juices. Look behind me. They're surfacing. This is just not even fair. It's like the silver bullet is being crescent with a school of white bass right now. They're coming towards the vessel in droves. Look at what's going on. Here's the school of fish. Okay. I'm going to drop my lure down. Okay. There it goes. There it is. My spoon is tiny. Remember, watch these fish come up for it. They're coming up. They're coming up. They're following that fish because you've got my lure. Unbelievable. Oh my gosh. The education that you can attain by just watching this screen while you're fishing is next level. Next level. It is, I would have to say, worth the money just to learn. You could go back to regular sonar and still be effective, but you're learning how these fish are behaving. You're going to pick up so much I can already tell. This is just outstanding. Look at the fish coming up right now. Look at the fish coming up. I am bum-fuzzled by this. It feels when you're on this panoptic system, it feels like you're, it's like God-like powers and you're looking out over the souls of the lake, except they're fish down there and you're taking them up to heaven and you're bringing them in the silver bullet. It is magical. I'm going to learn so much from this thing. I'm so excited. I know I'm late to the party on this. There's a ton of YouTube's videos about it. If you guys want to watch, learn, I have literally done that. That's how I learned it was so good for crappie and other stuff, but I'm going to abandon my white bass here for a minute. I'm going to go look at some other rock piles and things and see if we can get a bass on the line. Just kind of look and I'm going to take it in. I'm going to end on the great note here, just discovering that. Okay, Chesty was loose. Oh, got a bass on. I literally, this is the first time this has ever happened, but I got stopped by a police officer. He's right over there checking those folks and he had to go through my boat. Literally brand new. Let's get this guy up in your first, first bass in the new boat, baby. Yes. Caught up on that big old drag and drop at seven inches. All right, buddy, let's get you on hook. I know it's hot. Put you back in the waters. That was my second cast, second bass cast. Didn't have to go, probably. I literally had to, I had to break out all my life jackets. I had to do my horn. Ironically, I was checked like zero times in that other boat. First day out in this one, wow, bam. Did I say drag and drop a second ago? That's where my mind is. I just came from the Great Lakes where the drop shotting was key. I meant to say slim chic. This is the seven incher. This is the big boy here. There's a rock drop off. There's some fish on top of it. It's a good crankbait spot, it looks like. You guys legal? Did you get a ticket? Good deal. I am. Yeah, I've just got a new boat, so I'm trying it out. Are you recording video? Yeah. I was just catching a fish while you guys were getting checked. That's a short guy. Appreciate you, man. Well, hey, good luck, guys. Take it easy. Got some fishing freaks on the lake, dude. I'm just the energy already in this boat. It's hot. Oh, man, I felt it going in the crevasses. The deep crevasses in there, man. That's where I had that other one. I got stuck and then I got it unstuck and then one ate it. I got one bass and a bunch of white bass. Yeah, a bunch of them. You guys going after white bass? That's the same thing. Yeah. All right. I mean, it's far. It's like a couple of hundred yards off the shore. Drop it down, reel it up a couple cranks, jig it. I'm telling you every time. Yeah, here. Listen, follow me seriously. I'll go slow. This looks like a father-son duo behind me. I'm going to put them on the white bass. Catch them both. Show these boys where they're at. I want to see you hook one now. Fish on. I'm telling you, they're big too. Look at that. Look at the size of them things. Yeah, like five hours ago. You got to break it in right. There you go. Hey, watch them come up to the top too. Did you see that troll motor, guys? How cool is that? You guys have fun? Yeah, take it off. I'm leaving them for you. We have launched the boat today. We've run into fishing freaks. We've discovered greatness with the pan optics. It's called white bass. It's called a large mouth. We got checked by a police officer. It's been a lot. It's been a lot this happened. Just listen to the girth on this bad boy. It's actually quieter when you get it up on pad and it's more gurgling and deep when it's in the idle. It's just nasty. I like it. Okay. I think I might just take it in. I'm getting this severely sunburned. We got a lot of fishing to do later this week with OSG going after crappie bass. You name it. We'll tackle the whole way to the new boat y'all. So thank you for tuning in today. I feel blessed to be in this industry just working in it and this is man literally living the dream. So thank you for supporting me. Thank you for watching this channel and I love you guys. God bless you. I'll see you soon.