Tips, Reports, & a Blog
Here I will share some fishing tips, report on what's hot and where, and blog about my fishing. Check in often.
August 29 - Matt and I talked about Oneida this weekend a bit. He talked to a buddy who lives in Connecticut that used to fish Oneida quite a bit and actually has won a Bassmaster on Oneida before. He gave Matt some ideas, and Matt is supposed to talk to some more people to see what all he can learn before we go Friday. I ordered my Oneida map today as well. Hopefully that gets here in a day or so. I went into Dave's today and had then get me some lower unit fluid. I'm supposed to change the lower unit fluid in my new lower unit after 10 hours of break in. Not sure if I have eclipsed 10 hours or not, but I'm darn close if I haven't. So I will change that and do the spark plugs tomorrow night. Then I have to get the boat completely ready to go tomorrow night. I have to work every day and teach every night after tomorrow until we leave Friday morning. So tomorrow it has to be.
August 28 - No fishy stuff today. Just worked all day, then grabbed a quick nap and played a doubleheader.
August 27 - Kind of a recovery day. I parked the boat in the sunshine and opened everything up to make sure everything that might have been wet could get good and dry. I let it sit in the sun all day. We rode up to Big Rapids so Amber could go to the big JC Penney sale, so I went to Autozone and got new spark plugs for the boat. Now that all of the extra oil should be out of the gas tank, I figured I should change plugs, since the other ones have been run a little rich since they were new. Got home and cleaned up the garage a bit and moved the race car trailer over so I could put the boat in the garage as well. Time to chill out and watch some Lions football.
August 26 - Up early to clean out the room and load the truck up. Then I had to meet Bumstead at the ramp early this morning, so we had time to get him in the boat and ready for launch. He said they call him Bummer. That's fitting, cuz qnyone who gets stuck fishing with me probably thinks it's a bummer. Go time came and off we went. We went to west side of Pelee island and got in a group of about 10 boats. There just wasn't much going on there. People were catching some, but not like I hoped. I got 3 and Bummer got 1. One of mine was 4 pounds, but the other 2 were peanuts. I need all 4 pounders. I gave up on that area finally, and headed for another spot I didn't get to fish yesterday. Bummer wanted to try an area on the way so we went to try that. It was a huge area with scattered grass and a little rock. I'm sure it can be a good area, but we didn't have time today to fish all around to try to find where they were right now. We moved onto the spot I wanted to fish. Nothing. So after a half hour, we went back to where I caught them yesterday. After about an hour of nothing there, I decided to go try for largemouth. That guy told us about that largemouth spot that has never let him down in 30 years. Just had to go in there and fish by the willow trees. So I went in there but didn't find much for willow trees. Million dollar homes and yachts yes, willow trees no. There was seawalls and dock posts and little rip rap banks. There was a little island that had a couple willow trees on it. By little, I'm talking 30 feet by 20 feet. There were branches and stuff overhanging the water and in the water all around it. Of course all of my largemouth stuff was in the truck. I started throwing a little senko and got a 4 pound largemouth. No more time and no more fish. On the way back out of the area, I saw what looked like a bunch of willow trees about a mile away at the very back of this big open area with nothing around. I bet that's where I was supposed to go. Oh well. Maybe next time. We got back and my 4 went 11 something. Matt sent me a text yesterday saying good job and that Clara was rooting for me. So I made sure I said Hi to Clara and Hudson and told them thanks for rooting for me on stage, but apparently the feed went bad just before I weighed in so they didn;t get to see me. Figures. After a decent start, today was absolutely crushing. I dropped to 66th place. Carroll had 2 and Don had 10 more pounds. One more chance this year to get some respect back for myself. Matt and I are going to Ney York Friday to practice Oneida Satuday and Sunday. I sure hope it pays off. I need to make the cut in New York to save my season. I said my goodbyes and we'll see ya in New Yorks and hit the road. All across the tollroad going east were hundreds of utlilty trucks. Power trucks and tree trucks. Huge convoys, one after another. All kinds of different companies from I have no idea where all. I'm assuming they are headed to get ready for the hurricane. Kinda cool to see how they all get together to help each other out. I stopped at Wonderland and got some oil since I was passing through anyways and I wasn't sure if I had any left at home. I made it home about 10:10 and that was the end of another week of professional bass fishing. Tomorrow is a day to get everything back in order form the trip and back to reality for a few days.
August 25 – The alarm went off way too early today. Mark met me here at the hotel and we all rode to the ramp together. The wind wsa blowing, but you never know how bad it will be until you actually get out there. We did the normal tournament morning routine and went through boat check and away we went. My plan was about 32 miles away. The harbor was rough. Leaving the harbor was rougher. I noticed my 1197 was moving weird and realized that one of the knobs was missing. I’m sure I never tightened it. I was getting everything ready walking down the road to the ramp this morning and I must have tightened one side and it was time to pull ahead and I never went back and tightened that one. So I just took it off and had Mark hold it while we were running. Hitting the stretch of open water between Sandusky and Kelly’s Island was stupid rough. So rough in fact, that I said forget it, and stopped about 25 miles short of my planned destination. The wind was out of the northwest, and we were protected somewhat on the east side of Kelly’s. If we ran north of Kelly’s we had a whole bunch more open water until we got to Middle and Pelee Islands. I’m sure we could have made it, but it’s just not worth it to me to beat myself and all of my stuff to death to catch a few slimy little fish. I’d never fished by Kelly’s Island before. So I just took it like a practice day. I looked for stuff that looked like it should be fishy and fished it. I got a keeper pretty quick drop shotting a Nemesis Baits goby. Number 2 came pretty quick as well. We ended up just drifting the area over and over and over. After a few hours without any bass, I got bored and ran to the NE point of the island and made 2 drifts there. Nothing doing, so we went back to where we were earlier. I got my 2 biggest fish after we returned. I ended up with a limit. Along with couldless hundreds of pounds of sheephead and half a dozen catfish. Yeah, we caught more catfish. Big ones, too. We headed back and the return trip was fairly uneventful. It had calmed down a lot and we stopped a few times to check on the fish and to top off the livewells. My limit went 17 pounds exactly. I’m pretty happy with that. Especially since I had never fished that area. I’m inside check range, and still have a shot to make the top 12 cut for Saturday. Carroll and Don both also had limits. We are all happy with today. That’s good for a change. I went to the service yard to get a new knob for the 1197. When we got back to the room to retie and get ready for morning, I found the knob was too small. So one we got everything ready, we went back to the service yard on the way to pick up Carroll for dinner. I showed it to him and he told me it was too small. Really? So he gave me a pair of the right ones and told me to keep the other one as a spare for my 997. He also gave me a high speed transducer for my Humminbird and the Y cable to tie into my side imaging and the epoxy to epoxy the new transducer into the hull with. That was cool. He gave Don one as well. He is getting a Miller Lite token of appreciation for his thoughts. Tomorrow will be a challenge, no doubt. Hopefully my partner concerns are unfounded, and I will be able to catch them good. Time to get some rest and go get ‘em again tomorrow. I’m gonna try to go to Pelee again. Hopefully the weather cooperates a little better tomorrow.
August 24 – Well, the wind was blowing and the parking lot was wet, so we didn’t go fishing today. Carroll called to see if we went, cuz he didn’t either. Don and I went and got him then went to breakfast. Then to Dick’s, then to the ramp to see what the guy there was selling, then to Home Depot to get screws and tape to fix my net, then back to drop Carroll off to his boat so he could bring it to the service yard, then back to the ramp to pick up the weights the guy was gonna pour for Don. The ramp was empty. There were lots of people at the service yard though, so I just went around BSing with everyone. The best part of these tournaments is still just talking to everyone. We finally headed back to our room to get everything ready for tomorrow. I tied up my rods for tomorrow, made sure everything tightenable anywhere on the boat was tight, and covered the boat back up. Tonight’s forecast is for severe storms with strong winds and hail. So I strapped the cover down good. We went and picked Carroll back up and headed for the meeting. That turned out to be about a 2 hour BS session before the meeting, cuz that’s just what I do best. There are 124 boats. I got 109, Carroll got 122 and John got 124. I’m Ok with 109, cuz I don’t have to be back til 4:20 which means I get an extra hour and 20 minutes to fish over the first flight. My partner is from Minnesota and seems like a nice guy. We went to get some dinner then we played raid Eric’s drop shot box. Carroll needed some drop shot hooks and wanted some gobies. So we got him what he thought he needed, took him back to hotel and called it a day. Good luck to everyone tomorrow.
August 23 – Don made it to town about 6 this morning. We got his stuff loaded up and we headed out. We went down and launched at Vermilion, so we could check out the stuff down there. We started out right in front of the harbor and I hooked up on about my second cast. Sheephead. Don then caught one right away too. No more bites there. So we headed west and tried about 10 different spots. And never caught another fish. We went back to the ramp about noon and headed back for Sandusky. Grabbed some lunch and topped off the gas tank on the way. I stopped into the service yard when we got back. I needed my shift linkage adjusted and my Interlink still isn’t working. So the Humminbird guy put a new Interlink in and the Yamaha guy adjusted my shift linkage. These service guys that come to these tournaments to help us out and make sure we stay on the water are awesome guys and do an incredible job. We ran into John Hempel at the ramp and he gave us something to try. So we made a 32 mile run to north of Pelee Island to try some stuff. We ran over a few things I decided I wanted to stop and investigate on the way back. I’m not sure we found exactly what we were supposed to find out there, but we did find 4 little rough patches there. I caught a few sheephead and lost one smallie after I saw it was a bass at least. It was starting to get late, and it was starting to get rougher than I like it. We headed back for Pelee to check out those other spots we ran over. We found some nice rocky areas, but like always, caught nothing but sheephead. The wind was coming from the SE and the farther we went, the worse it got. It got bad. Like way bad. When we got back to Kelly’s Island, we went around the north end to be able to run down the west side of it to be out of the wind. It is a lot farther, but the lake was getting huge. Huge is bad. Some of the worst I’ve been in. Once we got to the south end of Kelly’s, we ran straight across to Marblehead. It was a fairly short stretch and was pretty protected. We got back just before dark. I sure wish we wouldn’t have stayed out there quite so long. Tomorrow’s forcast is brutal winds, so I’m not even setting the alarm clock, cuz it sounds like fishing is out of the question.
August 22 – Carroll picked me up from my room about 6:10. We grabbed some gas and snacks and headed for the lake. We launched just after daylight. He looked at me funny when I put on my rainsuit and hood and all that. The sky was perfectly clear, yet I was donning raingear. Although he had no idea why, he decided to put his on too. Good thing, because before we made it out of the harbor, we were soaked. The waves were big and the wind was blowing. The idea of me showing Carroll some of Canada and getting him a Canadian license were totally out of the question. We went around the end of the breakwall to get out of the wind and waves. We saw some rocks on the graph and started fishing. Carroll hooked up right away. With a catfish. In Lake Erie. A catfish. I’ve been fishing Lake Erie since 1998 and remember catching one and he gets one on the first cast. No more bites there. I told Carroll how we could hide behind this island and that island and not have too much open water to traverse. We decided to give it a go. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad. We fished by Kelly’s Island basslessly, and decided to head for Pelee Island. That’s where we were gonna get an Ontario license for Carroll. We called Canada to let them know we were coming and thet said we had to call back once we were in Canada. So we drove a little farther and called back. It was quick and painless. The lake had really laid down by now. You couldn’t go fast, but you could get where you needed to go fairly comfortably. We went to Pelee and got the license. Then we fished some stuff around Pelee. I caught a ton of sheephead and Carroll caught 2 more catfish. Yes, that made 3 Lake Erie catfish in one day. 2 more than I have ever caught. We did catch a few bass. All on a dropshot. Acouple nice ones, but we still have a lot of work to do if we think we’re gonna do well. Tomorrow, my plan is to go east and launch by Lorain. I’ve never been down there, but wanna check it out. Don will be here in the morning, so he will be fishing with me and staying with me the rest of the week. We got of the water about 7:30. We had an absolute ball today. Even though we are enemies starting Thursday. We went straight to dinner with some buddies from Tennessee and Baltimore, then Carroll dropped me off at the room a little before 10. Back at it in the morning to find the big girls.
August 21 – I finished the trek to Sandusky this morning and loaded the truck and boat with gas. I went to Walmart to get a fishing license. The sporting goods counter was nothing but Ohio State stuff. Mike McClelland was there to get his license as well. The guy working the counter told Mike he had to do an Arkansas Pig Souey before he could have his license. The guy with Mike was from Oklahoma, but he already had his license so he didn’t have to do anything to get it. We had some fun with it. Mike finally got his license and they were off. I thought I should pretend to be a Michigan fan for a few minutes. I figured the only thing that a Buckeye fan would hate more than a Wolverine fan would be an NCAA investigator. I couldn’t pull that off, so I stuck with Michigan. Paul the counter guy had a few tattoos, so I had to make some comments about that, too, being an OSU guy and all. I planned to drop shot a lot down here, and I knew I needed some drop shot weights. Walmart didn’t have any. I figured there must be a bait shop around somewhere. On the way towards the lake, I spied a Dick’s. That will work. I went in and got all the heavy drop shot weights they had. All 20 of them. They were all on clearance for 98 cents, so there were only 5 four packs left. But I got them. I headed towards the water. I had no idea where the ramp was, so I just followed the “Historic Waterfront” signs. I eventually ran into the ramp. While I was getting the boat ready, John Hempel pulled in. We chatted and joked and laughed for a bit. I finally took off, heading I had no idea where or how to get there. The ramp was in a bay in a bay. Sandusky Bay is about the size of Muskegon Lake. It’s big. I found my way out and headed for Kelly’s Island. No bites there. I sat there for a bit and punched in all the waypoints I had compiled on my sheet. Then I just started running around trying stuff and fishing here and there. I caught my share of sheephead and one real good smallmouth. I was on the east side of Pelee Island when I noticed what appeared to be a storm coming. I decided I had had enough for one day. I ran back and only got a little bit wet. Carroll was just getting back the same time I was. By the time we got our boats out, it was getting sunny once again. So much for the storm I was scared of. Oh well. We decided a big steak was in order. So we went and found one. While we were eating, we decided that we would fish together tomorrow. Yeah, I’m going fishing with the enemy. We’re going to Canada to try to get him a Canadian license and to show him some stuff. B.A.S.S. told him he was so far down the co-angler waiting list that the only way he was getting into this tournament was to go as a pro. So he did. So I’m gonna try to help him out. Hopefully we don’t get captured by Canada. I’m sure we will have a ball, no matter what. We definitely have fun together. After we ate, I went back and got my stuff around to co-angle tomorrow. My Humminbirds are not recognizing my Interlink. That’s a problem. Last night at Brian’s, I hooked his 798 up to my wires, so he could download his waypoints onto a chip to load into Shawn’s unit. When I first turned, it on, it said “Reprogramming Interlink.” Then it said it wasn’t connected and now mine won’t recognize it either. I took it out and made sure it was all hooked up right and put it back, so hopefully now it will work. If not, I can always load the stuff I either entered or found onto a chip and load them onto the other one. Off to bed now, to find the giants tomorrow.
August 20 – I didn’t get home until about 1 this morning, so I had a bunch of stuff to do this morning before I could leave. I had to reload the boat. Every rod and reel, and bait, and scent, and accessory, and scale and cull floats and beam, and life jacket, and spare prop and anchor, and tool box and ropes and drift socks, and paperwork and everything you can ever imagine would ever go in a boat. That took quite awhile. Once that was done, I had to unhook the car trailer and switch receivers to pull the boat out of the garage. Then I had to switch receivers again and put the car trailer in the garage. Then I had to take all of the racing related stuff out of the truck and load the truck with all of the necessary fishing related stuff. Then I had to switch receivers again and hook up to the boat. Pack my bags and I’m finally ready. Then it decides to storm, so I decide to wait a bit to take off. I finally hit the road. I had to stop at the office to pick up my list of waypoints that I forgot yesterday. Chuck and I were gonna meet for dinner after I stopped and picked up my Nemesis Baits form Brian’s. I couldn’t find the stuff I wanted at Brian’s, so Chuck and I went to dinner, and then we went back to Brian’s now that he was home and got our stuff. Chuck headed home and I stuck around for awhile to talk fishing and just do what guys do for a bit. I finally headed for Ohio. I made it almost to Sandusky when I decided I had had enough and crashed at a toll road plaza for the night.
August 19 – Driving the race car tonight, so no fishy business. I am leaving for Erie tomorrow, though, for the next Bassmaster.
August 18 – I hurried home after work to get the breakin process started. I put the prop back on and the holehsot plate. I took care of all the tools and garbage that was still scattered all over the boat from last night’s reinstallation project. I originally had planned to do all the wire tie up and neatening, but I decided I could do that on the water while I was someplace burning time at idle RPMs. So I hooked up and headed for Hardy. I filled up with gas and launched under 131. I let it sit and idle while I parked the truck to get good and warm. The first ten minutes were supposed to be at a fast idle. I backed away from the dock and it didn’t go in neutral when I got to neutral. The shift linkage needs to be adjusted so neutral is neutral and not a little fit forward is neutral. I headed down the river for ten minutes at idle. The next 50 minutes were at a max of 3000 RPM varying RMPs often. So I would run a few minutes and idle a minute or so. The no wake zones helped with that plan. Once I got to River Ridge, I went in and got a drink and a snack and let the motor run. I continued the game all the way to the dam. That killed hour number one. It is about 16 miles from 131 to the dam. Now I know that. Hour number 2 was similar to hour number one, but I could run 4000 RPMs instead of 3000. So ran around down by the dam awhile and when I slowed down to idle a few minutes, I worked on tidying up all the wires under the console and in the rod locker. When I got them all done, I ran around a bit more and headed back up the river. Run a little, idle a little. Max of 4000 RPM and varying RPMs often. This is incredibly boring, but it has to be done. I have to race tomorrow night and am leaving for Erie Saturday, so it has to be done tonight. At least the first two hours do. I actually got the second hour finished before I made it back up the river. Hours 3 through 10 allow one minute of WOT, then 10 minutes of 4000. So I tried the one minute of WOT. The boat ran about 65 MPH at 6000 RPM. That was with just me and a bunch of gas in it. No tackle, no partner, no livewell full of water, etc. That speed:RPM ratio is way out of whack, but I’ll wait to see what happens when I get it loaded. It might get better. Hopefully as the motor gets more broke in, it will run better. I’m running the same prop that I got with the boat new, so I don’t think it will be a prop issue. Not unless the new reeds will make that big of a difference. We’ll know for sure in a few weeks I’m sure. I loaded her up and brought her home. Hopefully, I’ll have a little time before I head to the track tomorrow after work to start loading the boat, otherwise I’ll have to do it all Saturday before I leave. I have decided I will do really well in this tournament. The reason is that I have never been so unprepared for anything. The boat motor is not broke in. I have no tackle ready, no rods are ready, I need line still, have done no research, haven’t talked to anyone about fishing down there, I don’t even have a room reserved for the tournament yet. This huge lack of preparation should lead to a great tournament, cuz the times I have prepared to the max, I have sucked. So we’ll try it this way this time. I’ll be back to normal of Oneida. In fact, Matt and I are going to New York to practice over Labor Day to practice.
August 17 – After my meeting in Big Rapids all day, it was boat time. I went to the powdercoat place and picked up the fenders and went to Jeff’s. The boat was sitting there fenderless, but otherwise ready to go. We got the fenders mounted back up and the bunks mounted to the fenders and it was go home time. On the way home, I stopped at the State Farm office in Lakeview so they could take pictures to prove the trailer really was repaired and should be put back on my policy. Not sure what they needed pictures of, since there is no damage and no one has any pictures of the damage in the first place. But I stopped so she could take her two pictures and I was on my way. I was in a hurry to get home, but not in a hurry to get home. I wanted to get everything ready to go, but it’s a huge task to get everything ready to go that I didn’t want to do. But I got home and got started. I had to reinstall everything. Transducers, pucks, mounts, rerun all the wires and switches and everything just like I was starting with a brand new boat. I swore under my breath many times, since none of this was necessary until the miracle change of my boat having no value. That I found out the morning after I spent all night uninstalling and removing everything. Oh well. It is what it is. I kind of started at the back and worked my way forward. I got the rear transducer installed and the rear puck installed. Those wires were gonna need to be pulled up to the unit. Since the Power Pole switch wires also needed to be run, I did them all together. I got the Humminbird wires pulled to where the unit was and hooked them to the unit to make sure everything worked. It did, so I reinstalled the RAM and wire covers, etc and hooked the 1197 all up. One down. I had to get the Power Pole switch wires the rest of the way up front to where the switch was. My trusty tape measure got that job done as well. I put the switch back in, but couldn’t remember which wires went where. I looked that up on the computer and wired that back up. I had to run the Interlink wire back to where it was mounted, otherwise all the 997 wiring was all up front stuff with no wire running required. I plugged everything in and made sure it all worked before I started securing and routing wires. It all worked, so I put it all back together. I had to remount the little RAM mount that I had on the head of my trolling motor, and had to reinstall the Interlink box. I went back and installed the Power Pole pump, but I’m not putting the poles back yet. That takes time that I don’t have, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be using them on Lake Erie anyways. But all I have to do know it hang the poles and hook up the hydraulic lines. Eventually, I had enough and gave up for the night. I think all I have to do tomorrow night is tidy up all the wires, put the cupholder and old plug in back, put a prop on, and reinstall the holeshot plate. Hopefully, that will all only take a half hour or so. Then I hope to head to Hardy to spend a few hours breaking the motor and lower unit in. I’ll still have to reload everything into the boat Saturday before I head south.
August 16 – Jeff called and said the boat was ready to go. I have to take the racecar to Mount Pleasant tonight to make sure it is ready for Friday night, so I’ll have to get it tomorrow after work. But, it’s done and ready to come home. Can’t wait to get it home and have it ready to go again.
August 15 - I spent some time today working on organizing some waypoints to check out for Erie next week. I have lots of stuff along the north shore, but I've never been to the south shore or around the Ohio islands at all. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can run whereven we want to whenever we want to like it was at St Clair a few weeks ago. My plan as of now is to leave sometime during the day Saturday. Gotta race Friday night. I was going to go early enough Saturday to fish a little in the evening, but rooms are at least $100 Saturday and they drop to $50 starting Sunday. Not sure I can do $100 worth of fishing Saturday. So I'll just get down there about bedtime and sleep in my truck at the ramp Saturday night and start fishing bright and early Sunday morning.
August 14 - Played ball this morning and this evening, so no fishy stuff at all today.
