Ups and downs with a boat.

[WDH]

DanG, now I want some fried fish .  

[newoodguy78]

Is that a white perch?

[YellowHammer]

Looks like a small striped bass to me.  I think up Nawth there call them white bass. The fact that the striped lines down the side are not broken indicates its not a genetic or stocked hybrid.  They are decent to eat, but have a strip of red meat that's a little strong. 

[firefighter ontheside]

This is a white bass, different from a striped bass, but related.  Some lakes up here have a hybrid of the two known as a wiper or hybrid striper.  Those get upto about 15 lbs. White bass max our at about 3 lbs.

[Southside]

Ice fishing once as a lad we landed a bunch of Whitefish.  Commenced to eating them over a fire right there on the shore of the lake and could not understand why they were so bony compared to how they ususally were.   Turned out they were suckers, about the size of that bass.  Aside from the bones they were pretty good actually.  

[YellowHammer]

You guys have those species we don't see much of.  That's a nicely rigged, and good looking boat.

[firefighter ontheside]

I've never eaten sucker or whitefish.  I have caught them both though. 

Thanks YH.  We are very happy with this boat.  I will try to remember to take a better pic of the boat tomorrow.  Gonna try to fish the morning and then head home.  Have to get on the road before the bad weather starts.

[Southside]

Sadly I can't make any of the same claims.   :D

[WDH]

Just a sucker for suckers :D.

[firefighter ontheside]

I forgot to take a better picture of the boat.  This morning we fished from 8 til about 10:30.  It was very windy and the storms were threatening.  There is a high risk of damaging storms across the whole state of MO tonight.  I caught a nice largemouth right outside the mouth of the marina and then a few smaller smallmouth bass.  Sean caught the only walleye of the trip and his first ever.  He was very excited.

 

 

[YellowHammer]

Nice.  The weather does look threatening.

[newoodguy78]

Those walleyes can be finicky to catch but man do they eat good.

[WDH]

One of the top three very best fish meals that I ever had was fried walleye in Dryden Ontario.  

[firefighter ontheside]

One of the top three very best fish meals that I ever had was fried walleye in Dryden Ontario.  

Eagle Lake?  I've caught and eaten a lot of walleyes on Eagle Lake near Dryden.

[WDH]

Not sure.  The place is covered in lakes. 

[firefighter ontheside]

True.  There are a lot of lakes.  

[caveman]

Things happen but maintenance is paramount.  

This quote resonates with me, especially with a boat.  Stuff happens.  I have neglected my boat for over a year (we have had other irons in the fire).  Two weekends ago, after a day of sawing, I convinced JMoore to help me get it out of my shop.  It has been parked there without moving since John and his family used it LAST July.  To my surprise, it fired up and ran great and started on both batteries.  Evidently, I had the battery maintainer only charging one and left the battery switch left to both when I turned it off.  We did not have time to take it to a lake and run it.  Fast forward two weekends (I was gone 11 of 14 of those days with work) and it was Pop's birthday and time for my wife and me to leave on our 30th anniversary trip.  

On Saturday, my Dad's birthday, my wife took a Covid test at the Doc in a Box and it was positive.  We stayed away from my folks and were debating whether to go to Anna Maria Island for a few days or stay home.  Well, Sunday afternoon we decided to go.  I moved a recently acquired table saw, a JD Gator and a mower and we were able to extract the boat from the shop.  After an uneventful drive to the island, other than my trucks clutch started slipping when ascending overpasses at 70 mph.  I just eased off of the throttle and babied it.  After arriving at AMI, we unloaded our groceries and clothes at the house, and I decided to start the boat engine on the hose rather than being "that guy" at the ramp whose boat won't start.  To my surprise, the engine just clicked when I hit the key.  Drop the trailer in the yard and head to Cortez Walmart to buy a battery.  I installed the new battery and it started right up.  

We headed to the ramp, five minutes or so away and all was well.  My wife remembered how to get through my truck's shift pattern and managed not to take out any stop signs or pedestrians on the way back to the house.  I turned on both the stand alone GPS (old Garmin 3210) and the newer Garmin combo machine and checked both livewell pumps.  Only one livewell pump turned on and the stand alone GPS would not locate any satellites.  The motor ran well and it was good to be on the water again after such a long time.  I could not detect any problems with the wiring on the GPS or the switch for the offending pump.  The console access hatch is completely inadequate for a normal sized adult human.