August 13 - The lower unit made it to Grand Rapids tonight. Not sure which Fed Ex is bringing it though. One of them is a Monday through Friday operation and the other is Tuesday through Saturday. So it will either be at Jeff's Monday or Tuesday, depending on who is bringing it.
August 12 - No new developments on the boat today. Just waiting on the new lower unit to get here from Florida. After work tonight, I spent the evening in the garage. It had every piece of fishing equipment I own scattered all over the place. That includes every thing that was either in the boat or attached to the boat adn every rod, reel, and bait I own. And tools everywhere that I used to strip everything off of and out of the boat. And now throw in a racecar and all the parts and spares and all the stuff that goes along with racing, and you have the biggest mess in the history of the world. But not anymore. It's now organized chaos that I can live with for a few days until I get the boat back and can get everything back in it that belongs in it. Getting closer.
August 11 – I accidentally left my phone at work yesterday. When I got there this morning, I had a message from Jeff to call about my boat. I didn’t figure he wanted me to call at 4:45, so I waited awhile. I got ahold of him and we have two options with the lower unit. We can go ahead and buy the gears and all that and use my old gearcase, or we can get a brand new aftermarket complete gearcase, with full warranty, for about the same money. No brainer. New one on the way. But it’s coming form Florida, so it will be a few days. No problem having it back and being at the Erie Bassmaster next weekend though. I might still have some breakin to do on Erie, but that’ll be OK. Keith and I went to Mecosta tonight for Castaway. 2 weeks ago, our lead had dwindled to only about a pound. I expected to see that go completely away, but last week, we extended it to 5.5 pounds or so. We need to catch them good again tonight to keep that lead. Next week is it, so tonight is kinda make or break. We have consistently drawn high take off numbers since day one with this group. The only time we have gotten good take off spots is when we call the week before. Call this week, go first next week. Keith sent me to draw and I was not allowed to draw our customary 8 or 9 or the red one (call boat). So I went and drew, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t do exactly what Keith told me to do. No 8, no 9, no red one. Nope. I drew a 10. I didn’t even know there was a 10. I though they only went through 9. I tried to convince Tim it was actually 01 not 10, but it didn’t work. We headed to the north end of the lake and started fishing some docks. Keith had some ideas, cuz him and Mark got 14.5 Tuesday night out here. We fished all the docks along the north end and never got a bite of any kind. Not a bluegill, not a rockstar, nothing. The wind was really blowing out of the west, but I was actually dead on with my casting tonight. I wasn’t missing anything. Well, except fish anyways. We crossed the Blue Lake channel and fished the docks south of there. I finally got a good one. A little over 3. No more. Around the point, still north of the island, and a 2 pounder. We went around the island and Keith got another keeper. That’s our limit anyways. Not huge, but making it tougher to overtake us. We went across to the west side of the lake and fished some weeds and droops and stuff, but caught no more keepers. It was tough for us tonight. We only caught the 3 keepers and only about 8 more fish all night, including a couple rockstars of course. We were 4th to weigh in. First boat had 6.67. I figured they had us. Shane went next and had one over 4 and 9.97. Holy crap. Good bag. Until the next bag. They had a 4.67 and 10 and a half pounds. Now that’s a bag of fish. Our 3 fish limit went a bit over 7 pounds. At the end of the night, that got us 4th place and we actually extended our lead to 10.5 pounds with only 1 tournament to go. I’m extremely confident that we will not be beat by 10.5 pounds next week. And that would have to be Doug and Linda. Everyone else is even more out of range. Therefore, I’m pretty sure we just sewed up our 3rd consecutive Castaway Angler of the Year title. That gets us a nice plaque anyways. We talked on the way home and I’m not even gonna fish next week. I’ll use that night to work on breaking in the new powerhead and getting ready to leave for the next Bassmaster event next Saturday morning. If Keith can’t hold a 10.5 pound lead without me, I guess we don’t deserve to win. So it looks like my Castaway year is over. I will gone for both the banquet toruanemt and the classic. So to all the Castaway gang, it was fun, thanks for another season full of fun tournaments and good times.
August 10 – NTTA is at Winfield tonight. We’ve been having about 13 boats every week. That ought to be interesting on Winfield. Everyone gets their own 37 square feet and has at it. Good thing is this is a cool group of guys and no one ever seems to get upset about much, so it shouldn’t be much of an issue since everyone will be on top of each other all night long. We got to the lake and we had 13 boats again. We started off across form the launch and started throwing at some docks. We got 2 off the first ones we fished. There was another pair of docks that no one had hit and no one was heading towards, so we went and tried them, but no one home. We went back to the ramp and started fishing those docks and got 2 more there. We had to promise to put a fish back we caught in front of some folks watching from the bank, which we promised, and we did put it back. Most everyone was fishing the drop off, all the way around the lake. We decided to try one more stretch of docks that I know had been hit at the beginning of the night, but there just wasn’t anything left to fish. We got one more under those. That gave us a limit at just about 7 o’clock. We just junk fished the rest of the night, throwing at whatever we came across of fishing the drop off in between things to throw at. I tried to skip this one dock and it was epic. I am always trying to do it underhanded, backwards, wrong handed, the wrong way, trying not to hook my rods laying there, etc. It’s not very pretty usually. I shoot at this dock and I miss completely. My bait went above the dock. There was a worm container sitting on top of the dock about 10 feet from the end. It had no lid on it and my bait nailed it. Perfectly square in mid air. Worm dirt went flying everywhere. We about fell out of the boat laughing at me. Until we thought about the possible attempted worm murder charges I might be up on now. I’ll probably be getting a call from one of our detectives in the morning. I didn’t do it on purpose, I promise. We only caught the 5 keepers all night and only got maybe 10 other fish all night. Not a good night. There were boats pulled out and gone by 8:30. We only saw two other fish caught all night. Other boats were pulling out early. We even pulled out a bit early. We had fun and laughed a lot, fishing just stunk. But it stunk a little less for us than everyone else tonight. We won with a little over 9 and a half. Only one other limit. Big fish was under 2.5. A win is a win and we’ll gladly take it. Hopefully it carries over to tomorrow night and Keith and I can get it done once again. We need to make sure our lead doesn’t shrink at Mecosta tomorrow in the Castaway group.
August 9 – Jeff called this morning and can’t get replacement brake parts very timely. I have UFP stuff, and that will be have to be ordered and wait for it to all get here. Or he can put change both rotor and calipers with stuff available at any auto parts store. It will be more money obviously, but no waiting and all new stuff all the way around. I told him to go ahead and do it. Now it won’t be ready until tomorrow, which is totally fine with me. Might have to skip NTTA to pick it up, but we’ll see what happens. I picked up the new stainless hardware to remount the fenders when they are done getting powdercoated today too. Getting closer. Jeff called me and said there are tons of metal shavings in the lower unit and pieces of teeth broke off and laying the bottom and bearings are shot and all sorts of terrible, terrible bad stuff. He says there are no rebuilt ones available anywhere, so I told him to see what all it needs and we’ll go from there. Keith won Mecosta tonight with the Split Shot group. I sure hope that doesn’t mean we flop there Thursday night. We really need to do well Thursday, but doing well tonight didn’t really mean anything. We have a bit of a lead, but that can disappear really fast if we don’t catch them good.
August 8 – I picked up my boat fender today and got all the holes drilled and took both fenders to get powdercoated. They will hopefully be done Wednesday. My boat was sitting there and the only thing hanging on the back was the mid section that bolts to the jackplate. No powerhead at all and no lower unit. Not gonna be very fast like that. The new powerhead was sitting there ready to have things switched over and be bolted on. The new reed blocks are done and ready. Jeff confirmed that it would still be done tomorrow. We’re getting close. Just after I got home tonight, I heard a strange vehicle pull in. I looked out the window and it was Scott. First I wondered why in the worked he was at my house. Then I remembered he was there because we were supposed to fish the COTM on Tamarack together tonight. I totally forgot about it and have to get this race car put back together to go to MP tomorrow night. What an idiot I am. I can’t believe I forgot that I was supposed to fish this tournament with him. We’ve only been planning it since like January. Sorry Scott. I got a little less sorry when Scott texted me that he only caught one fish, was completely soaked, and had left early and was already on the way home. Still feel like a complete idiot for forgetting.
August 7 – The twins put forth a great effort, but came up a little short in their quest to knock off Sheldon and Samantha for the Papi’s Fishing Tournament championship. Word has it (from Chuck) that the twin’s got front ended by Uncle Chuck and he caught the big ones. I smell a conspiracy. Sheldon is his daughter and the twins are his nephews. I think he might have front ended the twins so the championship could go home to his family instead of his little sister’s. Chuck and Amber and I went out for a couple hours this morning. Half boat riding half fishing, but it was nice out on the water anyways. We ended up out in the channel for a bit. It is always full of fish. Not always big, but fun catching them anyways. So we caught a bunch of rockstars and small smallies. Nice to be on the water again. Seems like it had been forever, even though it had only been since Thursday. Packed up camp and headed home. Back to work tomorrow.
August 6 – The Papi fishing tournament is on at Lake Charlevoix. 8 of the 9 grandkids are entered, fishing in 2 person teams. Sheldon and Sam are leading, with only the twins left to fish tonight. Everyone gets a 2 hour block to fish. You’d never believe it, but there is a bunch of trash talking and even a few fish stories going around. Jake came in and said they had 7 pounds. He was telling someone else his story a few minutes later and said they got 2 5 pounders. Hold the phone. Where I come from, 5 plus 5 is ten, but they only had 7. Busted. Racing again tonight, so no fishing today again.
August 5 – No fishing stuff today. We are camping with Chuck and his family up to Lake Charlevoix for the weekend and I am racing at Merritt Speedway Friday and Saturday nights.
August 4 – Castaway is at Chippewa tonight. I haven’t been here since opening day. Pretty sure things have changed a bit since then. I know 10-10 had an open here Saturday and Mike got one over 6.5. We are still holding a very slim lead, with little chance of holding on to it. We drew a 9, which is pretty customary for us with this group. We have only drawn less than 8 maybe 5 times in the 3 years the group has been around. But like most every group, I don’t think the number really matters a whole lot at the end of the day. Keith wanted to go down by the cranky lady’s dock to start. We did. She either wasn’t home, didn’t see us, or had a stroke, cuz she never came out. We caught a few shorts, and Keith got a nice one. We worked along and got our 3 fish limit eventually. We moved to fish some deep weeds down by the west end. Nothing but dinks there, so we moved up to try an area that we haven’t fished, and only dinks there, too. We went back to by where we started to give another shot at a nice one that Keith lost. No one home. We worked out away form the bank a little and I made the suggestion that there ought to be a big smallie up on the flat feeding about then. About the time I finished saying that, Keith set the hook and caught a nice smallie. Glad I said something. That culled nicely for us. That was it, time to go. We ended up 4th and 2nd big bass. At the end of the night, rather than losing our lead like I expected, we actually extended it to almost 5.5 pounds. Two more weeks til another championship if we can keep catching them.
August 3 – Matt and I were off to Clifford tonight for the NTTA deal. Matt had never been there and I hadn’t been there in a few years. We got out of the truck and holy cow was it windy. The wind hadn’t blown a stitch all day, but let me tell you it was blowing now. They said it wasn’t blowing until we got there. Figures. Figuring dock fishing would come into play, I was hoping for a high takeoff number. If you draw low, the boat just jumps in front of you, and the next boat just jumps in front of them and so on. Everyone gets their own 3 docks. I drew a 4. Not what I wanted. Oh well, it’s just fishing, and Matt and I haven’t tied our enjoyment to our success at all. We were sitting next to Chris and Paul at takeoff, when another boat that must have been 2 or 3 came blasting between us form behind us. Paul jumped out of the way of the wave entering the boat. Not sure how much of the wave went over him or how much he managed to avoid. Either way, the boat got filled with water and that was just not cool. As for the fishing part, we headed to fish some docks on the east shoreline. Having 8 or 9 boats behind us, I figured we would have lots of company. But no one else came over there at all. They must have known something we didn’t, cuz we were all by ourselves. Matt was throwing at the docks and I was throwing at a few of them and also throwing out toward the deeper weeds and drop. I actually caught the first one out there. As I was fighting it, Matt got a bite. He had the net in one hand, so he set the hook as best he could while netting mine. I took the net and took to getting the fish. By then it had him wrapped around a couple posts. He finally got it out of the dock and it was a big fish. Not quite as big as the one that cost us 2nd and big bass last week, but big none the less. It got to the boat and just as I went to net it, it dove under the boat. I pulled the net away, so I didn’t stab the line. It came out form under the boat and got off. Of course it did. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Can’t imagine actually landing a big fish. We went on to catch a small limit. I tried to throw under a dock, but missed the entire boat. I was reeling my bait back in beside it when another nice one boiled on it. It missed of course. It sat there looking for it, but by the time I got it back in there, he gave up and swam off. Of course he did. Can’t imagine actually landing a big fish. At the end of the night, we got third. The big one cost us 1st and bug bass this week. Maybe next time, we’ll get them. Chippewa tomorrow.
August 1 – Man does it stink to type August. I’m not sure summer has even started yet and it is pretty much over. I took the boat to work this morning, so I could take it to Jeff’s this afternoon. I talked to Chuck for awhile today about this weekend. This weekend is the whole family annual camping trip. This year it’s up to Charlevoix. We were told we are expected to be there earlier this summer. I can’t wait to get away for a few days and just relax and have fun without a care in the world. By then, I will have worked 14 days in a row. Chuck is putting together some kind of tournament for all his grandkids. I think the tournament ought to be who can we make have the most spectacular crash on a tube. After work, I picked Amber up and we headed over to Jeff's to drop off the boat. None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.July 31 – Not much happening today. I just worked and made sure the boat was ready to go tomorrow afternoon. I’m taking it to Jeff’s after work tomorrow so he can get the repairs done that need to be done. So hopefully I will only be boatless bank trash for another week or so. I did call Kenny to see what he thought about fixing my fender vs getting a new one. He said it is really tough to work with thin stainless like a fender, so I might be better off to replace it. So I will take his advice. The president of my B.A.S.S Federation club called tonight to chat for a few minutes. We talked about the state fishoff and what happened that I didn’t get to go. He apologized and accepted responsibility for what happened. That’s now water under the bridge. But it meant a lot that he took the time to call and talk to me about it. You have to respect someone that will take the time to so that. Thanks Scott. I can’t believe tomorrow is August.
July 30 – After playing ball all day, we took the boat to Townline. Parked the boat on the bank and went to work on the trailer. I removed the old bunkboards first. One side just meant taking the duct tape off, cuz that’s all that was holding them on. The other side was still bolted on. Once I got them off, I went to work on the brackets. I put the torch to them and got them stood back up. Not perfectly straight like I was hoping, but straight enough to get the job done. Once I got them straight, I took the wire brush to everything. I brought primer and paint and was going to do it all while the boat was off it. I got all the bubbled/burnt, peeled, chipped paint off the brackets. The paint was messed up where they had to straighten that one spring as well, so I cleaned that up, too. Once I got it all brushed, I scrubbed it and made sure it was all dry. I put a coat of primer on it, then a guy and a girl came in with a tin boat. They apparently got new oars for it and the new oarlocks wouldn’t fit in the old inserts. So me and the drill fixed that problem for them. I drilled out the old inserts and now the new oars fit perfectly. The primer was dry, so on went the 2nd coat. That also dried pretty quickly, so I put 2 coats of paint on. The brackets didn’t turn out perfectly, but I know they will support the boat like they were meant to and they should be protected form the elements now. I will always know they aren’t factory now, but unlikely anyone else will ever notice. While we were waiting for the paint to get good and dry before I put it in the lake, we went for a boat ride. There were lots of skiers and tubers out. We putzed down to the west end, then let her run back. I had to get out of it a couple times because of the traffic, but she still went 69.7. I told Amber I needed her to get out so I could go 70 again. This will be the last trip with this powerhead. She’s a runner to thevery end. Loader her up and took her home. Off to work now.
July 29 - I plan to take the boat to Townline tomorrow afternoon and straighten the bunk board brackets. So today, I went to Stanton Hardware and got new wood and mounting hardware and to Millards to get carpet. I put the carpet on and they are ready for installation tomorrow. Ralph called while on his way to the Grand for the BFL tomorrow to see if I had thought about it anymore. I said there was nothing to think about since my boat has zero value. I told him I had ordered all the stuff I did and that I was fixing it. It was a nice conversation, but brief. I wanted to check out the dragging brake sound on the trailer tonight. I can hear it sometimes and there is brake dust all over the left rear wheel. Somethign isn't right. I took the tire off and felt the rotor. The inside of the rotor is trash. It is full of grooves. Big, deep grooves. Must be the crash knocked the brake pad off and the 1000 miles since then has been metal binding into the rotor on the inside. That's not good. The rotor is trash. I don't have the tools to do the job. So when I called Jeff to give him the model of my motor, I told him he was going to need to fix that as well. I put that all back together. I put a socket in the slot where the actuator slides to push brake fluid out the master cylinder and taped the heck out of it. Now it can't slide, so the brakes can't engage, so no more damage can be done. Well, hopefully anyways. I spent some time and cleaned all the marker off the boat. Wonderland marked all of the stress cracks and wrote on the boat with what needed to be done in each area. It took a little elbow grease, but since I am for sure keeping it, it had to go, so it went. I put everything in the truck for tomorrow afternoon at the lake when I try to straighten the bunk board brackets. Got some softball to play first I guess. Sure sucks that August is almost here.
July 28 - I took the truck and boat to work with me so Kyle could change the oil in the truck and weld the winch stand up on the trailer. He did both. I went to Dave's and got some primer and red paint and masking tape. I cleaned it all up, taped it off, and put a couple coats of primer and a couple coats of paint on it. The colors don't match exactly, but good enough for who it is for. With this weld, it is now better than new. I talked to Jeff again to specify what fender I needed and gave him the serial number off the motor. We decided since we had to reuse the old reed block on the new powerhead, we would put new carbon fiber reeds in it. Things are starting to come together. Most of the parts should be there by Monday. So, I'll drop it off Monday night after work and he can get started. Keith and I had Castaway at Martiny tonight. That was tough. We only caught two keepers. Keith lost a big one that would have given us 3rd probably. I never saw it, but I'm going by what he said. Our lead in the standings is pretty much gone. I expect it to be way gone soon. We never get to practice and we are battling some people with unlimited practice time. We should lose by about 10 pounds by the time we are done. But we'll keep trying and do our best. Really missing my boat.
July 27 - My day started out with a call from Scott at Wonderland. He was just calling to see how I was coming on the whole boat situation. He has been on vacation since I was there last and today was his first day back. So I told him about trading my boat and my check for the Z-20 and that Ralph was checking on what the Z-21 would cost me. We had a nice talk. Ralph called me later in the morning. He talked to Paul and told me the deal. I had two options. I could trade my boat and my check and over 12 grand for the Z-20 or I could trade my boat and my check and 26 grand for the Z-21. Somehow, things changed by about 12 grand since yesterday. Or we had the biggest misunderstanding in the history of fishing, despite my absolute clarification on the phone yesterday afternoon. I explained what I recalled and asked what my boat was getting me in the deal. He told me my boat "has no value". They are going to take my boat off my hands so I didn't have to mess with getting rid of it. But my boat has no value. Are you freaking kidding me. No value! I have never heard such a bunch of crap in my life. I could take a lugnut off the trailer, take it to the scrap yard, sell it for a nickel and be ahead of letting them do me the favor of getting my boat for free. If I sound mad, well maybe a little. Well, all things happen for a reason. Sure wish I hadn't spent all night last night removing all wires, mounts, pucks, transducers, switches and everything else. Oh well. Another project. I like projects. I can take a day to put it all back when it's all fixed. I called Jeff and had him price me out a bunch of stuff for the boat. Gonna put a new propshaft in the lower unit. Since the lower unit wil be tore down, I'll have him put all new seals and a new water pump in it too. I decided to have him order me a power head as well. Mine is running fine and has never given me any problem, but he can get me a new one for $3500 with a year warranty and mine is gettting pretty worn out. While the power head is off and given the hours on it, I'll have him put new motor mounts on too. He will also get me a new fender. Matt and I had a NTTA on Bass Lake tonight. That was a test of rain suits. It flat poured on us out there. I can sure tell you that Frog Togs are not for intense rain. But that's what I grabbed. Sure sucks not having your own boat. We got a limit, but no big ones and decided to pitch them at weigh in. For some reason that upsets people. I still say why put the fish through the weigh in process if it means nothing and why mess up the guys who are there every week trying to get the club Angler of the Year. Just about as I was getting in the truck, I heard some make a comment to someone else about did they think their name was, Eric Smith or something like that. I can only imagine what that was about. While we were out on the lake, Jeff called me with prices. Looks like we will be about 5 grand to do all of the stuff so far. That's a lot of money, but since it will be as good as new when we're done, it will be worth it.
July 26 - Brandon and I had to go to Fremont today, and we ended up having to kill an hour so we went to Dunhams. While there, I found the exact same tie down hook that I need for my boat. My estimate included that part. The part was $29.90 and it was $105 to remove and replace it. I paid $1.58 out the door and spent 5 minutes putting it on after work at Bill's. I'm in the wrong business for sure. After work, I took the boat to Bill's so we could weld that winch stand up. The welder wouldn't feed, so we didn't get that done. The tie down hook is on the back now and there are some extra ratchet straps on the front. It should be just fine until I can do something more definitive. I left there and remembered that today was the deadline to pay my balance for the next Bassmaster event. So I stopped back into the office and got online and did that on the way home. When I was pulling into the office, I heard some weird metally dragging sound. I noticed the right rear rim was discolored like brake dust. The rotor was super hot. That's not good, nor right. They were both cool when I left the office and headed for home. I heard it again a little bit pulling onto the driveway, but they were both cool when I backed into the driveway. For some reason, that one must be hanging up a little now and then. Ralph called to give me the lowdown on the motor on that Z20. It has 111 hours, 2 over revs and 5 over heats on it. That's not many of any of them, really. So now I'm all out of reasons to not get that boat. Well, almost all out of reasons. I had plenty of time to think today while I was driving all over Michigan, and I thought why not ask about that Z21 at Wonderland that I looked at when I dropped mine off. If I can get that kind of deal on the Z20, maybe for a little extra cash, I can get the brand new Z21. I asked Ralph to ask Paul about it in the morning and give me a call with the results. I don't want a payment and will be perfectly happy with the 20, but if I can get that 21 for a little extra, it sure is worth it. So we'll see what Paul says tomorrow. One way or another, I am getting one of them. I will be running a Ranger very soon. I never thought I would say that. As many of them as I have looked at over the years and knew I would never afford one, I will now. Now that I know for sure I will be getting one of them, I finished getting mine ready to go tonight. I took all of the wiring and transducers and pucks out for the 997 and 1197 and the interlink and all the wires and switches for the Power Poles. That will make the changeover at Wonderland quicker and easier. I can install all of that stuff on the new one when I get it home. Then there is no hurry and I can play around with the stuff in different places and decide exactly how and where I want it before I mount it. If I get the 21, the only thing there will be to do to it is the Power Pole plates and maybe the jackplate. My next report should include what my new boat will be and when I am going to pick it up.
July 25 - I covered for Tim this afternoon at work, so I didn't have be there at the normal time this morning. So Keith and I went to Martiny to practice a little. That was the first time I've practiced for a tournament all year. We went to new areas that we had never fished only. Looking for new stuff and new fish. We actually may have found something, too. We got one nice keeper from one lake and 3 nice keepers in a rather small area in another lake. We'll know Thursday night I guess. While we were out there, Keith was talking about a TV show he was watching where they were ice fishing somewhere for sharks. He said they were using chickens for bait. We decided that live chickens would be better bait, so we decided we were going to design a respirator for chickens so they would live longer under water and be better ice fishing shark bait. That'll surely be a great product. We had to get off the water about 11 so we could both go to work. On the way home, we saw a couple of 500 pound LP tanks on the side of the road for sale. So we decided we are going to buy one and make a submarine out of it. I can't wait til we are fishing out of it. It will make fishing docks kinda tough, but we'll make do. I talked to Ralph at Wonderland this afternoon. They will take my boat the way it is, my insurance check, swap my jackplate, my trolling motor, my battery charger, my electronics, my power pole brackets, my cranking battery, add a 3rd deep cycle battery, tax, title, registration, and maybe more that I'm forgetting even up. That's not what I expected. I had made my mind up 99% that I was keeping mine because they would offer me a deal that I couldn't afford. I can afford zero pretty easily. We are basically swapping title for title. Now I have made my mind up 99% that I am swapping. When they took it in Monday, they tested the compression and lower unit. Ralph and I both thought they hooked up the computer and stuff as well, but they don't at that point. So they are going to do that in the morning and let me know what I want to know. Unless the computer shows something I don't like, I'll be swapping boats. So we'll see. Ralph is supposed to call me in the morning when he gets the readout. It might be bye bye Stratos after 7 years.
July 24 - Got up at the crack of 10:22 this morning. I couldn't believe it, but I did. Long day yesterday. I called Wonderland to make sure the boat was ready to pick up, but they didn't open til 11. So we got some breakfast and then called. The boat was ready, but there was a $315 estimate fee that I had to pay. Not real happy about that, but I'll let State Farm know I paid it, so they can pay me back and not Wonderland. I also talked to Ralph about the Z20 that was supposed to be dropped off last Monday. He will be there to show it to me when I pick the boat up. We rode over there about noon. I got my boat and looked in parts for fenders, bunk boards, and a new tie down bolt for the back. They had none of the above. But I have my boat hooked up anyways. It's going home today. We went and looked at the Z20. It wasn't bad. Not exactly what I was hoping for. They have the lower unit off it and to put a new lower unit on it. It would need my jackplate put on it. It only has a 24 volt trolling motor, so we would have to add another battery and swap trolling motors. Likely, just swap all the batteries, cuz the ones in that boat were small. It is set up for RAM mounted electronics, so that will work as is. It has a Lowrance fishfinder flushmounted in the dash, but it is just a monochrome sonar, so I think I would want to swap one of mine for that, since mine are color GPS/sonar combo units. It isn't the prettiest boat ever, and in my opinion hasn't been really well cared for. At least not like I would have taken care of it if it were mine. But it was sitting just as it was when it came in, so once it is cleaned and detailed, I'm sure it will be much better. There were 2 big scratches/gouges on one side that I didn't like. I can live with the one, but the other is huge. That will have to go or be covered. Ralph is going to talk to Paul tomorrow and see what we can do. It all depends on how far they will come down on it and what they will give me for mine. Ralph is supposed to call about 4 to talk about it. We made the long trek home and talked about it a little. It makes all the sense in the world for me to fix mine, rather than get the other one. But we'll see what Ralph says tomorrow. When we got home, I plugged it for the first time since the 4th. I fished 5 days and it sat for 2 weeks since it's last charge. They were as dead as dead has ever been. I hope the batteries aren't junk. I took the broken tie down hook off the back, so I can try to find another one tomorrow. I talked to Bill about getting into the OKB fabrication shop to get the winch stand welded and the bunk board brackets heated and straightened. Looks like Tuesday maybe.
July 23 - I was at I-96 today working the safety crew when State Farm called. They are sending me a check. I can use the money towards a new boat and "scrap it" as the lady put it, or I can use it to fix my boat. Of course the check won't be big enough to get another boat. So I spent some time thinking about what to do, and I have no idea what to do. I know for sure that either of the new boats I looked at are out of the question. But there might be something used I can afford, or I can fix mine. Another thing I thought of was that I ought to go get mine tomorrow. Nothing going on and it sure doesn't need to sit there covered with James River scum and with completely dead batteries, when it can come home and get cleaned and taken care of like I like it to be.
July 22 - I still never heard anything from the insurance, so I called tonight after work. The lady said they had gotten the estimate, but the lady hadn't had a chance to go over it yet. She said the boat expert would be in in the morning, and they would go over it and call me tomorrow. Hopefully, we're getting closer.
July 21 - No update on the boat today. Dave said Friday or Monday, so I'm calling tomorrow afternoon if I haven't heard anything by then. Keith and I went to Mecosta tonight for the Castaway group. Keith started right out by drawing us the start boat. So once everyone else was gone fishing, we took off for Round Lake. We were gonna try to fish a weed edge area, but there still weren't any weeds. We threw at a few docks. Keith got a keeper, but nothing big. Then I saw a very black fish lazily swimming along. It kinda had a bassy shape, but was absolutely black and wasn't acting very bassy. I chucked a senko at it about 20 times. I didn't realize it, but there was a lady sitting on her deck that is right at the water's edge about 15 feet above the water right where we were. I realized she was there when she made a comment on how it had no interest in me just like a woman or something like that. I proceeded to catch it on the next cast. Nice one just shy of 3. Take that lady. Blind in one eye and black as could be. Then she said she had to tell her kids that the old men in the boat caught the fish they kept putting back. One more squeaker kinda maybe if you hold it just right kind of fish through that stretch along with quite a few dinks. We went back into Mecosta and fished by the channel, but only caught a couple dinks. We headed for the weedbed we found a month or so ago during the Weekend Warriors tournament we fished up here. It took awhile, but I did get a solid keeper that got rid of the questionable one. Then I got a nice one over 3 in the same area. Now we have a decent bag anyways. No more keepers for us. We pulled out and Keith went to do the weigh in and I took care of the boat. I got the fish out of the livewell and into the bag and promptly fell out of the boat. I didn't really fall out, but kind of went down in slow motion. There really wasn't any impact, which was good, since I fell on the asphalt. My big worry was when the bag of water tipped my way and the water started flowing out of it towards me. I rolled away as fast as I could to get away from the water. I did not want to get all wet. My cat like reflexes got me away from the water, so I stayed dry. I eventually got to weigh them and our big one was a little over 3 and our bag was 7.32. Not bad for a 3 fish limit. Surely nothing to be ashamed of. That got us 6th place I think. Big fish was 3.84 and the winners had 8.84. Those numbers are close anyways. Our standings lead got cut into tonight, by about .4 pounds. Now we should be leading by a little over 4 pounds with 4 tournaments to go. A lot of work left. I would like to win, just for the principle. After tonight, we will be inside the classic cut off by about 15 pounds. Pretty sure we can hang on to that. Not that it matters, since I will be in New York anyways. Keith and I decided to fish the Weekend Warrior tournament Saturday at Tamarack. Maybe we can do good.
July 20 - No update on the boat today. Keith called to tell me his motor started trimming up last night and will not stop. It goes up and when the motor gets all the way up, the pump keeps running. Hopefully, it is a bad switch and I can isolate it and just unhook the switch for now. I'll have to look at it tomorrow after work. Matt and I were back on the NTTA trail tonight. I've been out of town for the last few tournaments, so it's been awhile for us. Life hasn't been all that great to either of us lately, so it was kinda nice to just get out and go fishing without a care in the world. We were on Muskellunge, which normally fishes very bad. Tonight was no different. We caught a boatload of dinks and one keeper. To be honest, I don't think either of us cared about the fishing tonight. It was about getting out there and chilling out for awhile. We just threw it back and didn't even take it in. It was different fishing out of someone else's boat last week, but not that big of a deal, since it was Lake St Clair. Tonight was totally different. Not being able to position the boat the way I want or fish the things I want or the way I want is different. Tonight wasn't a big deal, because neither of us really cared, but I could see it being really frustrating if we cared. Guess I better get used to it, since I will be without my own boat for awhile if not forever. Maybe some word on the boat will come tomorrow. Even if it doesn't, Keith and I are going to Mecosta for Castaway.
July 19 - Finally got this thing updated today. I got ahold of Dave at Wonderland today to see what was going on. He said he was finishing up the quote and would be sending it in today. He said they wanted a quote because I had it insured for so much. Not sure what that means, but I'm guessing they will now fix it rather than total it. He said we should have more information Friday or Monday. I asked to talk to Scott, but he is on vacation until the 27th. Now I know why I didn't hear anything yesterday. That will make it hard to figure out what to do about another boat if I have to. Stand by. More to follow for sure.
July 18 - The guy was supposed to drop off that Z20 today, but I never heard anything. My local agent called me today to see how things were going with my claim. I told her what I knew and she said I needed to call them to see what was taking so long. I said I would call if I didn't hear something soon. Nothing else today.
July 17 – Gameday. Today is supposed to be warm, with light winds. This is the first trip I ever remember making to fish big water where the weather or the water conditions hasn’t ruined at least part of the trip. Aside from the south shore area we looked at one day, the entire lake was nice and clear, and the winds were calm enough to run anywhere you wanted to anytime you wanted to, every day. That has never happened before, and likely never will again. We got to the ramp and did the typical morning routine. Handshakes, fish stories and lies, etc. We were boat 12. We launched and Mike parked the truck. Just as he got back into the boat and we backed away from the dock, the bilge kicked on. I forgot that Chuck always takes the plug out when he gets home. I since I forgot he takes it out, I forgot to put it back in. Mike and I leave ours in, so we didn’t take it out and neither of us thought about putting it back in. So we went back to the dock, Mike showed his blazing speed to the truck, amazing racing backup skills, we loaded and pulled out and put it in, then back in the water it went. Mike parked the truck again and sprinted back to the dock. We missed our boat number but not by too many boats. We cleared the rest of the boats and the no wake zone and headed for the weather buoy. We went a few miles and kinda got in the middle of nowhere and we were catching a boat that was heading the same direction we were. When we got close to them, I saw it was Tommy Robinson. I knew he was also going to the weather buoy. See, last year at the TBF State Championship over here, Dennis fished with Tommy. Dennis never bothered to practice and Tommy wasn’t on anything, so Dennis asked Chuck for the coordinates to it. Chuck and I had fished it in practice and had good fish going there. Chuck knew I was going there, but reluctantly let Dennis have the coordinates. When I got there the next morning, Dennis and Tommy were there. Denis had a big ole smile on his face and was waving. I was very mad, but they were there, so we didn’t fish there. Had I had one of the fish they caught there that day, I would have made that state team as well. But I didn’t and it is what it is. Back to now. No way in hell was I going to let Tommy beat us to that spot. Chuck’s 12 year old Skeeter isn’t as fast as I expected it to be, but it was faster than Tommy’s new fancy Ranger. So we were there first. This is a buoy, OK. Round thing that floats, with a chain holding it to a chunk of concrete on the bottom. That’s it. Tommy pulls right up to it and says that we’re just gonna have to share it. Are you flipping kidding me. All of Lake St Clair, and you are going to pull up on us and share a spot that is 5 feet around. No wonder you hear about people nearly fighting during tournaments on LSC. This guy deserves a fight. Mike caught one about 4 and a quarter and they caught 3 little keepers. This was stupid, so we left. I told Mike he would probably sit there all day. He can have it. This is just a fishing tournament, and he has to pull stunts like that to try to compete, he can have it. We ran to the St Clair light. Mike got another little one on the drop shot and I cleaned up on the rock stars. That was it for there. Nothing at the green buoy today. That was the extent of our spot fishing, so now it was on to area fishing. We started at the firecracker. I caught a couple 4 or a little better there yesterday afternoon, so we were hoping for more of the same. Nope. No one there was catching any, so we went to the coal pile. We caught one or two there, but nothing big. We headed back to the weather buoy to try it again, but you know who was still sitting there. Last place we were going was back to the hump. The Flicks were on that same spot we saw them yesterday, and they were catching them again today. We worked our way south from that spot and were just catching one here and one there for awhile. The farther south we went, the more we got into them. We must have caught 25 keepers from that area. No big ones, but man were we having fun. We capitalized on the follow up pattern many times. Kinda weird letting a keeper swim around waiting for a bigger one to follow it up so we could catch that one. But it was working. We spent the rest of the day here. We figured we were close to my goal of 15 pounds. We ran back and weighed in. Chuck was at the weigh in. That was cool. We ended up with just shy of 15 pounds. And we only beat 3 or 4 teams. Guess I was way off on my projection of 15 pounds getting us in the top half. Not sure how many boats there were. I heard boat numbers as high as 44, but also heard there were 26 boats. So who knows. Really doesn't matter. One team weighed in just shy of 25. Like 24.90 something. And they had one just over 6. But they got DQ'd for not wearing their life jackets. That's gotta suck. But rules are rules. We headed back to Chuck's to drop the boat off. Mike headed west pretty quick and I hung out with Chuck for a bit and got the boat cleaned out and all that good stuff. I finally headed home about 6:30 and got home a little before ten. Long day.
July 16 – Chuck decided not to go fishing today, so it was just Mike and I. I didn’t really like Chuck not going, but I understand completely. He had a couple real long hot days and he probably needed to rest a bit today and Chance had a couple more ballgames today. Mike had to pick up his Canadian license at Lakeside, so we got that, then some breakfast, then headed for the lake. There wasn’t much more that I wanted to explore, so we went to try to expand some of the other stuff we had found. We headed for the hump again. Since we had to go right by the weather buoy, I told Mike he could make one cast. He was only getting one, so he better make it count. He did. So we motored on down to the hump. We found another little area that the Flicks were sitting on catching a bunch of them, too. We developed a new pattern though. One of us would hook one, and when we got it close to the boat, we would let it swim down, the other one of us would drop a bait down there, and there would be a follower almost every time that would eat the other bait. It worked almost every time. It was crazy. Sometimes you could see the follower and sometimes you couldn’t. We went to the firecracker and got a couple nice ones. I experienced something there that you hear people say, but I thought was only a phenomenon. I was bringing this 4 pounder in when it came up and literally jumped in the boat. Clean out of the water and landed right on the front deck. People talk about them jumping in the boat, and now I’ve seen it myself. We got off the water kinda early, so to get everything ready for tomorrow. Our plan is to go hit the spots, and then the areas. We are going to start on the weather buoy, then the St Clair light, then the Nine Mile channel marker, then hit areas. Like the firecracker, coal piles and the hump. Hopefully we can get some bigger bites. We have to finish in the top half of the field to qualify for the classic. Supposedly, there will be about 50 or 60 boats, so I’m thinking if we can manage 15 pounds, we should be in the top half. We shall see. Chance won both of his games today.
July 15 – We have to go to Chance’s ballgame tonight, so we were planning on getting on and off the water early today. We struggled a bit today. We ran all new water today looking for more fish and bigger fish than we found yesterday. We didn’t find them. We ran to Chuck's lucky spot, then the south shore. One little one at lucky and the south shore was too muddy for us. We went to the Belle River Hump and caught a few there. Didn’t spend a bunch of time there, but caught a few and seen some guys catching them as well. We went to the flat above Windmill Point and caught a couple smaller ones there. There were big dark fish all over the place, but I think those were all sheephead. I did catch one of them on a crank while we were there. While I was playing him in, this big ole log kinda floated in and laid by the boat watching the whole thing. I was kinda hoping he would eat the sheephead I was reeling in just to see it, but he never did. It must have been 5 feet long. It was almost too big to be a fish. No hooks up side the head today or any other catastrophes. My leg is starting to heal where Chuck punched me yesterday. We got off the water about 3, got the boat ready for tomorrow and headed across town to Garden City to see Chance play ball. They won their game and we all went to dinner afterwards. It was about 10:30 before we made it back across town and Mike was there waiting for us when we got back. Enough for one day.
July 14 - Chuck had eye surgery yesterday and had a follow up appointment this morning, so we got some breakfast and went to that. I still didn’t have my Canadian license, so we went and got the boat and rode up to the Marine City ferry to get that on the way to the lake. We launched at Harley Ensign and started running around the lake. We caught them pretty much every where we went. We caught them on cranks, tubes, drop shots, beavers, you name it. We went to the St Clair light, weather buoy, a ship wreck, Strawberry Island, a channel marker buoy, a rock pile, the coal pile, and I’m sure more. We caught dozens of fish, but nothing over 3 pounds. Well I caught one big sucker over 3 pounds. I was throwing a big ole crankbait and Chuck was sitting behind me retying. I’m not used to someone sitting there and he’s not used to having someone standing there casting big ole crankbaits while he reties. I went to make a cast and my line suddenly stopped and broke. Why? Because my crankbait was in the top of Chuck’s head. Mostly hat, but a little head, too. Nothing I wasn’t able to get out real easy. But when I did and he punched me, that wasn’t real easy. He can punch pretty hard for an old fart. The best part was that I didn’t even backlash my reel. I had never driven a Skeeter before. The boat sits a lot higher in the water than mine does and you sit higher in the boat than in mine, and I like both of those things. I thought it would be faster, but I’ve never caught a fish going 75 anyways. We got a late start and we stayed out kind of late, too. We took the boat home, got it all ready for tomorrow, grabbed some dinner and called it a day. A nice day and a successful day it was.
July 13 – While I was on the way to Wonderland this afternoon, Dave the service manager called me asking for the name and number of my claim rep. He said he and Paul were getting ready to start the quote and found 20 grand in damage just by walking around the boat and looking at it basically. He wanted the claim rep to basically give him permission to not spend the time to write up a quote since there was that much damage that was obvious and they hadn’t even started seriously looking at it yet. So I stopped and called my agent to get the info he wanted and called him back with it. He was gone by the time I made it over there, so I don’t know if he called or what the results of the conversation were if he did. I went into the sales building and chatted a few when I got there, hoping for some new info. The only new info I got was tht there is a guy from Minnesota trading in a Ranger Z20 on Monday and getting a new ranger 621. Paul said Scott had some pictures of it, so I asked to see them when Scott walked up. It looks Ok in the picture. Has a 225 HPDI, so that’s good. It has 2 different colors of carpet, which I don’t like, but we’ll see. When it gets there, Scott is going to check it out and let me know what he thinks and send me more pictures. I’m sure it will be awhile before the insurance company does anything, so I have some time to figure out what to do if they decide it’s not worth fixing. I went out back and got my rods and tackle and life jackets, etc out of it that I will need until I have a boat again. Craig and Paul were both saying how busy it had been all week with the Everstart guys in town. And I was leaving, Craig was looking at a boat from Alabama that the motor was about ready to fall off. The motor mounts were shot in it. The guy was mad that it couldn’t be fixed by the time the tournament started in the morning. He also said it had been that way for quite awhile now. Are you kidding. People drag their boats across the country and plan on running all the big water and don’t bother to take care of them. Apparently so. Before I go, I have my oil changed and transmission serviced, spark plugs in the boat, lower unit fluid changed, hub oil on the trailer changed, make sure the spare tire is OK, and every other little thing I can think of that could ruin a trip. Maybe I’m weird. I finally got out of there and got to Chuck’s just in time to go get some dinner and call it a day. I did get to see his new Team Papi tournament jersey that he called and told me about. It's pretty cool. Not sure where it came from, but it sure is cool and it was very cool of whoever did it to do something like that.
July 12 - The rat got a whole lot bigger, stunkier, and uglier today. Apparently what I was 99.9% sure was going on, was going on. Both Paul Sacks and Paul Wagner replied to my email stating everything was sent to the club contact, nothing was returned undeliverable by USPS, but nothing was returned regarding the tournament. Paul Sacks actually called me later on. That was nice that he took the time to do that. He told me he spoke with the club rep, who told him he never received anything from the Federation about the tournament. Paul doesn't believe him and neither do I. But let's say he didn't get anything. This tournament surely hasn't been a secret. The dates and locations were voted on by the club reps back in the winter. We talked about it at club meetings. It's in the minutes. You sure would think that if you hadn't gotten any information regarding the single biggest Federation event of the entire year, you might be asking some questions. Unless, of course, there is that rat I have been suspicious of. Paul talked to Paul and I am just SOL. I can't fish the tournament that is the very reason I am part of a Federation club. Through absolutely no fault of my own. I submitted all my stuff way back when. Including my entry fee. I believe that no one ever had any intention of sending our stuff in from the get go. They even scheduled a club tournament the same day as the fish off. Would they have done that if they intended to go? I'm guessing it only affected me. And I'm likely the only one that didn't know that our stuff wasn't getting sent in. How long has it been known by others? At least since February I know some knew. So how did I never got notified, since I am the only one it affected? I don't know either. I have been absolutely hosed in this one and better just stop typing now. I could go on and on about what I feel about this, but it will get really nasty, so I'll quit. Thanks a million for not letting me fish the only Frderation thing I care about. Unfortunately, this will sour me forever and I will never respect some of the people involved after this. Both Scott and Craig were off today, and when I finally got to talk to Dave at Wonderland, he said he hadn't started on my boat yet. Awesome. Maybe I will have a boat next year. I have to go to Wonderland and get my tackle out of the boat tomorrow on the way to Chuck's so I can fish this weekend.