I brought new trailer bunk brackets to install that I had purchased a year or so ago.  My wife was not feeling incredibly well, and I was starting to suspect I was coming down with C-19 for the second time in 2022 so I decided to drink a few foamy waters and replace the trailer bunk mounts.  It went pretty well but they were not direct replacements of what I had so new holes had to be drilled in the bunks.

We did not fish at all (We celebrated our Covid anniversary sipping Nyquil for a few days) but did take the boat out on a few short rides in Tampa Bay and Gulf.  I would not have ventured too far with the boat not being in top shape.  We headed home late Wednesday evening; again, babying the clutch for 80 miles.  Yesterday, I wedged myself into the console and discovered a GPS antennae wire that had broken at the heat shrink connection.  It was soldered, heat shrunk and the GPS functions properly now.  A new pump has been ordered.  Both of the offending batteries have been charged and seem to be holding.  A clutch kit and fuel bowl O-ring replacement kit for the truck's engine has been ordered (diesel dripping on a clutch disc will ruin even expensive Southbend clutches).  

All in all, it was not a bad week.  On a side note, my son in law went out 100 miles in the Gulf today and they caught some good grouper and red snapper.


 

 
I still need to order new aluminum crossmembers for the trailer. 
 

 

[YellowHammer]

That's a fact, we also just came back from a great trip to the gulf.  We had the boat out last Fall and we did a "basic" overhaul and PM just before the trip.  Saltwater boats are nothing like freshwater boats, because saltwater and electricity is like battery acid to both boat trailers and boats.  

So we started going through it and we replaced and fixed: 4 fuel filters, 2 oil filters, 3 gallons of oil, lower unit lube drain and replace, replaced 8 spark plugs with anti sieve, replaced 8 high pressure fuel injectors, replaced a raw water wash down switch and breaker, did two water pump rebuilds, replaced the radio, fixed the head (toilet) pump, replaced secondary bilge pump, found a broken wire, fixed a spray nozzle, replaced a bow light, and put new flares and fire extinguisher in the boat. Then we went on vacation and we were tired before we started.  

Everything was working when we put it away last fall. 

[firefighter ontheside]

Yeah, we gotta take the bad with the good, don't we.  Since I made the original post, our boat has gone on 2 trips to Canada.  Mom and dad took it in May and had trouble and weren't able to really use it.  Brought it home and into the shop to have 2 injectors need to be cleaned.  I took it back to Canada the following week and it was not running well again.  Luckily I took new injectors with me and ended up putting them in.  Took it back out on the water and it still had a problem.  The boat would not get up to speed and the RPM gauge was maxed out.  Brought it back to the dock and talked it over with the guy who owns the lodge and he suggested that the only way the RPMs would get that high was if the prop was slipping.  It had a brand new prop on it.  I took the old/spare prop out of the compartment and installed it on the boat.  Boat ran great.  Turned out that the brand new prop had a bad rubber bushing and was slipping.  Boat worked great for the rest of my trip.

[Southside]

Man y'all should just get rid of those boats and get some farm equipment instead.  About the same frequency of issues and at least you get to write off all of those expensive parts.   :D

[gspren]

We have been "downsizing" from the farm to a smaller property and now I may downsize my boats. I have a 24' Key West and a 15' skiff and I'm thinking about crossing the ocean off my destinations and get a Boston Whaler 170 Montauk to replace both current boats. That would be crabbing in very protected water and fishing in bays. Something to think about.

[SawyerTed]

A boat is among the machines you can put away in good order, only to find it broke sitting in storage. 

[rusticretreater]

I once heard an old man say the two best days of owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.

[YellowHammer]

There is no doubt that a boat, especially a saltwater boat, is high load.  However, some of the most memorable sights and experiences in my life were from a boat.  

Seeing a momma porpose with a baby so small she was having to hold it up on her pec fin so that it could breath, and she kept near the boat, maybe 10 feet away.  

Seeing a huge mako shark from about 2 feet away, it looking up at me as I was leaning over the gunnel, exactly like the classic scene from Jaws, with an eye so big it looked like a baseball.

One of my favorites is taking a person out on the ocean whose never been out of sight of land, and watching their face as the horizon disappears.

Or the bobcat that was swimming across the lake in the morning fog while I was fishing, and he decided my bass boat was a great place to take a breather.

Or the numerous people I have literally rescued, pulled from the water, with the thought that if I hadn't been there, they may have died.

    

  

[stavebuyer]

No good for off-shore fishing; but a nice Kayak requires no fuel, insurance, and very little upkeep and will get you to where most of the fish are and where the jet skis are not.

8)