July 11 - I called Craig with the claim number and fax number today. Hopefully it won't take long to get some things going. I sent a couple emails today to the GRBC club about the fishoff. I paid my entry fee back in the winter, and submitted the rest of my stuff long ago. The tournament is next week and I still haven't heard anything. No packet, no nothing. That is totally unusual. No one else has gotten anything either, so I emailed Paul Sacks at the suggestion of one of the guys. I smell a giant, stinky, smelly 300 pound rat in all of this, but I will give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Pretty sure I know what's going on, but hopefully I am wrong. I talked to my local insureance people, asking how this whole thing works. With there being talk of the boat being totalled, I wanted to know what exactly would happen. She told me that if it were totalled, I would get the value of the boat, up to the amount of my coverage. So, if I have $35,000 coverage, but they decide my boat is worth $800, that's what I get. $800. Screw that. I pay for $35,000 every month. I damn well better get it. Not whatever they think it is worth now. I called the claims lady about the bill I paid in VA to get the trailer fixed to get it home. She said she is sending the check today to reimburse me for that. As I was telling her I had a few more questions, they got told to hang up and evacuate, as they were under a tornado warning. Great. No questions answered today. I called Scott tonight about the boat, as he suggested, but no answer and no callback. Maybe tomorrow. The insurance lady called me back because I mentioned I had some more questions, but she didn't get a chance to answer them. That was nice. She set me straight on how the whole thing works, should the boat be totalled. I can't imagine it will be, but at least I know what to expect if it is. And I feel a lot better after talking to her.
July 10 - We took the fishing stuff out of the truck today and put it all away in the garge. It will rest peacefully until I figure something out. I am going to use Chuck's boat for the Sunday derby. I have to go back to Wonderland Wednesday after work and deal with the boat some more, then I'm going to Chuck's for the tournament over there. I have to call the insurance tomorrow and see what they say and we'll go from there I guess.
July 9 - I took off about 4:30 and drove a couple hours, but had to stop and nap again. When I woke up and took off that time, I was good to go. I called Scott at Wonderland to talk about the trailer. I stopped in when I got to Michigan. I ended up leaving it there. We found a whole bunch more stuff messed up that I hadn't noticed before. The only new thing with the trailer was the fact that the winch stand weld was broken about 2/3 the way around. If I had to crank the boat up instead of power load it, I'm pretty sure it would have broken clean off. I don't think I could have duct taped that. As for the boat, who knows what all is wrong with that. The prop shaft is bent, then skeg is broken, it looks like the motor has moved back and forth on the transom, gouges in the hull, gelcoat cracks, and who knows what kind of structural damage you can't really see. I won't have this boat back for awhile, if ever. This sucks. I have to fish tournaments, but it will be kind of hard without a boat. Craig was kind enough to offer me a pair of his extra waders so I could still fish. On a more serious note, Scott offered me the use of his boat on Sunday for the TBF Open on St Clair. Just one of the reasons I like dealing with Wonderland and the people there. I took my rods out of it, put the cover on it, and kissed it goodbye. They are thinking 50/50 whether they will total it or fix it. Since I was there, I looked at a few boats they had sitting there. I have no idea how my insurance company works, but I sure hope if they total it, I get the option of buying it back. I need a boat, but can't afford to make a payment on one. If I can buy it back, I can use the difference in money to pay to have the trailer and motor fixed, and not worry about the fiberglass issues. I'll call and ask some questions Monday and play the waiting game I guess.
July 8 - Tournament day 3. 4 still comes early. The weather forecast for today is scattered storms. When it storms in Virginia, it storms. Nothing wimpy about these storms. I put what was left in the truck and went to hook up the boat and noticed the charger lights weren't on. I checked and the charger had been unplugged. Not sure when or how, but it was unplugged. So after fishing for 3 days with no charge and finally being be able to plug it in last night, it still might not have a charge after fishing 4 days. That could really hurt me today. Nopthing I can do no, so away we go. I didn't get the experience the launch fiasco yeaterday morning, because the boat was in the water at the marina next door. After experiencing it today, I'm glad I didn't. The launch line was out of the ramp and down the road. By the time we got launched, we missed not only our boat number, but our entire flight. We jumped in line, but they told me my life jacket wasn't good enough. It was the exact same one I wore through boat check yesterday, and never took off until weigh in. It was fine yesterday, but not today. I don't get it. So I had to pull out of line and get out another one and go back through. We finally took off and headed up the river again. The tide is behind up here, so we would have some time to fish low tide, where it would already be up coming up down the river. Nothing on the first spot, so we came back and fished a few jetties. We each got a keeper on crankbaits. It started raining on us very gently. Not hard, but just enough to put on the Frog Toggs. I had another come off while waiting for the net, rather than just boat flipping it. I got a second keeper in the boat that might have been the smallest bass ever weighed in. It was a chore to get it to go 12 inches, and the only reason it did was it had a huge lower jaw. But it touched none the less, so in the box it went. No more keepers there. It quit raining. We junk fished lots of spots going down the river with lots of baits. I got one more crankbait keeper right by Molly the dog's dock. We started back up the river and ended up back beyond the ramp on those same jetties we started on. I got 2 more on cranks to finish out my limit. By the time we were done fishing, the trolling motor wouldn't even move the boat against the tide. That's pretty dead. Come weigh in time, my giant sack weighed 7 pounds. Not quite what I had hoped for, but better than yesterday. We had to be on early, so we actually got a spot to park in the marina today. But since the tide was once again out, you had to somehow climb from the boat up to the dock which was about nipple high on me. It sucked really bad, and I'm fairly young and in fairly good shape. Can't imaging how short, old, fat, and less then nimble and athletic people did it. Once weigh in was done, Tom got the truck and trailer and I got the boat. Once we pulled out, Tom took his stuff and I got the boat ready to start home. I planned to go back and watch some of the weigh in and talk to everyone. I was talking to Carroll when it started raining and looking nasty. I ran to the truck and took off for home. I never made it back to the weigh in. I stopped for dinner somplace, and stopped to nap just east of Pittsburgh somewhere for a few hours.
July 7 - Tournament day 1. Holy cow does 4 come early. I had to get up extra early cuz the boat is moored at the marina and I knew I had to haul everything from the truck to it this morning. It was a giant pain, but the trailer is in tow, so this will be the last time. Carroll met me at the marina and we got everything loaded up. The typical tournament routine with the National Anthem and blast off ect. We were boat 112 and not due in til 4:20. That gave us 10.5 hours to fish. More importantly, extra time with that low tide. I told Carroll I expected the fish to start biting around noon. We started out running up the river a bit to try a jetty or two and the pit that I first fished last Saturday. The tide was rushing in. No bites. So we ran downriver and junk fished for awhile. All places I had gotten bit, but nothing today. We ran a set of old pier pilings in the main river. We both got a keeper there. That was my only bass today. Carroll got two more in a creek, and another in a little creek. He got 4 bites today and I got 1. In 10.5 hours. How pathetic am I! So I am in about 156377th place. But Carroll is in 6th. He doesn't even have to go fishing tomorrow and he'll take home a check. catch a bass and he's in the top 12 and fishign Saturday. This will keep my streak alive of having my partners make the cut in every Bassmaster I've fished. I have to catch approximately 58 pounds to do any good now. No problem. I got to put the boat back on the trailer for the first time since Monday. Which means the batteries can get a charge for the first time since Sunday. They are pretty much dead, but they got me through 4 days. Out of all of us staying at this hotel, Grant is the highest in 95th place. They should rename it Oh My Gosh We Suck At Fishing Hotel. Fishing is so bad though that we all still have a chance at a check with a decent day tomorrow. Two of us are going home with some cash though. We have a side pot going now. Everyone is throwing in 2 bucks and the biggest bag tomorrow gets half and the smallest bag gets the other half. Go me. Time to win some cash. The truck is loaded and the room is packed. As soon as I'm done weighing in tomorrow, I'll be on the road home. Probably no update tomorrow night, as I'll be spending the night in the Hemi Hotel at some rest area between here and there.
July 6 - Final practice day. Bill met me at the room at 6. We headed over to Jordan Point to where the boat was moored and headed out. We started out up the river looking at lots of different stuff and trying a few spots and some old ones. The tide was high, which meant we weren't going to catch any. We went into a pit that had some nice grass and I caught one off a pipe in low water to try the grass, now that it should be wet. Nothing in the grass, but I did find a brushpile in about 14 FOW. I dropped a marker on it, backed off and started casting. First cast.....thump! Set the hook and nothing there. Like there was a fish down there with scissors and cut the line nothing. Retie, next cast.....thump! Catfish. Enough of this crap. We ran around up the river a bit, then went back down past Jordan Point to a creek down there. It started raining on us, but at least we were getting closer to low tide. Once the water started getting low, I got bit. I got 3 bites today. Once again, all on low water. While we were out there, I called the marina right next to the tournament ramp to see if they had a slip I could get into, since I have no trailer and sure didn't want to have to drive over to the boat each morning and run the river up to the ramp. They did. While we were out there, Dennis called me and told me what the trailer was going to cost and how soon they'd be done. We quit fishing a little after noon, so we could get the truck and boat up there. I topped off the gas tank at Jordan Point since that is the only place to get gas on this part of the river. I drove the boat up and Bill took the truck. We secured the boat and headed back to the hotel. Bill left and I showered and headed to the meeting. I ran into John Hempel on the way in and once I got registered, we chatted a few and decided we needed to go eat. We saw some pretty funny sights after getting some directions from a nice man at the registration. We never did find food, but did find ourselves downtown Richmond. I mentioned to John that it would be nice if Dennis called while we were in town. And he did a few minutes later. They needed the lugnuts for the rear axle and they were done. We ran over there and they put the lugnuts on. But they noticed something with the trailer they didn't like, so I left it for them to do their thing cuz we had to be at the meeting. Dennis said he would finish it and park it outside for me to pick up after the meeting. Back to the meeting we went. I was really surprised at the low boat count. I'm guessing about 135 is all. And I was surprised at the small number of real pros fishing this event. I expected all of the Elite Series guys who didn't make the Classic to be here as well as a bunch of FLW guys trying to qualify for the Elites or the Classic. There are some of each, just not as many as I expected. There are quite a few local James River experts cherry picking this event though, so the competition will be tough. I drew boat 112. I was hoping for a late draw, because that low tide that I have to have to catch them is late in the day, so having a late draw gives me more time to fish the low tide. Couple the extra time I now get with the patterns I kinda have put together, and my confidence is starting to return a little bit. I have no idea what I will do tomorrow, but I have all night to figure it out. The weighin starts at 3, but I'm not due in til 4:40 I think. It will be live on Bassmaster.com if you wanna watch. After the meeting, I went back and got the trailer, then to the boat. It is alrady in the water and ready to go, so I left it there. I'll pull it timorrow after weigh in. I made sure everything is good to go, and it is, so we are all set for morning. Now I just need 5 big ole fatties to take to weigh in.
July 5 - Today is trailerless day 1 and maybe if all goes well, some practice, too. I called State Farm at 8, but they don't open until 9. Josh got here and we loaded his stuff into the truck, hoping we would get to use it later today. We headed to Sanderson Marine, as Glen recommended them. They couldn't help, but Clay did call his buddy Dennis up to Thurston Spring in Richmond and he said bring it up and he'd fix it. But we still had a lot of stuff to do first. We drove all the way back to the campground on the Chick where the boat was and put it back in the water. We pulled the trailer and took the rear tires off so we could pull the trailer. I called State Farm back and told them what happened, but I had to wait for claims to call me back. Brenda said she would ask them to call right away. Josh drove the truck and trailer to Jordan Point Marina and I drove the boat up there. The 1197 at the console won't connect to GPS. I kinda need that here, because I have to follow my trails to be able to get in and out of these creeks. I told the lady there what the deal was with the trailer, and she told me I could leave the boat there while we went to town with the trailer. We headed up to Richmond and found the place right downtown where you would never expect to find a place like this. But we found Dennis, like Clay said, and he said he would pull the axle, straighten it, straighten the bent spring, get 4 new tires from the warehouse and mouth them, and call me. He said he would try to get to it this afternoon, but if not, in the morning for sure. I guess we've done all we can at this point. Now it's a wait and see game to see if I have a way to get the boat to the tournament. We headed back for Jordan Point to get in the boat and go fishing. We got to fishing about 3. Long day of travelling, but now it's time to go fishing. Josh and I had plenty of time to talk and get to know each other during our travels. Today was the first time I'd met him and I'm glad I did. He is a real cool guy. Very smart, down to earth and very good hearted. Hopefully another lifelong friend. I'm not sure what I would have done without his help today. The tide stunk again tonight and again we caught no bass. A catfish and a white perch. Well, they tell me it was a white perch. It looked like a baby striper to me, but we'll call it a white perch. I messed with the electronics back at the slip. It really stinks not being able to work on the boat on the trailer, with the truck and it's tools or the convenience of the room. But I can't. I never really resolved the issue, so we'll look into it more tomorrow I guess. I locked the bot up and kissed it goodnight and headed back to the room without it again tonight. If worse comes to worse, I'll ask Chris at the registration tomorrow if we have to use the Osborne ramp. If not, and we will lauch late enough, I can leave the boat in the slip at Jordan Point and drive the truck over to it each morning and drive the boat up the launch. That will really stink, adding 2 hours to my day each day. But it may be my only option. Having to get gas at the marina every day and not charging the batteries for 4 days won't help matters. But maybe the trailer wil be done early enough tomorrow and it won't be an issue. Or maybe they won't let me fish the tournament. More to come tomrrow.
July 4 - Happy 4th of July everyone. Today is practice day 3. I met Jim at the yournament ramp to fish around some of the upper part again. We looked at some main river stuff, then ran down to some creeks. We ran into one of Jim's buddies and when they yelled to us, the boat stalled and wouldn't restart for over 30 minutes. We did get 2 keepers in there though. About 1230, we decided to load up and trailer over to the Chick to practice over there the rest of the day. I was following Jim cuz I had no idea where I was going. We were going across Route 5, which is a very narrow windy road with no shoulder and steep rocky ditches. I was going around a left turn in the road when I got run off the road. It was a left hand curve and someone didn't make their right hand turn adequately and came into my side. I ended up with the truck partially in the ditch and the trailer mostly in the ditch. It was one of those spots where the edge of the road is the white line, then it drops off into a steep rocky ditch. The boat was coming off the trailer and I thought the trailer was going over (and I figured taking the truck with it), but I got it out (at 50 mph) and then the trailer was sliding down the road and the boat was again coming off. It finally settled down and got back behind me. I limped it to the campground. The rear axle is bent. Both rear tires are toast. It ripped one fender about off and bent the other one. It ripped a bunk off and bent the brackets for it. It tore the carpeting and the end off another. The prop hit too. It bent the skeg guard and broke one of the bolts that hold it on. The reason the boat was coming off the trailer is that it busted the tie down clean off the boat. There are stress cracks on both sides of the splashwell among other places. No idea what else. My main concern right now is the trailer. I jacked up the rear axle and ratchet strapped it up, but the tires still drag with boat on it. So I left it at the campground for tonight. I'll call State Farm first thing in the morning. Glen suggested I take it to Sandersons in Hopewell. So the guy I was gonna practice with tomorrow is going to go over with me to where it is. I'll put the boat in the water, take the 2 rear tires off the trailer, leave the axle strapped up, I'll drive the boat to Jordan Point and he can pull the trailer without the boat. I can leave the boat in a slip there and take the trailer to get looked at. I'll start with Sandersons Marine in Hopewell. A couple local guys recommended them. Someone else also sent me a trailer repair place that is close to the hotel. So today has absolutely sucked and I no longer have any interest in fishing. I just want to be able to move the boat once again.
July 3 - Practice day 2. I drove back over to Jordan Point and launched there again this morning. I spent all day today going back and looking at the stuff Glen and I looked at last night. First stop, first cypress tree, pitch my brush hawg in.......THUMP! Set the hook and......go for a ride. About 20 minutes later I had my hands on what must have been a world record catfish. I caught no bass today. That's what I get for getting confident after yesterday I guess. I did catch another catfish on another brush hawg later. This one wasn't man eating size though. My only other fish today was a perch that ate a crankbait. Everyone I talk to keeps saying the Chick is fishing tough and it is take a number fishing. Nate said he bet he saw 80 different boats in there today. Word all along is that the winner will come from there, but I just can't get myself into fishing that kind of pressured and crowded stuff. Tomorrow I am meeting Jim at the tournament ramp to fish together. We're gonna start up the river by the ramp, then work our way down and we even talked about loading up and hauling downriver during the day to fish farther down. We'll see how the day goes. I go from being excited last night, to not so excited after today, to excited to get back out there tomorrow again. We'll figure them out darn it.
July 2 - Practice day 1. I met Kevin for breakfast and to talk a little fishing this morning, then he showed me the way to the Dutch Gap ramp. It's a good thing I followed him, cuz I think I'd still be looking for it otherwise. He couldn't fish, so I'm going it alone. My first impression of the river is it is a lot smaller than I anticipated. This whole upper end is maybe the size of the Grand. That's a good thing. I was envisioning Detroit River big or something like that. But it's not. I started up the river and realized that I never put the plug in. Oh well. Good thing I got the auto bilge fixed a few weeks ago. I ran up past the tournament ramp to a barge pit. There are a few pits that have been dug out for barges to sit in or something. The tide was outgoing. I fished the mouth of it, then moved into it and caught a keeper pretty quick. Well, I guess maybe I can catch a tidal bass. I fished around up the river, hitting a few more pits wihtout another fish. I headed back by the ramp and to some more pits downriver. Since I have never been here, I'm kinda focusing on places I can safely get to and not have to worry about crashing. I went to another pit that you have to run on plane to get into. This one is called the Skinny Dip Hole. Thankfully, while I was debating on going, a tuna boat went by me, so I just followed them in. I had another keeper eat the crankbait that Matt gave me for the trip. There was another pit almost across the river that I went into. This one is the Ski Pit and I see why they call it that. There were boats all over the bank partying and boats pulling tubers like crazy in there. The tide was pretty low now. I saw tons of stuff in both pits that looked like they might be good high tide spots. I saw some sort of pipe or tube or something sticking out of the water just a bit. It was arched like it was part of some sort of pipeline. It was off the bank a ways, so I flunk Matt's crankbait at it and got another keeper. That was it for there. I tried some main river stuff, but the tide was low and there wasn't any water on the stuff I wanted to look at. I did try cranking some rocks that Hank Heron was also fishing. He decided he had had enough and took off just as I flung Matt's crankbait up the shoreline. Well, Hank flew right through the line and eventually met Matt's crankbait. His flight pattern entered gentle descent mode until he did a gentle crash landing. I was slowly helping him come to the boat. Not sure what I was gonna do when he got there, but I sure couldn't lose Matt's crankbait. Especially after catching 2 keepers on it. The bird was quiet and not fighting me too much. He would turn a little here and there, but it was pretty unremarkable. Finally, he turned just right and out came the crankbait. Thank You. I headed down a ways farther and decided I was going to try to get up this creek. I got in just as the tide started to come back in. I only went in a ways and started fishing my way out. Mr Big Copperhead decided the boat was pretty and wanted to explore it furhter. Thankfully he didn't make it in and swam away instead. I think he might have owned that boat if he got in, cuz I'm not sure I would have stayed in it. I was heading out and a fish busted under a cypress tree. I flung a senko under there and got him. Nice fat keeper. There were some docks by the mouth that I tried and hooked a big one. 4 plus for sure. He jumped a few times and got me in the pilings and broke me off. But I know where he lives. I talked to a guy catfishing off his dock and he said there are bass under all them docks. I'm sure I'll revisit these at some point. I ran back up the river since the tide was coming back in to check the pits. The tide hadn't made it that far yet. I loaded up, gassed up and headed to Jordan Point. I was goign to Glen's house, then we were going fishing tonight. I met him and we launched at the ramp 500 feet from his house. That would be convenient. We ran down the river and went into some creeks and stuff that were kinda tricky to get in, so Glen showed me how to get in them. There is some super cool stuff down here and I have the next 4 days to figure out what holds fish and when the tide is right to make them eat. He showed me way more places than I can fish in 4 days, but it will be fun trying. We were fishing this one creek that has 2 trees across it. You have to be creative to get by the first one, but the second one you have to go through. You can get through, but it looks like you can't, and I'm guessing many people don't. As we were about to go through it, Boyd came from the other side coming out. I'm not sure who was more surprised to see another boat in there, them or us. We chatted and went up on in there. I got another nice one up there. 3 or 3 1/2. It was getting pretty late, so we headed back to the ramp. We went about 20 miles down the river checking these creeks out tonight. My best 5 today would have been about 11.5. My goal is 25 pounds for the first 2 days. That's 12.5 a day, so after my first day ever seeing the place, I'm not far off. For once, I am at a new place that doesn't intimidate me much. This is basically like a tidal Grand River. Once you down farther, the river does get wide, but it's mostly a big flat with a channel cut through it. The water is clearer than I anticipated as well. So I caught a few fish, it's not overwhelmingly big, the water's tolerably clear, and I got lots more fishy places to go explore. Things are looking good. We went back to Glen's, ate a pizza, played with the dog, looked at guns, talked fishing, and just did what guys do for an hour or so before I headed back to my room. I got back kinda late, so I got a feeling I won't win the race to the river tomorrow. Maybe it won't be quite as hot tomorrow. I drank all the water in the boat today, plus a yucky Gatorade that was in there, and got another liter of water when I got gas and drank that. Spent lots of time wiping sweat off and sunblock on today, too. I did talk to Chuck today. They are all up camping at Cadillac, and catching some fish. He apparently got a new fishing jersey in the mail the other day that he is blaming me for. It sounds cool. He said it has a picture of him and all 9 grandkids together on it and other neat stuff. Not sure why he's blaming me for doing something like that. I sure would never see a picture of him and his grandkids on his fridge, then get onto his computer after he went to bed and find that picture and email it to myself through webmail, then send it off to the jerseymakers and have them make it into a jersey, and anonymously package it and send it to his house. That just doesn't sound like something I'd do. He told me he knew it was me, cuz I was the only one he knew that would do something like that. Guess I should take that as a compliment. Christmas time I got blamed for Santa and Rudolph dropping off a new typewriter for Taylor, and now Chuck thinks I had him a jersey made. Hmmm. Maybe they're on to something. Hi Jorji, welcome to the 21st Century.
July 1 - Well, it's July already. Not sure I like that. Up and back on the road about 6:30 this morning. I saw a couple interesting things. I saw a SafeLite Auto Glass Specialists van with the rear window broken out of it going down the road. How's that for irony. Then I saw a State Trooper escorting a big chunk of cement on a semi trailer. Either that or it was the most boring pursuit since OJ. When I got close to DC, I decided to go. The parkway that takes you from the freeway into town is like a cart path at a really nice golf gourse. It is nine miles long, and just like a park. Super cool. I ventured through town to see the sites and to realize they don't like vehilces with trailers in town. Downtown is nuts, but everywhere not downtown is like a giant park. Then I went to Arlington National Cemetary. That place is huge and amazing. So glad I went. I left there and the day went downhill. I think I lost 4 hours in traffic from the time I left DC and the time I made it to Chester, VA. Traffic was stupid. At one point I gave up and got off to get lunch and go to Walmart. I got back on and it was a little better, but not much. I stopped at Bass Pro and got my license. My choices are a 5 day or a season. I asked the girl for 2 5 days. She couldn't figure out what I was talking about. I took my one and I'll get another one in 5 days I guess. I went to Chester because I reserved a room in Chester. I got to Chester and couldn't find the hotel where it was supposed to be. I discovered it was actually 3 exits up the road in a not very nice area. Not happy. People said to stay in Chester, so I reserved a room there. It even showed it in Chester on the map on the website when I reserved it. But, I got it now so here I am. I parked the truck and boat, and spent an hour or so rigging rods and reels for morning. I went light, and only rigged up 11 different rods. I have more if I need them though, don't worry. My morning guy backed out for tomorrow, but I have an afternoon guy tomorrow and a Sunday guy and Monday - Wednesday partners already. Should be fun. Kevin can't fish tomorrow, but we are going to meet for breakfast and talk fishing for a bit. Then it's off to the river to sack 'em up. I'll let you know it goes tomorrow night. In case you didn't know, NTTA is having an open on Tamarack Sunday. $60 a boat from 7-noon. The purpose is a fundraiser for the Moose Lodge so NTTA can have the banquet there in the Spring. Good lake, good guys, good cause. I would definitely go if I were 800 miles closer. The Wooden Shoe Open is happening again this fall on Smallwood Lake at the Wooden Shoe bar. The date is in my email which won't let me in right now. Make sure you check the tournament page for the date. The Lakeview Lions Club is having a fundraiser bass tournament on Tamarack July 16th. Check with Keith at Tamarack Sports for all the details for that one.
June 30 – That alarm went off way too early today, that’s for sure. Up at 3:51 and at work by 4:45. That made for a really short night. I took Dave’s tubing cutter back to him this morning. Otherwise, it was a pretty normal work day. Jim called me to talk about the James a bit more, but that was about it for the day. I headed out about 2:00. I was supposed to meet Chuck for dinner at 5. I was running ahead and his Dr appointment ran behind, so I ended up being an hour early. I went up to Wonderland, but none of the bass guys were there, so I just left. I sat in the Outback parking lot and worked on the computer for a bit. Chuck called a little after 5 and said he was stuck in traffic 45 minutes away. He had no idea when traffic would return to normal, but he was still 45 minutes away when it did. So we scrapped the dinner idea and I headed south. I stopped into Cabelas to pick up a few things. I got some little single Colorado blade spinnerbaits that I think I will need, and some gold blades for them so I can swap out. I did the obligatory Bargain Cave check and found Matt a battery charger. He has one on order, but it has been backordered, so I got this one. Exact same thing he ordered, but about 55% the price. The box is messed up is all that is wrong with it. So that’s cool. Too bad he can’t have it until I get home. Back on the road. Bill called me and wants to fish Wednesday. That’s cool. It looks like I will have guys with me every day. Some days will have to be split, because one guy can go in the morning and another can go in the afternoon, etc. That’s awesome though. I get to meet lots of new people and make lots of new friends. The dang fish just need to cooperate. About 9, I stopped for gas. I was feeling pretty good still. Matt told me he drinks a 5 Hour Energy, so I tried one. I had never had an energy drink before in my life. That tasted horrible. But it worked. I decided to stop for the night about 11:30 in Pittsburg. The next service center on the tollroad was another 64 miles, and I’d rather be safe than sorry, so I just parked it for the night. $34.50 in tolls so far. I went into the service center to go to the bathroom before I crashed in the Hemi Hotel for the night and there was a girl from Edmore that I know paying for her gas. No kidding. Pittsburg, PA at 11:30 at night on a Thursday and I run into someone from home. That’s funny. The plan for tomorrow is to get up whenever and keep going. Depending on what time it is and the weather, etc, I might go into Wahington DC rather than around it. I’ve never been there and since I will be driving right by, I might as well go check out the history there. We’ll see. Then once I get close to Richmond, VA, I have to visit Bass Pro to get my license and all that. I think I have about 6 hours of driving left. Not too bad.
June 29 - I went back to Dave's this morning looking for about 18 feet of brake line to replace that holy trailer line. Once I explained to him what I was doing, he sold me a $3 compression union, rather than a bunch of lines and couplings. That was really nice. He even gave me a pipe cutter to cut the line before I spliced it. Definitely good people at Dave's. I took my trailer spare to Hevel's too. I noticed it was down ther other day, so I pumped it up, but it started bubbling around the rim. That won't work. So they took it off the rim, ground then rim clean, remounted, and resealed the tire. Now that I know my spare is good to go, that should ensure that I won't need it. Which is exactly what I want. I put together a tide chart today for the James. I think I understand the tide thing. I think of it as a giant wave. The wave leaves the ocean and goes up the river. When it gets to where it can't go anymore, it goes back out to sea. Just like a wave would on lake Michigan or anywhere else. So I made a spreadsheet that has several points, farthest from the ramp to closest to the ramp, what time each high and low tide will be for each day that I will be there. Now I can look at that and know exactly where in the river will be what stage of the tide. I can find the timing of the tide that has the best bite, and fish the areas that I find the best fish at the times that part of the river has the best tide. And run from good spot with good tide to good spot with good tide. I have 5 days to figure that out. I will have locals with me every day it looks like. A couple guys that are not in the tournament are going out with me Saturday and Sunday, while some co-anglers are going Monday - Wednesday. So that will be cool, meeting new people and making new friends while I am there. Now the weather and fish just need to cooperate. Matt and I spliced and replaced that brake line before we headed to Dickerson for NTTA. Amazingly, everything seems to be working like it's supposed to. It's nice to have trailer brakes again. The fishing was pretty unremarkable. We started right by the ramp fishing some docks. The next boat started a couple docks in front of us, and the next boat started a couple docks in front of them, and so it went. We practically had to go slow to wait for someone to leave a dock so we could fish it. I usually don't mind fishing behing people, because I have confidence that I fish parts not all do, and can put my baits in places not everyone can. I got a 2.5 right away and one a little over 3 pretty quick. Good start. Then I got one just fan casting away from the docks just going from one dock to the next. That was it for the night. We got a bunch of dinks but no more keepers. The top 3 all had 5 and our big bass wasn't 3.25, so we just threw them back again. When I went to get the fish out of the livewell, there wasn't any water coming out. The pump was running, but no water coming out. When I got home, I found the screen plugged with pus and scum, and algae from the lake. Cleaned it all out and we're good to go. I still had to pack my clothes and load the truck. Got all that done, and I think I'm ready to go. Short night, so I better go sleep real fast.
June 28 - I left home a little early this morning to drop that master cylinder off at Dave's today. Lee took it apart and found what he thought was a bad cup inside it. He found one in some deep, dark closet upstairs and put it in for me. Cool. I put some fluid in it and still nothing came out though. There was another seal in there that we couldn't find a replacement for. NAPA couldn't help at all. I called a few places, and that got me nowhere. After work, I stopped and saw James at the Edmore Auto Value (used to be the NAPA). That dude is awesome. He took that master cylinder apart, cleaned it, bored it out the best he could, flushed it, did a bunch of really smart brake guy stuff to it, and told me it should work. He started bleeding/priming it and it was working. Now that is awesome. I had given up and was just going to put it back together not working and worry about it when I got back from Virginia. Some of the guys I have been talking to gave me some bait suggestions, so I got my lucky haircut and stopped into Tamarack Sports and picked up some baits. Matt and the kids came over to help with the bleeding process. I got the master cylinder all put back together and the actuator all put back together and the tongue all put back together and it was bleed time. Matt was pumping and I was laying under the trailer to work the bleeder valve. After pumping and adding some fluid and some more pumping and adding more fluid, I sure thought there should be fluid back ther by now. I looked across, and fluid was pouring out the other side. Not good. I went over and crawled under there and it was coming out the hole that the brake line comes out of the trailer frame. Probably a hole in the line. So we had to disconnect the line at both ends and pull it completely out of the trailer frame. Sure enough, a hole in the line. Back to Dave's tomorrow for 20 feet of brake line I guess. I did change the lower unit fluid and spark plugs tonight. Once we replace that brake line tomorow and bleed the brakes, I think the boat should be 100% ready to go. I am taking my spare tire into Hevel's tomorow to have them check that. It was soft, so I added air and it was bubbling around the rim. It needs to be reliable in case I need it. The more prepared I am for something bad to happen, the less likely it is to happen. So I am trying to be as prepared as humanly possible. After dinner, I talked to another Virginia guy. We talked about the river and how the tide affects everything and how I needed to focus on the tide. Lots of really good information. As much as I have talked to some of the VA guys, I feel really prepared for this tournament. I have never been to Virginia before and fished the tidal water, but I am feeling pretty comfortable. Matt has printed the tide charts off for me and is going to go over them with me tomorrow. He fished the Hudson River in NY for years and has a really good understanding of the tides and how they affect everything. Once more piece of the puzzle that will hopefuly take me les time to figure out once I get there. I think I have lots of areas to try and a decent understanding of the tide, so it's just a metter of finding fish now. I talked to Chuck today. I have decided to leave Thursday after work and meet him for dinner on the way to VA. Can't wait to see him again. It's been a month and a half. Tomorrow after brake repair and tide study, we're off to Dickerson for NTTA. I haven't been there in a few years, so that will be interesting I'm sure. Then I have to pack the truck and get ready to leave Thursday morning and not come back for awhile. Can't wait.
June 27 - Not much fishy stuff today. I picked up a new reverse solenoid and new lower unit fluid. Since I worked all day and taught water rescue all night, those will have to be tomorrow projects. I got home a little earlier than I planned, so I played around in the garage with the brake stuff for a bit. I can't get any fluid to come out of the master cylinder even without that solenioid on it. Maybe the solenoid wasn't even the problem. Guess I'll take the master cylinder with me tomorrow and see if I can drop it off at Dave's and they can make it good again.
June 26 - What a nice day. Must be I planned on working all day at home and not goign fishing. And work I did. I got all my rods and reels good to go to Virginia. Over the course of the year, things happen. Backlashes and that kind of stuff that I don't take the time to pick out when they happen. Most I do, but some of them are so epic that time just doesn't allow it during a tournament. So they are all ready to go now. I put the extra rods from the rack in the garage in the truck, too, so I am totally ready to go as far as rods and reels go now. I changed the oil in the hubs on the trailer today too. I change it every year, and last time I changed it was last July before I went to Champlain. So it was time. I rotated the tires while I had them off the trailer. The next thing I did was tear the tongue apart to remove that valve solenoid. Now I have to get a new one before Tuesday night so I can swap it out and get the brakes bled. Hopefully I can find one quick. I have two shops working on it. I sure hope one of them comes through for me. I spent some more time talking to a couple guys in Virginia tonight about the James River. I feel like I have an idea what to expect. They have told me some ideas and some things to look for. I have my map all marked like crazy and written all over. Now I just have to find the things they told me about and get some fish to bite every day. I am going to spend some time looking at satellite images of the river trying to see the things they have been telling me about. Hopefully, I can find someone local to go out with me Saturday and/or Sunday to show me around a little. It sounds like it can be a treacherous place to drive a boat and there are lots of boat eaters out there getting into the creeks. One guy told me a little about the history of the James tonight. He told me that the reason the creek mouths are so dangerous is the Confederates sank ships and plings and other objects in the mouths of all the creeks so the (us) Yankees couldn't get in the creeks and make landfall. I'm sure knew that their actions several hundred years ago would be affecting my bass fishing today. Kinda cool history in that area by the sounds of it. Can't wait to go take some of it in.
June 25 – Maybe today will be the day I can focus on the fishy stuff instead of the weather we fished in. The alarm woke me up, had some breakfast, hooked the boat up and waited for Keith. He still wasn’t here at 5:30, so I called him. He was almost to the lake. He left me a message last night that he would meet me at the ramp, but I didn’t know it. So I hauled up there. I almost hit a dozen deer and a goat, but we made it unscathed. Everyone else was in the ready and ready to go when I got there. We threw Keith’s stuff in and launched the boat. Everyone else took off as I backed in. Keith came back down to the boat and we went fishing. No rain and mostly clear skies, but man was it blowing. My long sleeve shirt, hoodie and fleece jacket wasn’t enough. We started just north of the ramp by the stumps. Nothing on topwater or senkos. We tried the channel for a bit. Nothing. We went north of the channel a bit. Nothing. We decided to go around the big point right there to a spot that used to have some cabbage. The entire lake has been nuked free of vegetation, but we thought there might be some starting to grow back by now. There wasn’t. So we tried the lily pads in the corner and the docks. Keith made a hail mary cast out towards the middle and hooked a keeper smallmouth. I put my rod down to get the net and the fish swam through my line. I netted it and it had my hook in the corner of its mouth. And Keith’s hook down deeper. I’ve never seen that before. I think I should get credit for catching it since my hook was it its mouth and I netted it both. We went out there to look around to se why that fish was out there. There was a deep weed bed and a little rise. The water was about 15 feet but came up to 13 and there were weeds on it. We got 3 more off the spot before we left. Then we went to a bank where we got a couple last week and saw some more. I got a keeper pretty quick. Then another keeper smallmouth. We saw some nice ones, but no go on them. We gave up and we went across the lake to try a bay where I had lost a nice fish each of the last two times I fished up here. No keepers. We decided it was time to go to Round Lake. The sun was getting high, and there is a stretch of weedy break where Keith has a history of dumping big ones. We like to try the stumps just south of the channel in Mecosta, and it’s on the way. Shane was there. We watched him pitch a stump, catch a keeper. Put it in the box, pitch another stump, catch another keeper. Dang, too bad we didn’t try this sooner. Oh well, into the channel we went. The weed line we wanted to fish is about casting length from the docks, so I was going to try the docks and Keith was going to cast the weedline. The wind was making big enough waves that it was really tough to fish the docks. As for the weeds……well there weren’t any. It was dirt. Normally, it is a bear to get the trolling motor through there to fish the docks because of the weeds, but it was nothing but dirt. I’m not sure what they use to “treat” these lakes, but if it can turn the weeds that are normally here to dirt, it’s some bad stuff. We tried the docks on the south end a bit, the docks on the north end a bit, and the docks on the east side a bit, but didn’t get any keepers anywhere we went. We decided to go back to the places we got our keepers earlier. There were boats on both of those places, so we ran to Blue Lake. We had about 20 minutes, so we put the trolling motor down and started cruising up the west side. No keepers there and it was quitting time. We went back to the ramp and the talk was tough fishing. KV without the D and Chris had 10.3 for the win and we had 9.97 for 2nd. Kevin and Chris also had big bass, for a nice payday. I made it home, got some lunch and rode to Townline for the NTTA weigh in. Tom and Justin won that with 14.78 and Mo and Jerry took 2nd with 14.72. Jerry got a 4.44 for big bass, too. Apparently Townline fished a lit better than Mecosta today. After that, it was just work around the house day. I did take the broken brake line off and put half of the new one on. Maybe I’ll swap the other part tomorrow. Tomorrow’s plan is to work on the boat and trailer and fishing stuff. Lot’s of stuff to do.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
– None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
None of the parts were there yet. We went over what all he is going to do to make sure we didn't forget anything. Apparently the go to guy for reprogramming the ECM can't do it. I said to just forget that for now. Not that big of a deal and not worth delaying the process at this point. We put the boat in one of the shop bays and took the fenders off. Jeff said they will take the powerhead and lower unit off in the morning. The gearcase is going out tomorrow to get the skeg fixed. Hopefully everything will be there tomorrow. If the fender comes in, I'm going to go get it. I want to get the mounting holes as well as the bunk holes drilled tomorrow and get it to the powdercoat shop Wednesday. I am going to have the good stainless fender and the new steel one both powdercoated black. The rest of the trailer is red and the boat is white and has no black on it, but I just can't see white fenders and it would be impossible to try to match the reds. Black goes with everything. So black it is. They will have til Monday to get them done. Everything else should be done and ready for pickup by Monday at the latest. If it's ready by Friday afternoon, I'll break in the new powerhead on Lake Charlevoix. I can handle that. When we got home, I took the inside bunks off the fenders. The one on the bad fender was full of rotor dust from the damaged rotor, and all that of course rusted. I scrubbed and sprayed both the bunks. Hopefully I got them pretty clean. They should be dry by tomorrow night, and I will use carpet cleaner on them and hopefully make them look real nice. I got on BBC tonight when I came in to see who might do the ECM. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll get it done after all.
June 24 - I checked a couple places that were going to look into getting me that valve solenoid for the trailer. Neither had gotten back with me, so I stopped in to ask. We'll see if that gets me anywhere. I did talk to a guy in Virginia about the James River tonight for a bit. My awesome phone allowed me to hear about every 3rd word he said until I lost him altogether. He called me back and left me a message to call him back tomorrow. So I will. He knows a ton of stuff about the river, so hopefully he can shorten the learning curve a bit for me. Can't wait to talk to him more. Mecosta tomorrow. It kind of sounds like tomorrow's update might focus on the lack of rain. Pretty sad when the biggest news is not fishing in the rain. But it sounds like a nice weekend is on tap. I know NTTA is on Townline and Lake St Station is on Bass, so I hope everyone sacks up a bunch of fatties. June 13 – Before I went to work this morning, I pulled the boat out so it could sit in the sun all day and dry. I put all the tackle out of the boat in front of the side door and opened that, so the sun could shine directly on that, making sure that was all dry too. Can’t have anything get moldy, mildewy, or rusty. I called in my balance for the James River Bassmaster today, so I am officially committed and going. Still not sure how I feel about that, but it’s a done deal now. On the way home I went to Cantwell’s Hardware to get some epoxy to seal some old screw holes up and a piece of metal strap to make a new bracket for the new float switch to be mounted to. I got home and commenced working on the boat. I took the batteries and pump out, and got down there. One of the wires fell out of the switch when got to it. That could certainly be the problem with that. I got the old switch out, then mixed up the epoxy and filled all the old holes. The jack plate stopped working as well. So I get looking at that and found the wire broke off one end of the inline fuse. Not sure what’s up with all these wires breaking, but they are. I got out a new fuse holder and wired that in. I think everything should be good to go now. I put the batteries back in and everything worked the way it is supposed to. Auto bilge works, jackplate works, and the holes are plugged. So, as of now, everything in the boat from one end to the other is 100% again. We’ll see how long that lasts. I never got to putting anything back in the boat tonight. Guess I’ll have to do that before Matt and I head to Tamarack for the 10-10 Bassbusters event tomorrow night. There was no internet up north, so I had to hand write my update each day and just got them all typed in and got the site updated tonight. Hope you enjoy the read. I'll try to get some pictures of the big girls up soon. June 12 - Today was supposed to actually be a nice day. Which would be a nice change after yesterday. The alarm went off way too early again this morning. A quick check outside revealed that it was actually quite warm compared to what the weather man said it was going to be. He said clear and upper 30s. It was neither. Mid fifties and cloudy. And the wind was already blowing. Supposed to only get up to 11 MPH or something like that, but it was way harder than that at 5AM. We got the room packed up and the truck loaded and headed for the lake. We were the first ones there, but everyone else showed up soon after. There was another tournament going out who invited us to join their tournament, but I told them I was quite certain our group was not interested in paying their entry fee. Mike and I were fishing together today, so that made things easy this morning. We finally got in the water and headed out. I hadn’t been to Mullett in quite a few years, so I wasn’t really sure what to do. I did have a bunch of bedding areas marked from then, but I don’t think the wind would allow looking for them. There were whitecaps at 6AM when we started. Nice. I knew they would all be spawning or at least in the shallows thinking about it. So we ran down to the south end to fish the big rocky flat out in the lake. We got down there and just started drifting with the wind throwing the same War Eagle spinnerbait as yesterday. Well I say drifting. More like sailing, but anyways. Another day fishing in the middle of June wearing more clothes than I normally would hunting on Thanksgiving. Not a big fan of this weather. We drifted across part of the shallow rocky area and I saw one on a bed. Not sure how I ever saw it, but it scurried off anyways. Power Poles down and we waited a few minutes to patiently await its return. It never did. A sailing we went, chucking our spinnerbaits. I caught one close to 5 once we got off the edge, out in about 8 FOW. We fished around and found a little school out there. I expected to find them shallower, but they weren’t. I missed a couple, jumped a nice one off, and we each boated 3 keepers from that area. After about 2.5 hours, we gave up on the area and started heading north. We did some exploring and some looking at areas I had marked from before. We did see one scurry off a bed in one of my old areas. It was so cloudy and windy, that we couldn’t find the bed again when we turned around. We never saw the fish again either. We did see a lady sunbathing a little before 10. I’m wearing boots, jeans, sweat pants, long sleeve shirt, hoodie, fleece jacket, 10MPH suit, and a winter hat, and she’s in a bikini. We appreciated it, but she must have been part Eskimo or something. There weren’t any fish around her dock either. We eventually made our way to the big point just south of the ramp. We each got a dink or two and I had a chaser off a rock. I said to Mike that I would throw the Bullet Craw up there and if it was a dink, it would eat it right away. If it was a keeper, it wouldn’t eat it at all. So out went the craw, and it never even made it close to the rock. That little dude had it so fast. Guess what, it was a dink. Go figure. Just about as I was ready to give up on that spot, I caught a little keeper. Very little, but a keeper none the less. Since there wasn’t much going on on the west side of the lake, and considering how we caught them this morning, I decided we should try the hump in the middle of the lake. It took about 30 seconds to drift through that whole area with the wind blowing like it was. Forget that. We decided to give the area just north of Aloha a try. There is a big rocky area that runs north from the park that was a popular bedding area last time I was here. We drifted for awhile, chucking that spinnerbait, but it was pretty much unfishable. I thought we could get behind Needle Point a bit and check out the old bedding stuff I had marked back there. The wind was blowing right down it and it was all unfishable as well. Waves over the bow every wave. Forget that. I still only had 4 and Mike still only had 3. We decided to go back to the south end hump and try for a few more. We fished around and fished around, doing nothing but washing our baits. The sun came out a little bit, which allowed me to take off one of my coats and my winter hat for awhile. I thought about it for a minute and thought maybe the fish moved up shallow now that the sun is out and things might be warming up up there. So we motored up to fish the top a bit. First cast and I caught a biggun. That was number 5. Amazing how one fish can totally change the day. The day had been quite boring and disappointing until that big girl went into the livewell. High fives and the whole nine yards. I still had that peanut in there that I really needed to get rid of. I actually though that big one might eat it before weigh in, there was such a size difference. We gave it another hour or so and decided we better head back north. We went back to the point by the ramp and Mike got another dink, but that was it. Ballgame. On the trailer we went. My 5 went 19 something. Never got rid of the runt and the big one didn’t eat it. By first fish of the day was 5.05 and my last of the day was 5.96. Not quite 6. Dang it. My 19 from today went with my 21 from yesterday to give me 40 something and the win by about 6 pounds. I’ll take it. My almost but not quite 6 was big bass as well. We took some pictures and put them big girls back to swim away, make baby smallmouth, and give another fisherman the excitement of catching them some other day. All in all, the weather was awful, but I managed to catch a few fish and a few big ones. Had the weather cooperated, it would have been lights out and I would have pushed 50 pounds I believe. Oh well. Never had the weather cooperate on any fishing trip I’ve ever taken, why should things change now. We stopped at Walmart in Gaylord so I could get a new float switch for the auto bilge. Mine isn’t working and I’m not sure why. But if the switch is bad, I want to have one ready when I tear everything apart to get to it, cuz it’s a pain in the butt. Sure don’t want to do it twice if I can avoid it. Have to take 2 batteries and the Power Pole pump and stuff out to get to it. Made it home just before 8 and emptied the boat. Everything is out of it scattered all over the garage floor and all the compartments are open to start the drying process. I think I’m gonna skip fishing tomorrow night and work on getting the boat out back together and working on all the stuff that needs working on. June 11 – Today’s forecast is cold, cloudy, windy, and rainy. Just what I was hoping for. The weather has never been cooperative for any long fishing trip I can remember. Why should this be any different? We woke up to pleasantly dry and warm weather though. It was supposed to start storming about midnight and go til mid day. Maybe they got it wrong for the good side once. We got some breakfast and headed to the lake. Burt today and Mullett tomorrow. Before we made it to the lake, it started raining. That’s more like it. I knew I wanted to spend a bunch of my day bed fishing, and that oughtta be just about impossible in this weather. Since I planned on bed fishing a good part of the day, I started out fishing areas that Danny and I could both fish equally. About 3 hours worth actually. We started out in the deeper rocky area south of Cedar Point. Nothing there. So we went to fish the rocky point by Chippewa Beach. We each got one there. Mine was on a War Eagle spinnerbait that was kind of transparent, with some white and gold and silver shimmer to it. Not sure of the name of the color. We headed up to Greenman Point to give that a try, but it started thundering and lightning. It wasn’t super close or really threatening, but I don’t like lightning. So we headed back towards the ramp to fish in case we needed to bail. The threatening weather didn’t last long and I couldn’t take it anymore, so we went to the bed fish. It actually stopped raining by now. I wasn’t sure how big of a window I would have, so I wanted to take advantage of it. The beds were all on the edge of the little drop where the rocks turn to sand. I went along looking for the circles the GPS drew around the beds last night. Way easier than trying to remember what waypoint was what or new or old. I got to number one and it bit right away. And came off at the boat for no apparent reason. I was kind of surprised how quick I got it. I should have just waited a minute for it to go back to the bed, but I’m rather inexperienced with this stuff. I was bummed, so I moved on to number 2. I got it to go quickly as well and it came off, too. No idea why. Everything is good with the hook and bait and rod and line, etc. Oh well, I’ll be back to get you two later. It went much better after that. I was throwing a Nemesis Baits Bullet Craw in road rash color. I figured out the key to getting them to bite was swimming the bait into the bed. I would swim it in there, they would go ram it with their nose, zoom around the bed like crazy and about the time they would go back into it, my bait would come swimming back in. It never took long and they would gobble it up. The strangest thing was a walleye though. I saw a bass take off from a bed. I flipped my craw a few feet beyond the bed so I could work it in there when the fish came back. I felt something eat it, so I jerked, and caught about an 18 inch walleye. No kidding. 5 feet from a bass bed. Once I got my 5, I let Danny have first shot at them. He wasn’t quite as successful as I was getting them to eat. When he would give up on them, I would catch them. I managed to hook every fish I tried to today. We only managed to hit about ¼ mile of bank today. I had 3 totally different areas that I think had some bigger fish that we never made it to. The weather window closed and it became impossible to fish the beds on the east side. We went to a rocky area that had a bunch of beds and I turned Danny loose on the troller, but he was unable to locate any beds. So we went to the west side to get out of the wind and to check some areas that I had marked from those old trips. We found a few more. I had a 3-0 that I culled with a 3-1, then a 3-2. Sure not much, but and ounce is an ounce I guess. No more keepers and the weather was still not nice. I was wearing boots, jeans, sweat pants, long sleeve shirt, hoodie, fleece jacket, 100 MPH suit, winter hat and gloves. And still cold. We actually went in a few minutes early. It was brutal out there. Come weigh in, I had 21.20. My first 20 pound bag I ever weighed in. I had a 5.09 and a 5.16. Never had 2 5 pounders in a bag either. Heck, I haven’t had many 5s ever. I was leading after day 1. The last few years, I have consistently improved each day of multiple day tournaments. I got a feeling that will stop tomorrow. No place up to go in the standings, and I doubt I can beat 21.20 on a lake I haven’t been to in years and didn’t practice at all. We got back to the room and piled all our wet stuff up. After a short nap, the rest of the gang called and said they were going to dinner now. We threw the wet stuff in the truck and stopped at the Laundromat to dry it for tomorrow. The weather dude says we’re gonna need it. It’s supposed to clear tonight and be in the 30s on the morning. We’re gonna need all those clothes to try to stay warm tomorrow. The sign says the Laundromat is open til 7:30. Perfect. We have almost 2 hours to get back. I’m not real experienced with these dryers that run on quarters, so we ask the lady “working” there. She says it will run for 5 minutes for a quarter, but it will run a long time on a dollar. Huh? About 20 minutes I’m guessing. Anyways, we got her going and our stuff is drying. We tell her we are going to eat and verify they are open til 7:30. She says they close at 6:30. “Last load is at 6:30, so I can leave if no one is in here.” I ask her about what if we aren’t in here, but our stuff is still in here in the machine. She kind of shrugs her shoulders and gives me the “Oh well, not my problem I’m leaving at 6:30” look. Now I understand why the dryer runs 5 minutes on a quarter, but a really long time on 4 of them. I ask what time they open in the morning, since we won’t be back and our stuff won’t be done before she leaves. 9. That won’t work for us, obviously. Finally, I sweet talked her into putting our stuff in a garbage bag and putting it by the door when she leaves. How friggin nice of her. Oh well. We will have dry clothes for tomorrow. We went to dinner with everyone, then went and got the garbage bag full of dry clothes. The nice laundry lady even folded the stuff for us. How sweet of her. This was the first time I’ve had to go to a Laundromat on the road, and hopefully the last after this. Gassed up the truck and boat and time to call it a day. Mullett tomorrow. If the weather was going to cooperate, I would come back to Burt. I left a lot of big fish and a bunch of beds. I think I could do even better tomorrow. It’s just not worth taking the chance of the weather not allowing me to look at them when I get back over here, so I’ll just go play around on Mullett. Hopefully I can get a few and hold my lead. We’ll know this time tomorrow I guess. June 9 - I got home from work today and the truck and boat all loaded up and ready to head out in the morning. But I had to go to Hardy first. Tonight was the first Castaway I've been able to fish this year. Since there have been big tournaments there the last two weekends at Brower, we decided to run there first. There have been about 400 tournament quality smallies released there in the last week and a half. So we left 8 mile last boat out and idled through both no wake zones, got to Brower and started fishing. We put our limit fish in the boat at 6:20. That was fast. Boat 1 left at 6. Here's the kicker. They were all largemouth. We ran down there to catch some of the retread smallies, but got a limit of lareheads that fast. We never did get any smallies in there. One chance a year at that pattern, and it didn't produce. No idea why not, but it didn't. We went around the corner and fished the rocks outside Brower for awhile. Keith got a monster backlash. He got it picked out and reeled it back in. And the 2 pound smallie waiting on the other end. New pattern for Keith maybe. That was the only smallmouth we caught all night. We didn't get any more keepers. We ran back of to River Ridge Resort and you could tell it was a slow night. I think there were only about 9 teams that had fish. I think more than half zeroed, by the sounds of it. We ended up 2nd. Brad and Ginger won with the only other limit caught. NBAA was at Townline. I guess Jerry and Tryce won and Bill was 2nd. Bill's on a tear. Better hope he don't show up wherever you are fishing. In the morning, I'm off to Burt/Mullett for the weekend. GRBC has a two dayer there this weekend, so I'm going a day early to look around and fun fish. Probably no internet up there, so I probably won't be able to update until I get back. So if you don't hear from me, tear it up this weekend and tell me all about it.
June 23 - Big surprise. It pretty much rained all day. I'm not sure the last time I updated a day and didn't mention adverse weather. Oh well. I got home today and my maps for the Bassmaster tournament next week were there. So were my new shirts. They sent me a hoodie, a short and long sleeve jersey. The shirts were supposed to be black and they're white, and my old ones had cooler diamond plate, but overall, they're cool. Hopefully, they bring me lots of luck. Can't forget that tonight was the Castaway at Martiny. Luckily, we got to pull out of the garage in the rain and drive up there in the rain. I stopped for a bit, but started again for us to take off in. Thanks. The past several tournaments up there, we have been fishing a point and sunken island each time. Given the time of year, and the fact that we keep getting more and more company at our other spots, we decided to zig. Several years ago, I lauched at the dam and went into some of the canals off the river. I remember seeing some nice looking stuff in there that I thought might be good right now. I thought there might either be post spawners hanging out or fryball guarders. We went into a few canals, but never found the ones I remember. And we only found two little keepers. Guess we should haved zagged. I must have caugh a dozen fish that were 6 inches or less. No idea why there were so many of them little ones, but I think 5 times I set the hook and fish came flying out of the water at me. Once, the poor little bugger flew headfirst into the gunwale. When you're 5 inches long and weigh about 2.5 ounces, hitting a bassboat head on at about 60 MPH has a bad outcome. Sorry little buddy. The weather was awful and the fishing was worse. Our just over 3 pounds was inside the top ten. I think there were only 2, 3 fish limits caught. Oh boy. No fishing tomorrow, but Weekend Warriors Saturday on Mecosta.
June 22 - Not a nice day at all. Cloudy yucky windy rainy, then sunny, then storms, then sun, and more storms. We have to fish Tamarack tonight, so you know it will be nasty by then. Matt got to the house and we headed for the lake. The first thing I noticed when we got out of the truck was the wind. It was blowing incredibly hard. I was outside off and on all day, and there was never any wind. Now that it's fishing time, the wind is flat howling. People are wearing their raingear just becasue the wind is blowing so hard. We took off 8 out of 12. We headed down the north shore a ways to try the weeded that Randy and Chip caught 3 or 4 limits out of Monday night. Given the facts that the weeds have all been nuked, there was a ton of rain last night and today, and the wind is blowing 100, it was really hard to find the weeds and even harder to try to fish them. We did get one little keeper though. It decided to rain us for awhile, becasue apparently the wind alone wasn't enough. We just fished around all night, going wherever the wind was blowing us to. When we would come across a weedbed, we'd stop and fish it a bit more thoroughly, then blow on the the next bite. We worked back towards the ramp, then down the east shore a ways. We tried the weedbed we caught 4 out of last Tuesday, but didn't catch any. Bill was working his way down that same shore real shallow. I really wanted to go up and fish the same stuff we got them in last Tuesday, but Bill was working his way to where I wanted to go. He was fishing along at the speed of glaciers, but he was headed that way, so I left it alone. So we just kind of fished around going from dead weed patch to dead weed patch. We would fish them when we found them, otherwise just kind of threw wherever. We ended up catching 6 keepers on Senkos and 4 inch Power Worms. The best 5 went about 11.5. That got us first, by just 5 hundredths or so. Wow, that was close. BUt a win is a win, and we'll take it. Hopefully the boat isn't too dirty and I don't get grounded. Amber said she'd kill me if I get the boat dirty after she helped clean it last night. If I never update this again, you know it was too dirty when I got home.
June 21 - I got another insert for the hydraulic line. Cost me another dime. I also got the Hookin' Up Heroes page up. The story and pictures for this year's event are there. Check it out. Now it's time to fix the boat and clean it. OK, the boat is fixed once again. It took me a good 2 minutes including filling the reservoir. When Amber got home from work, it was clean the boat time. And let me tell you, did she mean clean. So the cap was scrubbed with Meguiars and waxed, the hull was sprayed with Awesome, washed with soap and water, and waxed. The carpets got vacuumed, and all of the vinyl got cleaned with Awesome as well. There was a taco break in there somewhere. I recognized the smell of the Awesome. For those of you that don't know, Awesome is a cleaner you get at the dollar store for a buck. 2 for a jumbo bottle. I finally figured out where I regognized the smell of it. I think it is the same thing as I use to clean my motor. I use BioKleen. 15 bucks a bottle. I tried the dollar Awesome and it worked on the motor just as well, if not better, as the BioKleen for a whole lot less. Check this stuff out. It works on everything. So the boat and motor are spic and span and clean as a whistle. I sure am glad I decided to clean the boat tonight instead of go to Coldwater. The weather was as if I was fishing though, another hurricane, and thunderstorm. So I sure hope whoever did fish tonight had fun and stayed dry. I'm sure tomorrow night will be the same weather. I can only imagine how much trouble I'll be in if I bring home a dirty boat tomorrow night after Amber cleaned it tonight. Gotta love a girl who tells you the boat is too dirty and wants to help you clean it.
June 20 - I got the insert for the hydraulic line. Cost me a dime. Since I was spending all that money, I just got the goofy shapd round thing that goes on the outside of the line and will replace that, too. I ordered my maps for the first Bassmaster Tour event in Virginia. I have been writng back and forth with a coupel of guys from Virginia that hopefully wil gove me some insight on fishing the James River. I've never been there and hate tidal waters, so I'm pretty happy there are a couple guys willing to help me out. More to follow on that for sure. Tonight, Scott and I are fishing the COTM. I sure hope we get some bigguns. I'm guessing everyone will be catching the same fish. I think it will boil down to who gets the lucky bigger bite and gets 11 instead of 10 or 12 instead of 11. I really hope to win, just because of all the crap the guys were giving me Saturady after the Hookin' Up Heroes event. Big bass would be nice, too, while we're at it. I got home and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get that insert and collar to both go on. One or the other. Scott got to the house for the tournament and I wasn't ready. He took the other side apart and saw that that insert was way smaller than the one I was working with was. Apparently, these things aren't sized like I thought. So, back to the hardware to spend another dime tomorrow I guess. We put it back together without the insert, bungied the pole in place and off to Tamarack we went. We zoomed off. Well, we didn't really zoom anywhere. Just kinda putzed a few feet and started fishing. First cast, first bass. Second cast, first keeper. Not a bad start. We went on to catch a bunch of fish, bit we just never got any good ones. Scott did get one that just went 3, but a bunch of peanuts to go along with it. At the end of the night, we decided not to weigh them. These guys fish every week for points and we just came for fun. So rahter than screw up the points deal, we just put them back. We probably had a little over 10. First was 13 and there were 2 4 pounders caught. It took aa something to place. Better luck Wednesday. Brad's having a singles tournament on Coldwater tomorrow, but I'm skipping it. I have to fish every other niht this week, it's a long ways up there, and Amber says she needs to clean the boat. So I guess I better have it there for her to clean.
June 19 - Happy Father's Day everyone. Please make sure you take time today to let all of the positive male influences in your life know how much you appreciate them and all they've done for you. No fishing for me today. I worked the ambualcne at the drag strip. I don't normally do that, but today being Father's Day and MIS weekend both, they needed some help. Since I am not a father, nor do I have any fathers left, I volunteered to do it so no one had to work that wanted to spend time with their families instead. I did take my computer and camera and work on the story from yesterday. I got the story written and photos off my camera onto my computer. Now I just have to finalize the story and pick which photos are going onto the website. I'll try to get that done tomorrow and get the new page up on the website. Yesterday must still be effecting me a little but, because when they played the National Anthem at the track today, it brought back memories of yesterday. Amazing how one little day in time can have such a profound and lasting effect. I did work on the boat a little bit. I cut the hydraulic line back beyond the split, but dropped the brass insert into the bilge so I can't put that back together until I can get another one tomorrow at the hardware. I can't figure out why it won't go into reverse yet. I'll try some more and call for help I guess. We rode to dinner with Keith and Janet, then it was back home to figure the boat out. And I did. Long story short, a bolt came out and settled in a spot that prevented the lever from moving to put it in reverse. Each head has a 10mm bolt that serves as a ground. Not sure what they ground, but there are black wires with rings that these two bolts hold to the head. The port side one came out and made its way to the front center of the motor and wedged itself down where the shifting rod goes down to the lower unit. When I tried to shift into reverse, the lever couldn't go far enough, because it was hitting the bolt. I found the bolt first, pulled it out and everything worked. The trick was trying to find where it came from. Finally found a hole in the head and a dangling wire. I put it back and all seems good again. Not sure when or why it fell out and how in the world it got to where it did, but it did. And I figured it out all by myself and fixed it. Go me. So tomorrow I just have to get that brass insert from the hardware and put the hydraulics back together. We'll be ready to go for the Tamarack COTM tomorrow night.
June 18 - This blog cannot do justice to this years event. I will create a page dedicated to this years Hookin' Up Heroes event. I have to sort through 200 pictures to go along with the story. Check back soon for the new page.
June 17 - Today's plan was go work 5-1, then come home and weed eat the property, and spend the rest of the night getting ready for Hookin Up Heros tomorrow. I have these boxes of giveaways to load up. I wanted to take the truck and boat to town to the carwash. The boat is trashed from one end to the other from fishing tournaments every day for a week and travelling the state. I want everything to look nice for the event. Well, instead, I worked until 8:30. So none of the above got done. Actually, nothing at all got done. Came hom, ate, and went to bed. Let's hope for a nice day tomorrow and another great event.
June 16 - I spent more time looking for the actuator valve I need for the trailer brakes today. I stopped at one place that actually had what was said to be a universal one in stock. It had a different part number than what I need, looked too tall, and it had a 2004 or 2007 price tag on it and was more than twice as much as the other ones I’ve seen, so I chose not to get it. I stopped at Goldstar and talked to the trailer guy there, but he can’t even get UFP parts, so still no luck. Guess I’ll just have break down and order online. It was back to Mecosta tonight for Castaway. Tonight will be the 4th tournament in 5 nights there. It’ll be interesting to see how it holds up. We drew boat 4. It was pretty uneventful until they called our number. We were idling through the boats to clear everyone before we took off when they called boat 4. Boat 4 was directly beside me about 6 feet away and blasted off. Then he created a big enough wake that part of it came right over the side of the boat and into my lap. That was cold and I wasn’t real happy. As for the fishing part of the night, we decided to start in the channel by the ramp. 3 tournaments just released their fish here, so there’s gotta be some retreads around and Keith said they saw a big one Tuesday night here. Keith caught a dink right away, but no other bites. Keith did see a big one lazily cruise his way under a dock. We left there and headed north. We went onto a little cove where I dumped a pretty nice one last night. No one home. So we worked the bay back north hitting the docks and weeds and whatever we could find to throw at. Keith got a keeper and I dumped a real nice one in there. Few dinks and rockstars, too. We cruised across the lake and fished a bank that Keith got a couple on Tuesday night. Dink right away, then I got our biggest fish of the night. Keith was standing there with the net and when it came up, there was another one with it. I wasn’t fast enough apparently to get the bait back out there to get the other one. Keith got a nice pike, which we added to the critter side of the livewell. No more keepers there. We moved north a little farther and got a couple more small keepers. The highlight of the night was when I spotted a dogfish. I was right on top of it when I spotted it and wasn’t able to get a bait down to it. So I told Keith to watch for it to come out the back of the boat. He says "there it is", drops a bait, and sets the hook. In the critter side it goes. We are now confident our critter weighs more than our 3 fish limit of bass does. We ended up back by the channel to see if any retreads got hungry while we were gone and to see if we could stumble upon Mr. Fatty that Keith saw. One dink is all we got there. Time to give up and go to weigh in. I was surprised at how nice the bags were tonight. It took 7.87, I think, to win tonight. That’s better than a 2 ½ pound average. It took 11 something Sunday night, 9 something Tuesday night, and 13 something last night. I am impressed how well the lake held up. The guys sure caught them tonight. I think our dogfish weighed exactly the same as our bag did. I’m guessing we were around 15th or so. We did get 12 bucks for the dogfish. WooHoo, we’re going to Disney World. When the weigh in was over and the guy who took off next to me was kind of alone, I went over to him and mentioned what he had done. He said he realized he had done it and apologized for doing something he shouldn’t have. I was cool with that. We just chatted after that, all was civil and I have no issue with him at all. An honest mistake and we’re cool. But, while we were chatting, someone must have been listening to our conversation, because he says something to me about going up through the boats in the way when I should have stayed back and waited my turn, or something like that. I informed him that I was boat 3 and was idling through to make sure I was clear of everyone else before I took off. I finished the conversation by suggesting he know what he was talking about before he starting talking next time. I haven’t had any issue at all in several years, and tonight wasn’t an issue either until then. Apparently Mitch heard my suggestion to him and reminded everyone to play nice together. Hopefully the stick his nose in it guy will just let it be what it was, which was nothing at all. While it wasn’t a very nice weather night, the fishing was pretty good and some of the teams who routinely don't do well did very well and caught some nice fish, so that was nice to see. It would have been nice if Shane would have respected his elders a little bit and got that dogfish out of the livewell for me and not made me touch that thing. Tim runs a pretty fun tournament with lots of prizes and giveaways. Chad called me on the way home to tell me about NBAA. They were on Townline tonight. Chad said they went to the spot Mike and I took 15 pounds out of last year and caught a 4.97 on the first cast. That’s Chad’s biggest fish ever. The had over 12 for the night, which is a pretty stout bag as well. Come weigh in time, neither were tops for the night. Can you imagine fishing a weeknight tournament and having a 5 pounder and almost 13 pounds and neither being the heavy? Sorry guys. LOL No fishing tomorrow. Just plan on finalizing preparations for Hookin Up Heros Saturday. The boat is pretty much trashed, so I hope to be able to clean that and the truck up before Saturday morning. We still have room for both boats and Veterans if you or someone you know is interested is fishing with us.
June 15 - Off to Mecosta tonight for the NTTA tournament. We stopped in Canadian Lakes for lunch on the way and it started raining while we were eating. The kind of rain that looked like it might not last too long. Wrong. Got to the lake and donned the raingear. Keith fished here last night and fished Mecosta and Round, so we were gonna try Blue tonight. It took 11 something Sunday night and 9 something last night. We'll see how tonight goes. All reports I've heard are that all vegetation has been nuked and the water is crystal clear. They were right. We took off in the rain and got almost to Blue when I remebered there used to be some deeper cabbage on the north end of Mecosta. Maybe it was deep enough that it hasn't been totally decimated and now is nonexistant. So we decided to try it. We did find some deeper weeds and Matt caught a keeper pretty quick on a Rodent. We fished around and Matt was getting pummelled by little fish and rock bass every cast. We moved shallow and Matt caught another one. We had two pretty quick. We fished around and only got more rockstars and dinks. We went up to try shallow and around the docks like we caught them last nght. Same thing. Dinks and rocks. We moved back out to the break and the deeper weeds. I decided to try a jerkbait and got our biggest fish on my first cast. That would be our last keeper. But not the end of the rain. That never did stop while we were fishing. We went back towards the ramp and fished the rockpiles and flat south of the island. We put a serious hurtin' on the rockstars up there. Every cast. Big ones, too. We gave up and headed back. We never did make it to Blue like we planned when we blasted off. I tossed our 3 back while Matt was getting the truck. Mo and Jim had 13 something and a 3.88 or something big fish. It finally did quit raining when it was time to come home. The last I heard of tomorrow's forecast was "exactly the same as today." Oh boy. I can't wait to fish in the rain all night tomorrow night again. The good news is we do it at Mecosta again tomorow fpr Castaway. Wish us luck and let's hope for some dry fishing.
June 14 - Tonight Matt and I went to Tamarack for the 10-10 Bassbusters tournament. We got there and much to the surprise of no one, the wind was howling. At least the sun was shining. We all got launched and Scott gave the go ahead to blast off, and........I dropped the trolling motor and started fishing. I knew they had sprayed about 9 days ago, but I had no idea what kind of effect it had had. So we really had no idea what we were going to find. I had memories of past seasons and millions of sprayings on that poor lake, so I wasn't completley clueless, but not sure. We started out real shallow heading down the east shoreline. We worked out a touch farther to see if a weedbed that was there was still there. It was and we got 2 keepers out of it. We went back real shallow and worked our way the rest of the way down to the corner. We caught a ton of fish real shallow. They were on the inside of the weedline and in and around all the little beds up there. Our biggest fish was apparently sitting right on the edge and I spooked it with the trolling motor. Matt saw it scoot shallow and turn around, so he flung a senko at it and it ate it. Once we got to the corner, we noticed fishing definitely slowed a ways back. So we turned around and fished our way back. When we got back to the weedbed, we went back out there and caught two more. From there, we zoomed over to the shore north of the ramp and fished our way toward the cemetary. We culled one more time doing that. Matt had a big one blow up on this bait as he was reeling it in to recast, and I dumped what was sure pulling like a big one. Oh well. We caught some more fish but never culled again. When it was quitting time, we fired up the motor to put it back on the trailer. Didn't burn a whole lot of gas tonight. We agreed that win, lose, or draw, we couldn't argue that we had a blast tonight. We must have caught 40 fish and 20 keepers, give or take a few here or there. Our best 5 went 14.25 and Matt's big one was 3.86 I think. Both were good enough to get us the top prize. The wind eventually died down and it turned out to be a beautiful night. First place and big bass sure didn't hurt either. Lots of teams did well tonight. Scott and Randy had 12. I think all but one team had a limit, and everyone reported catching lots of fish. All in all, a great night. Thanks to Scott for having the 10-10 club. We looked at the trailer when we got back to see what's going on with the brakes. We believe the recirculation valve has gone bad on the actuator. I never have trailer brakes. We think the valve is stuck open, so the fluid just goes through the return line to the master cylinder instead of through the lines to the calipers. I'll have to look into a new one tomorrow. The pictures I took of Burt/Mullett with my phone didn't turn out good enough to post here. They are grainy and just look bad. I'll have to wait for Mike to email me the ones he took or get the ones Bob took for the club. Tomorrow night, Matt and I are back at it. Mecosta for NTTA. Split Shot was there tonight, but I don't have a report yet.
June 10 – Mike made it to the house about 7:30 and we were on the road heading north shortly after that. Since I miss Houghton Lake so much after last week, we decided to stop there for breakfast. It started raining while we were eating. Perfect. I was anticipating the tournament being a bed fishing bonanza sacking up a bunch of giants, but that might be kinda tough in the rain. It actually stopped raining before we got to Indian River. We stopped for some boat gas and launched at Burt Lake State Park. We started out in an area up the east shoreline out in a bay that usually has some big fish on some deep beds. It was cloudy and windy, so we couldn’t see anything. When the weather is like it should be, you can see everything. I busted out the flogger to see how well that actually worked. That thing is amazing. Without it you couldn’t see anything. With it, it was like there wasn’t any water in the lake. You could see everything. Well, if there was anything to see, you could have seen it. I saw one fish, a few live crayfish and tons on dead ones. We fished around awhile throwing spinnerbaits and crankbaits, and swimjigs, and Mike even tried a senko. No action there at all. We gave up on the deep bed idea and area. The wind was NE, so we went down the shoreline west of Colonial Point since it has some nice rocks down there and it was protected from the wind today. It was protected, but we only saw 3 beds. And only one had a fish. It scurried off and never came back. Something ate my Freak and broke me off on the hookset. That was all the action for that area. We decided to go to the east shore of Burt, where I had some beds marked from those trips a few years ago. We quickly found a fish on a bed. It broke me off too. Then we found another on a bed, and another, and another, etc……. It pretty much went like that the rest of the night. We found 4 different areas that were full of fish on beds. We didn’t really try to catch any more, just went in a circle around them with the bow of the boat, so the GPS would draw a circle around the bed. So tomorrow, each circle on my track from today is drawn around a bed. I didn’t have to worry about the old waypoints or what they meant. I just had to go fish the circles. My idea so you can’t steal it. Definitely have a plan for tomorrow. It was cloudy and windy, and we had to work our tails off to find the ones we did, but we did. We met up with the other guys and they said they had practiced for 2 days and hadn’t really caught much. I have to say, I didn’t believe them. They have too much experience and have had too much success up here to not be on anything. Time will tell I guess. Tomorrow is gameday. We got some dinner and a room and it was lights out.
June 8 - I have been struggling a little bit this year with the idea that there really isn't much to fish for. Sure, there's always a few bucks on the line, but pig picture.....nada. I won't fish enough on Mondays to make the classic and have no shot at AOY. This year, in an attempt to draw more boats, all of the tournaments are open. No points, no standings, no big payday at the end, or anything like that. On Wedsnesdays, you just have to fish enough tournaments to make the classic. Don't even have to weigh a fish all season. And I'll miss enough to not have a shot at AOY. On Thursdays, you do have to be top 5 to make the classic, but I'll be gone during the classic anyways. Top 5 is nice, but kinda meaningless to me this year. So it just feels like there is nothing to fish for this year. Don't get me wrong, I still love to do it, and hanging out with the guys is always a blast, but I just can't seem to get up for anything this year. I'll just keep plugging away and get through my little funk hopefully. As we get closer to July and there is some stuff at stake, I'm sure I'll get all jacked up for the tournaments.
Tonight was NTTA at Townline. 10-10 was also at Coldwater, but Townline is about 45 minutes closer to home. Jerry gave me the flier for the NTTA Open on Tamarack on July 3rd. That is on the tournament page now. Matt and I started out in the SE corner of the lake. It was pretty slow, so we motored down the lake a bit. I got one in some lily pads, and some more dinks. We went to the bay that goes to the south and saw some beds, but not until we would have spooked anything off them that might have been there. It was super windy, cloudy, and even rained a bit. Not so good for bed fishing. We worked down to the west end and got no more keepers. We motored up to the west side of the island and spent the rest of the night on the west side and north side of the island. We got a few more dinks and two more keepers there. There was quite a flurry of fish eating right at the end of the night. We got to listen to some thunder, and see a bit of a lightning show, but the weather really was never threatening. We just threw our fish back and didn't weigh them in. Nothing on the line so no sense putting the fish through that. Quite a few 10 pound bags. Big fish was just shy of 4 and big bag was just shy of 11. Fun tournament and good group of guys for sure. We'll get them next week maybe. I didn't get a 10-10 report yet. Hardy tomorrow for Castaway.
June 7 - Bill text me during the night saying he thought he spun a hub. That was one of the ideas I suggested, based on what he was describing had happened. He called this morning and was bringing it to the office for me to look at. It wasn't the prop, but something inside the gearcase. He took it up to Hansul's and they sad it was toast. That stinks. Justin and Cy won on Big Whitefish last night. Not sure what they had. Tonight was Tamarack for the singles tournament. The wind was howling at the beginning. I started out fishing some weeds. Oh wait. The entire lake is a weed right now. I haven't been there this year. I had no idea where there were weeds, or not weds, or what weeds you could actually fish, etc. I started out down the north shoreline and fished back to the ramp. Bunch of dinks. I ran to the SW corner of the lake and fished my way up the west side toward the old pickle docks. Once, I threw my senko next to a little clump of lily pads. I felt some weeds on it, so I tried to shake them off. I kept shaking and they wouldn't come off. Finally, I see a big ole mouth open up and my senko come out of it. Nice. Finally got my "weeds" shook off. I got my first keeper up by the wood slabs on the bottom. I ran to the SE corner and fished my way back towards the ramp. A couple more dinks and one more keeper before quitting time. Both of my fish were nice ones, but not nice enough to bother weighing. They now reside in the pond. Dustin had one a little over 4 and had 14 pounds. Nice sack. I added two more boats to the list today for Hookin' Up Heros. We're getting there. Still need more, but we're getting closer. Split Shot was on Townline tonight, but I don't have a report on how that went yet. Townline tomorrow for NTTA with Matt. Sure would be nice to do respectable for once this year.
June 6 - I spent some time today working on confirming the boater list for the Hookin' Up Heros event. I managed to confirm 18 guys are coming to take the vets fishing. Bill is going to remind everyone at the NBAA and Justin is going to remind everyone at COTM, so hopefully we can get a few more this week. There is still room, so let me know if you are interested. I will be reminding everyone at Tamarack Tuesday, Townline Wednesday, Hardy Thursday, and Burt this weekend.. Hopefully 25 or so by the end of the weekend. I think we can do it. My plan for tonight was to get the truck and boat all cleaned out and restored to normal after last week. But instead, I grilled some brats, sat on the deck watching the wildlife while we ate, then started working on updating this. A little over 4 hours later, I got it all updated. I wasn't able to update it up north, so I just hand wrote an update each day so I could update it when I got home. The truck and boat are trashed still, but hopefully, everyone has some enjoyable reading. Bill called and said Cowden fished pretty good tonight. There were multiple 4 pounders and Dustin had 13 something for the win. Bill had some trouble with his motor tonight. Hopefully it is simple and we can figure it out tomorrow.
June 5 - Worked til 1 today, then raced home. We still planned on going to Hardy to check out the Lake Drive weigh in and talk about Hookin' Up Heros. We met Keith, Janet and Mark in town and rode the bikes over there together. We got to Brower just before the weigh in started. Lots of fish, but not really many big ones. Lots of limits, but again, no big ones. Big bass was 4.35 and 16.48 or so won it. Marc Snyder won again today after winning the State Championship yesterday. Jeff let me talk to everyone for a minute about Hookin' Up Heros and it looks like we're going to get about 4 more boats as a result. That's cool. After the weigh in was over, we rode the bikes over to Cy's place on Brooks Lake. Cy planned a cookout and invited a bunch of people over. Not only was the food awesome, so was the whole thing. Everyone sitting around telling lies and fish stories. It was a blast and everyone was laughing non-stop. Good times for sure and thanks to Cy for that. Case of the Mondays and NBAA One on One both start tomorrow, but I don't think I'll make either of them.
June 4 - Tournament day. Bill was up and gone long before my alarm went off. I'm not very excited, but he obviously was. Fishing has been brutal and the weather isn't supposed to be very nice. I brought my rainsuit into the room last night, expecting it to be raining this morning and I didn't want to have to get wet to get it out. I looked out the window and it was dry. That was a pleasant surprise. No rain yet. I got around, packed up and headed out. It was actually quite warm out already. Even more of a pleasant surprise. It was quite breezy, but that probably won't hurt my plan today. I got to the ramp and met Tyler and got his stuff loaded into the boat. There was the typical tournament BS going on all over the ramp before we started. That's part of the fun of it. We launched and waited our turn to blast off. My plan was to head to the northwest part of the lake and hit a couple canals in particular up there. I know the big fish are all going to be smallmouth and will all be caught in the lake. I haven't caught one all week and have no clue where any of them live, so I'm just going to try to catch a limit of largemouth to save face if nothing else. And nothing about sums up my expectations for the day. We got up to where I wanted to go, and I realized I was in the wrong place, headed for the wrong canals, so I did a 180 and went to the right place. Surprisingly, no one was there yet. I figured for sure my mistake would have cost me, but it didn't. The canal was horseshoe shaped, but there was a road across the middle, so you had to fish it as 2 canals. No keepers in the first half, just a couple dinks. We motored around to the other half and I got 2 keepers in there. Nothing big, but not going home empty today. We played the canal game all down the west side of the lake. I did manage two more keepers and Tyler caught a nice one on a fluke. Mine were all on senkos. We were fishing our way up another canal when I saw a chipmunk swimming across it. There was nothing but seawalls where it was headed. I didn't even know they could swim, but this one could anyways. I figured it was in trouble when it got there, but there was a board just under the surface that I didn't know was there. It got on that and sat down. It was breathing about 100 times a minute and was panting with its tongue sticking out like a dog. I figured it was safe now, so we kept fishing and went around the corner. No more fish in there, but when we came back around the corner, the stupid chipmunk was back in the water, on its back flailing wildly trying to keep its head above water, but was failing badly. It was about to be a goner. I zoomed over to it and netted it. It just laid in the net and didn't move. I trolled over to the seawall and laid the net in the grass. It still didn't move, so I picked it up out of the net and laid it in the grass. It just laid there. It was safe and I had fish to catch, so away I went. I left it be and assumed it would be smart enough to stay out of the water. It should be fine once it rests. I did my good deed and saved the chipmunk from certain death very shortly. Hopefully the animal gods will show their appreciation by letting me catch a bunch of big ole fatties this afternoon. We made a return trip to the original canal that I caught the first two in. I got two more keepers there. That means I had to cull once. Now I had a sack full of fish between 14.003 and 14.345. Tyler found one on a bed, but couldn't get it to bite. We finally gave up on that canal and ran across to the Long Point canal sysytem. Not a bite in there. We went to try the bedding area that I have been pounding and trying to force the fish to be there. I finally found a bed there while I was fishing around. I saw it as I was directly over top of it and couldn't make it out very well, but at least I can finally say I found one. No fish there again, for about the 8th time. We ran to the canals in the southeast corner of the lake. We ran into Bill in there and he also had a limit. Lots of other boats in there fishing around, but no one was getting any bites. We left there with about an hour left to fish and went back to the main lake. I knew where there was some grass by the ramp on the edges of some sucker holes. No more bites all day. That means I never caught a single bass in 4 days of fishing from Houghton Lake. Even though I culled once, I had a puny little limit. I figured I'd just throw them back at the ramp and not put them through getting hauled to the weigh in and all that. Tyler threw his back before we loaded up. Don backed my trailer in and pulled out. I decided not to throw them back yet for some reason. I just had to walk them down and toss them back if I decided to. Home was long overdue and the opposite way of the weigh in, so that was sounding like a great idea. As people were leaving the ramp, Jack and Luke were checking livewells to see how many everyone had and if they were alive. I was parked right by the exit. I was the last one to leave the ramp. When Jack came over to my boat, I looked at the sheet. There weren't many numbers on it and almost no 5s. I verified that was correct, and he said yeah it was. So I decided I needed to go to the weigh in, cuz my puny limit looked not so bad all of a sudden. So I headed over to Prudenville to the Riviera. They had a nice set up for the weigh in. They had the tents up up over the tanks and scales, had a stand there that had beverages and stuff, and a little fountain pond that all the fish were being released into. 30 of the fish were being tagged for research. It's always cool to be able to help out with that kind of stuff. As the weigh in went on, it bacame apparent that fishing was bad for everyone, not just me. My giant sack went 7 3/4. So big, I could barely carry it. At the conclusion of the weigh in, there was exactly one 3 pounder caught. Marc Snyder won with 13 pounds. I think there were 2 or 3 11s, a ten or 2, some nines, and 2 8s, before we got to me. Not only did my huge haul make the team, it made it comfortably. This makes 3 times in 5 years that I have made the state team. All on different waters, different times of years, using different tactics. Wow, that kind of makes it sound like I can actually fish a little. Nah, must be a fluke. Even better, both Bill and Don made the team as well. Don made last year with me as well, but this is Bill's first. So huge congrats to Bill for making his first state team. That dude is on a roll right now big time. The top 12 make the team, so that means 25% of the state team are from right here. How cool is that. One thing of note was the fish in the pond. Every single fish in there was leisurely swimming around and not one showed any adverse sign of the day. Not so sure I put a lot of credence in the arguments that some make against tournaments because how bad it effects the fish. They looked like they would eat again. Once the festivities ended, I hauled my way home, rode the bike to dinner, and called it a day. Gotta be at work at 5AM.
June 3 - Another 5AM wake up today. Maybe today I finally find a fish. Jorji is going to meet me at the ramp this morning, so hopefully we can find a few. He sure didn't drive up a day early to fish with me and not catch them. We cleaned out the room, loaded up, and headed to the lake. Tonight, Bill has a reservation at the Super 8, so no more Ann's for us. Jorji was waiting for me when I got there. There were a bunch of other guys there launching as well. No one seemed particularly excited to get out there and go fishing. A mini BS session was going on like bass tournaments are famous for. Ramp BS is always a good thing. Before we gave in and launched, a bunch of us decided we were meeting for lunch on the water at noon at the Limberlost. The wind was already blowing a bit, but Jorji and I headed to the bedding area right away. Just like every other time I've been there this week, nothing doing. So we headed to the north end sucker holes. No action there either. I hadn't been to the canals off the east bay yet, so we decided to go give them a shot. We caught a few in there on senkos and a drop shot. Jorji was schooling me on a pink worm on the drop shot. But the fish were small, and I was about canaled to death, so we went to the lake to try to find them. Just outside the canal entrance, there was a breakline that went for about a mile that had weeds on the edge of it. Just like all the sucker holes, this seemed like a perfect place to find them prespawn or postspawn. Sand, then a nice drop with weeds on it. We fished that break for about 1/2 mile and only caught walleye. Imagine that. Given the wind, it really didn't take long to cover that breakline. We did a little map study, and decided to try some more weeds and sucker holes on the south side of the lake by the ramp. We rode around graphing, looking, and fishing. Notice I didn't mention catching. There was none of that. Finally, noon came and it was time to meet for lunch. That was the best hour of the day by far. Once we all went our separate ways after lunch, Jorji and I spent the rest of the day fishing around the south end of the lake. Weeds, likely bedding areas, sucker holes, you name it. No more bites. We tried everything that looked like a bass might live there. We gave up at 3:30 and headed back to the ramp. 3 days, 30 hours of fishing, and zero bass from Houghton Lake. Boy oh boy, I sure cant wait to get out here and do it again tomorrow. How soon can I come back up here? My only real choice is to race to one of the canals at blast off, and hope I can get to one of them first and catch a few fish. A limit is a possibility, but any fish big enough to make a difference and any chance at making the state team are slim to none. Stranger things have happened I suppose. All I can do is fish as hard as I can, do my best, and see what happens. Loaded up and headed for the hotel. Gassed up on the way. When we got there and were plugging the boats in and stuff, Don pulled in. That's cool. He's staying there, too. All 3 of us got everything ready for morning, put our stuff in the room and rode to the meeting together. They had a nice set up at the meeting. We all got a raffle ticket as we registered for a drawing later. I found out my partner was 16 year old Tyler from Kimball Lake by Fremont. He just got up here and hasn't been able to prefish, so it's all what I can find us tomorrow. They had a pig roast for us and all the fixins for dinner. It was awesome. Once dinner was over, they did the typical pre-tournament meeting stuff, then had the raffle. There was a whole table of stuff, and you got your choice on the table when you won. There was a flogger on the table to be given away. Everyone there wanted the flogger. If you don't know, a flogger is like an orange traffic cone with glass on the bottom and handle and a facepice. It is to put in the water to be able to see in the water better. Primarily to see beds when the water isn't glassy. The glass is always glassy on the bottom of it. It's really cool, but I would never consider buying one. Ticket number one is drawn and guess who won. Me. Guess what I took. The flogger. Will I use it? Probably not, but as bad as a lot of people wanted it, I just couldn't leave it on the table for someone else. Bill won next and got a nice new Ranger life jacket. Probably the only thing we'll win this weekend, so I guess we'll have to be happy with it. We made a pit stop at Walmart on the way back to the hotel. Given the venerable whackfest we are sure to encounter tomorrow, we all decided some time in the hot tub was necessary tonight. We met some old guys who were there for a golf tournament who asked if Don and I were brothers. I'm not kidding. At least we got a laugh. Bedtime. Can't wait for the tournament to be over tomorrow so I can head home.
June 2 - The alarm went off at 5AM. I got up, showered, got dressed, and took off. Bill stayed in bed, since he got up here in the middle of the night. I grabbed some breakfast on the way to the ramp. The wind is supposed to be a light north breeze today. I got to the south ramp and it was rocking and rolling. I guess my definition of light and theirs differ slightly. I was looking forward to that light breeze after yesterday's gales. While at the ramp, I couldn't find my good glasses. I decided to drive around and launch at the north ramp out of the wind. I figured my glasses must be in the room, so I stopped on the way by to look for them. I woke Bill up, but couldn't find my glasses. I checked the truck and they were sitting on the console, right next to my phone. I'll be. Someone must have put them there when I wasn't looking. We decided to meet for lunch, and off I went. I launched and went to an area that was supposed to have at least 15 beds right together in an area that Tim told me about. It might have had beds there, but after yesterday's wind blowing on it all day and all night, I doubt if it does anymore. They were in about 3 feet of water, but the waves were way bigger than that. The water clarity was about 2 inches. The lake is totally destroyed from the wind. I fished around for awhile, trying anyways, but never got a bite. I went around the corner up the lake a bit into the smiley face cut by the Cut River. I caught a couple in there, but it just didn't look like much was happening. They were supposed to be bedding in there as well, but I didn't see any. I decided to come back later when the sun was higher to see what I could see then. I ran down the bank a few miles and fished around some of the sucker holes. There are areas of the lake where they came in some time ago and sucked a bunch of sand out to make beaches or sell or something. The whole lake is sand. These sucker holes have weeds growing in them. The sand is only about 3 feet deep all arond them. So these are the only deeper water around. Great area for the fish to bed around, hang out in during the prespawn waiting to bed, great place to rest up after the spawn, and a great place for the males to take the fry to hide and to guard them. These places ought to have some fish for sure. I got there to find nothing but mud again. Big surprise. Well, I did catch a walleye there. That's it. I ran around Long Point and fished the canals on Long Point. I caught a few, but it was the same ole, same ole. Barely keepers and dinks. Not what I came up here for. I came to win, not to catch an 8 pound limit and finish at the bottom. Back into the lake I went, to the north end of north bay. There is a bunch of sand up there, with some weeds and some reeds. There has to be fish bedding up here somewhere. Lots of good looking stuff, but I couldn't find any beds anywhere. I'm guessing they were there, but in deeper water than I could see in, due to the mud created by yesterday's winds. I went a bit south to look for a weedbed a fellow in a canal told me about yesterday. I found some weeds in the area he told me about, but no fish in them. I went back to the sucker holes now that the sun was higher to see if I could see more or catch anything. Nope and nope. I called Bill and we decided it was lunch time. We beached them at a restaurant and had a sandwich and talked about our amazing success. After an hour or so, we got back after it. I tried that bedding area again, and again no bites. I was close to the smiley face cut, so I went back to see what I could see in there. Not much more than I could see earlier. I caught a few more, but no decent fish and no bedders. Guess I can write this place off now, too. The Cut River comes in right next to ths cut, so I went up that a ways to see what was going on. There was a ton of current coming down and the bottom was mud, so there won't be any spawners in there. Another spot written off. Back to the beds with no action. I ran and checked out a spot that Chuck had marked on his map. It looked good on the map. I got there and found some nice gravel. It was quite shallow, but it was the only gravel I've seen anywhere. It looked like some beds were in there, but there weren't any fish around. The lake was really settling down and getting like glass. Too bad it was just glassy mud, basically, after yesterday's winds. I bet this place would have been a ball on Tuesday, or even now if those winds hadn't destroyed the place. I ran around and looked at all the mooring bouys and anythihg else hard I could find that I thought I fish might bed by. And I found zero beds or fish. According to the map, there was supposed to be some more gravel in the SW corner of the lake. So I ran down there to take a look. I didn't find any gravel, but I did find a nice weedbed down there. I promptly caught another walleye. Either this is a really good walleye lake, or I am a really good walleye fisherman. The entire lake has turned to glass now. Perfect conditions for riding around and looking for fish and for beds. Unfortunately, the water conditions made it imposible to see anything. Same old story. Either the weather or the water conditions seem to ruin every trip. Looks like this will be no different. Another trip back to the beds, thinking maybe I could see something. Not so much. Still couldn't see anything. No bites either. Hopefully, the wind will cooperate and the water will clear up quickly. This is just one of those spots I have a ton of confidence in, even though I can't see anything and haven't caught a fish. I did have a fish eat a Kustom Kicker Jigs 2K Freak, but it came off before I saw it. Likely another walleye. Maybe it was a bass and maybe there is hope for that spot after all. At least enough hope to keep me coming back to check on it the rest of the week. Bill texted to see if I was ready for dinner and I was. So I said this would be my last spot, then I would meet him back at the room. When I said it was my last spot, I meant it, but I found some weeds on the way back to the ramp that I just had to try. It was close to the bedding area, so I thought maybe they would drop back there either because they were now postspawn, or males guarding fry, or just becasue yesterday destroyed their bedding area. Great thought, but same results as always. Nada. After 14 hours on the water today and zero bass bites in Houghton Lake, it't time to call it a day and give up. Bill did catch a 3 pound LM on a fluke, so he is way ahead of me, and hopefully onto something. I came up here with very high hopes of catching a bunch and doing well, but after 2 days of practice, my expectations have declined significantly. Up & at 'em bright and early to get them figured out in the morning. Last day of practice, so do or die time to get 'em going. I guess it might be time to just keep swinging really hard, just in case I hit it.
June 1 - Today is the day I leave or the TBF State Championship at Houghton Lake. I got up and around and headed out. I got to Houghton Lake and went to the west launch. The weather dude on the way up kept saying the wind was going to be blowing west 25-35 with gusts over 40. They weren't kidding. Even the waves had waves. If they were going to tape an episode of Deadliest Catch today, they would have had to cancel it due to big waves and strong winds. The only thing I could do today was to play around in the canals that went off the west side of the lake. Even those had whitecaps in them. It was blowing so hard, you couldn't even see in the leeward side of the canals and the leeward side of the lake. I'm not sure I've ever been on the water in winds like this. All I could do was just blindly throw a senko at sea walls and if I happened to see a light spot or dark spot, I would throw to that. Any little spot that looked different than the rest. The first person I saw in a canal started chatting with me. She asked where I was from, so I told her, and she told me she was from Greenville. Then she said her son lives in Trufant and is on the fire department there. Pretty sure I had to know him, so I asked who it was. It was Mike Larsen. Not only do I know Mike, but his wife Denell is a former student and rescue employee of mine. Small world. I talked to several people throughout the day. While there were no other encounters like that, every single person I talked to was very friendly, and offered advice and told me where and how they had caught bass before and stuff like that. It was very nice, and not something I'm used to around home. One guy even had to go inside and get a picture of a big smallie he caught a couple weeks ago to show me. I was still chatting with him when I hooked my biggest fish of the day. Huge! Almost 2 pounds maybe. I was still chatting with him when I lifted it in the boat and my rod snapped in half. Awesome! I had had enough of the canals and their 14 1/2 inchers so I made a run across the mouth of north bay to go into the canals on Long Point. When I got there, the entrance was very short and very narrow. I had no idea what the water was like going through there or if my boat would even fit. The lake was rocking, so I decided not to take a chance and try to get in there today. Maybe tomorrow. I ran back to the ramp, talked to some more friendly people, and loaded up. I decided I'd get some lunch, look at the map, and devise a plan for the rest of the day. When I left the ramp, I noticed right away that gas went up 31 cents during the few hours I was on the water. The entire Persian Gulf area must be destroyed and there must be no more oil on earth for it to go up like that. Or there really is no good reason and big oil just wants another billion in their pocket for a party this weekend or something. I knew I was going to need gas while I was up here in both the truck and the boat, but I didn't fill up when I got here, cuz I wanted to get on the water. Good plan, cuz now it will cost an extra $20 just for gas in the boat. I got lunch and decided to go launch at the south ramp and fish the canals by there. There is a basin there so launching will be OK. I got there and the waves were huge and there really weren't any canals close by. I decided not to launch and trailered around to the north side instead where I could launch by the McKinley canal, fight the waves to get there, and fish there. On the way up there, I noticed Walmart still had gas for $3.86. I still think it is absolutely criminal to gouge people with those kinds of prices, but since there isn't a single thing a single person can do about it except bend over and take it while putting billions and billions of dollars profit in big oil's pockets, I had to consider it a bargain. There were so many cars in there, I couldn't even get off the road to get in. So I went fishing. I launched at a marina up there and didn't have to go far to get to the canal system entrance. That was very similar to all the other canals I fished today, both in the fish I caught and the water conditions. I was throwing to anything that looked a little different than the area around it. The only thing special about this place was that I caught a smallmouth in there. Probably not worth coming back to. About 6 or so, I decided to call it a day. I still hadn't gotten a room for the night, but I did notice one place in particular coming up here I was gonna stop and check on. Walmart still had gas for the same price, but there were still cars everywhere waiting. Had to pass on that again. The motel was Ann's (something or other) and there was a BASS sticker on the office window. Must be a sign. I got a room for us for a couple nights. Nothing huge or extravagant, but very adequate for a couple of stinky fishermen to stay in. I went to get something for dinner and Walmart still hadn't changed prices. There was still a crowd, but I decided to join it. I wanted to fill both the truck and boat, but if I parked the truck at the pump, it would have caused absolute gridlock, so I pulled the boat up to the pump. The pump said they were out of 87, so hit the 93 button and get 93 for 87 price. Ok. Talked me right into it. I filled up the boat and put a couple cans of Seafoam in her. As I was finishing, the lady came out and was telling everyone they were out of gas and starting putting cones across the pumps, and started covering the pump handles. She told me I took the last of it. Gosh, make me feel bad. I think there might have been a few upset people, but sorry. I went back, set the alarm and went to sleep. Bill made it up about 2. He stayed and fished the NTTA on Long before he came up. He won that. That was his first tournament win, so big congrats to him for that. First of many, I'm sure.
May 31 - I forgot to stop at the trailer place today to see if they have a master cylinder. I doubt they do, but if the price is right, I'll have them order me one. Otherwise, it will be another internet purchase, I suppose. I got home and started working on getting stuff ready to leave in the morning. The weather is supposed ot get nasty tonight. Given that and the stuff I still want to get done to get ready to leave, I decided not to fish tonight. A little thunder, a little lightning, a little rain, and a lot of wind. Good call not to go. Mount Pleasant even had a tornado warning during the tournament. Since every tournament is an open this year and there are no points or anything, I'm not really missing anything by not going. I got the truck and boat all packed and ready tonight, and rods and tackle all ready to go. I will be leaving in the morning for Houghton Lake for the TBF State Championship. I have never been there, so I am going to practice a few days before the tournament on Saturday. The weather looks pretty good, so I can't wait get up there and do some fishing. I'm not sure what kind of internet I'll find up there, so I might not be able to keep everyone updated on what's going on. I'll do my best. June starts tomorrow. Here's to nice weather for good now.
May 30 - Please do not forget the reason today is a holiday. The day and all of its festivities should be focused on those who have given all to defend this great county of ours. Please do not forget them. Happy Memorial Day everyone. I started mine out by sleeping until 9. Totally unheard of for me, but it has been a couple long days. I woke up to nothing but bright sunshine and warmth. About stinking time. Only the second day like this all year. I pulled the boat out of the garage and got it all put back together after yesterday. Amber and her little sister wanted to go to the lake, so we rode over to Townline for a bit. Lots of boats and lots of wind. We just cruised around for awhile. I never even made a cast. I did make sure I had all the settings on the electronics the way I wanted them and they were all working appropriately. All seems well. When we got back to the house, I went for a walk around the pond. The first thing I saw was a largemouth guarding fry. Fry, yes, the little fish type fry. I never even saw a bed, bit he was guarding fry. Cool. Another successful spawn in the pond. I'm liking this. No more fishy stuff today, becuase it's off to the World of Outlaws race tonight. Tuesday Night Singles tomorrow though.
May 29 - Another 4 AM wake up call today. For all the right reasons, too. Off to Muskegon for the TBF open. It was so foggy when I left the house, I nearly had to use four wheel drive to get through it. I made it over there and put my stuff into Mike's boat. Blastoff finally came and away we went. The entire lake was glass. Like many had never seen before at Muskegon Lake. Glass. Mike had a great plan put together. He had been over there a few times practicing, and had them pegged. He knew exactly where we were going and in which order. The plan included a trip to Mona to hit a few hotspots there, too. I sure have to give it to him. He was planned and prepared. He knew what size fish were on what pieces of structures, etc. But the fish didn't cooperate. We got 2 little keepers in a marina to start, then a couple more in the main lake. We had a small limit in two hours. They came on beavers and senkos. We upgraded an ounce here and an ounce there, but nothing great. We went out to fish the channel a bit and Mike caught our biggest fish. Nearly 4 pounds. No other big ones to go with it, though. We went down to Mona to hit Mike's spots down there. We never got a bite on any of them for some reason. Mike caught a keeper kind of in between spots that culled another ounce or so. We finally gave up on Mona and headed back towards the lake. We could see the fog bank over the trees. Once we got back on Lake Michigan, it was like pea soup. You couldn't see 50 feet. It was so thick, I was constantly wiping my glasses to be able to see, becasue it was like rain. I was really trying to see, because it was foggy and we were going to be on top of anything before we could see it. When we got back to Muskegon, we had to look for the lighthouse, even though the GPS said we were there. We were on top of it and couldn't see it. Then we had to look for the channel to get back into Muskegon Lake. Once we started into the channel, it was pure sunshine again. No fog. It was really weird how drastic the difference was. Fishing was pretty slow back in the lake. I caught one that didn't help in another marina. We decided to end on the second spot we fished in the main lake. The wind was starting to pick up and it was getting cloudy. The wind suddenly did a 180 and got super cold. It instantly got real cold. Even started thundering a little bit. And the few fish that were biting stopped. We got into them a little bit right at the end, as it started looking and sounding kinda nasty. We called it a day. Mike's motor was acting up a little bit on the way in, but we made it. Our best 5 went 12 something. All of the big fish and big bags were all smallmouth that came from Pentwater. All of them. 21 something won and big fish was 5.35 or something like that. We'll just have to get them at the next one at St Clair in July. Today was the first time I had fished with Mike. We got along well, had some fun and caught some fish. I'd take him as a partner again any day. I got home and hung up stuff to dry. Tomorrow, I'll try to put my boat back together. I talked to Tim tonight about Houghton. He took 2nd up there yesterday and had big bass. Nice job on that. He gave me some ideas of what might be going on next weekend up there. Big thanks to Tim for being thoughtful enough to help me out. I'll be heading up there Wednesday to get some practice in. Hopefully, it will be a little easier thanks to Tim, since I've never been there.
May 28 - Not even the rain that is falling can change the fact that today is opening day. Keith got here and we were off to Chippewa for the Weekend Warrior tournament. We got up there, did the good to see ya handshakes and normal BS session until go time. This is Memorial Weekend and I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, hoodie, fleece jacket, 100MPH rainsuit, winter hat and Under Armor gloves. Not Thanksgiving, Memorial Day. Really? We went fishing. Anytime Keith and I fish together, it's always an adventure. We tell the stories of the stuff we see, and people look at us like Keith took too many pain meds and my sugar is too low or something. We started out by some lily pads and before I even made a cast, some little thing that looked like a 3 inch tall man, came running out of the lily pads, running across the top of the water in a big half circle, and went back in the lilys about 10 feet away from where he came out. Seriously. No clue what in the world it was. Only thing I can think of was a 3 inch tall man wearing Jesus sandals or something. Apparently, this year will be just like years past. Funny stuff happening that no one believes when we tell the stories. We really did fish today eventually. It took us an hour to get a limit. All of about 8 pounds. We just fished around. Some shallow dirty stuff, some rocky stuff, some cabbage, some sandgrass patches, etc. We caught most all of our fish in 5 feet or less. We caught them on crankbait, senko, and the new Kustom Kicker Jigs 2K Freak swimjig. We culled one here and one there throughout the day, and caught a bunch of non-helpers. I think we caught about 25 keepers today. Our biggest 5 went 11 something, which got us 2nd. Chris and Mike had a largemouth over 4 and a smallie over 3 in their bag. They had over 13. Nice job to them. We loaded up and got home and unhooked. I hopped on the Harley and headed into Tamarack to see how the NTTA went there. That wasn't any better than Chippewa was. It only took 11 to win there. Fun talking to the guys for the first time since fall, anyways. I talked to Bill, and he said there were only 2 limits caught at the NBAA at Jordan today. I'm guessing the weather just has the fish all boogered up everywhere right now. Tomorrow is the TBF Open on Muskegon. I went through some rods and tackle and put a few things in the truck to take. I'm new to this non-boater thing. Kinda hard to decide which few rods and what litle bit of tackle to take. But I did, and we're gonna get 'em tomorrow. Hope you do, too.
May 27 - I checked today's forecast yesterday before I left work. I had talked myself out of working at all today and going to Chippewa and Townline. Until I checked the forecast. The weather dude said it was gonna be rainy and windy and just all around crappy all morning, then clear up and get nice in the afternoon. So I went to work. I actually agreed to work the road til noon. And I sat there watching dead calm cloudless skies. You kidding me? Then about the time I decided to go home, I noticed it getting cloudy and the wind starting to pick up. By the time I left and got home, it was cloudy, windy and yucky. The weather did exactly the opposite of what the forescat said it would. 100% opposite! And that cost me a day of fishing. I picked the wrong job. Meteorologists make at least 5 times what I make and people expect them to be wrong most of the time. If I am wrong at work, someone dies. What kind of crap is that? So I sat in the garage and tied some stuff up for morning. Another crappy forecast for tomorrow. But tomorrow is the holy grail of days. Bigger than birthdays, Christmas, or any other day of the year. It's opening day 2011. Good luck to everyone. Sack up a bunch of big fatties.
May 26 - I talked to Mike today about the TBF deal we're fishing at Muskegon on Sunday. My plan is to show up, get in his boat, ride along and net fish. Hopefully, he is Ok with my plan, and gives me plenty of opportunity to net fish. If the weather is decent tomorrow, I hope to get out of work at at decent time and ride up to Chippewa see what is going on. Keith and I are going up there Saturday for the Weekend Warriors tournament. I haven't fished enough this spring to barely know which end of the rod to hold. Better get it figured out quick, I guess. Starting Saturday, it's on!!!!
May 25 - Kinda wore out after teaching all day, but I decided to go get started on the transducer install. I got the transducer mounted, then the holeshot plate put back on, then decided to start working on getting the wires fished up front to be able to hook it back up. Amazingly, that whole thing went quick and easy. I don't think I was in the garage an hour start to finish. Hopefully, the new transducer works. I'm sure my boat will leave the garage again someday and we will find out. When I came back in, I brought some of the stuff Chuck gave me to bring home last time to donate to the guys fishing the Hookin' Up Heros event. Man, what a bunch of stuff he sent. There is a ton of stuff and the guys are going to get some really nice stuff. I went through a bunch of my stuff tonight as well, to add to what Chuck gave me to give away. This is gonna be big. There is still room for boaters if you are interested in participating. Just let me know.
May 24 - I did break down and open the box tonight. My transducer was in it. Hopefully tomorrow night I can get that installed.
May 23 - I think my tranducer for the 1197 came today. A box came anyways, and that is all that I was expecting, so I assume that was it. By the time I got home, I didn't even bother opening it. Hopefully, I will be home at a decent time tomorrow and can get it installed. Welcome Fred Bolen to the group today as well.
May 22 - Did a bunch of work outside the house today. The most important thing was making rockpiles in the pond for the smallmouth to hopefully spawn around. A few years ago, I picked a bunch of rocks out of the field and piled them up by the house with the intention of landscaping with them. They still sat there and the landscaping ideas have changed, so the pile of rocks had to go. So I put them in the wagon and made a few trips and threw them all into the pond in 3 different spots. Not big piles by any means, but hopefully enough to attract the smallmouth and maybe even make them spawn. The water got pretty stirred up when I was throwing all the rocks in, so I had to let it settle to see how it looked later. When I did, there was a largemouth sitting on the one pile and smallmouth sitting on the other 2. Wow, maybe my plan will work. I'll have to check back later. Amber and I rode over to Townline tonight for a bit to check that out. Similar to Chippewa, not much happening yet shallow. I saw 3 beds I think, and one pair actively spawning. There was about a 12 incher on a bed, so I messed with him until he ate my bait. I only caught a few all night. The water temp was 79.5 at the ramp, and 65.4 at the other end. This has the makings of being one screwy year I'm afraid. The cat decided to have a bunch of kittens at bedtime, so that put a bit of a damper in the sleep idea for awhile. Stay tuned, becasue in a few weeks, there will be a new website www.freekittensfromeric.com. Make sure you get in line to get yours today.
May 21 - I taught water rescue this morning. Not really fishing related, but I did show some videos of some boat crashes, including bassboats. Please, let's all be smart and careful out there, so I'm not talking about one of us in the next class. That was followed by sitting at I-96 Speedway for 8 hours waiting for them to decide to cancel the World Of Outlaws becasue of weather. They finally did at midnight. They rescheduled for Memorial Day, so I guess I won't go to Houghton Lake to practice that day now.
May 20 - I met Kyle today and we went up to Chippewa for a bit. I was hoping for the mad bite I've gotten into in the spring up there a couple times. Wrong. Pretty darn slow. I saw three pairs of largemouth actively spawning, but only saw two smallmouth shallow. That was kind of weird. I didn't see a bunch of empty beds anywhere, so I don't think they have spawned yet. I did see a few little largemouth guarding an area like there were going to make a bed there, but haven't yet. Kyle did catch his first bass ever on an artificial bait, so that was cool. We were up shallow and I pointed out a dogfish sitting in a patch of weeds. Kyle hadn't seen a dogfish before, and obviously had never caught one. So I messed with that until it ate my bait, handed it to Kyle and said "Here ya go, have fun." And he did. So he got to catch his first dogfish as well. Overall, the night was pretty unremarkable. I put on a squarebill and went huting the shallows and promptly caught a pike on my firts cast. That was about it. May half a dozen fish for the night. I sure hope this isn't a sign of things to come. While we were out there, Matt Brundage called me and told me he just caught the biggest bass he had ever seen. He caught it in about 15-20 FOW fishing with a Sweedish Pimple for bluegill. Must be the big girls are still deep.
May 19 - We got confirmation today that there will be a flyover at the Hookin' Up Heros event. The plan is for all the boats to gather on the river outside the state park and all the spectators line the bluff overlooking the water for the flyover. How awesome is that going to be. We also got word that the colors will be presented by the Color Guard from Selfridge. In addition to this event, I want to remind everyone that the St Louis Kids Fishing Derby is June 11th. The Middle of the Mitten Bass Tournament on the Pine River in St Louis is August 20th this year as well. Both are now on the tournament page. After work tomorow, Kyle Earl and I are going to Chippewa to play around for awhile. Assuming I actually get to go, it will be the first time I have been fishing on an inland lake this year. Opening day is a week away, and this will be my first time out. If this is how it's gonna be, I might as well sell the boat and get a horse or something.
May 18 - Not much happening today. I got a transducer coming for the 1197 and picked up a jug of brake fluid so I can bleed the trailer brakes. Hopefully fishing soon.
May 17 - I sent a couple changes to RayJus and they sent me back the corrections, so we're good with the new jerseys. Can't wait to get them. When I got home, I started out trying to figure out the leak problem and why the auto bilge pump doesn't work. That required taking the cranking battery and one of the trolling motor batteries out to get to it all. So I did. And found nothing. No loose or unconnected hoses. No loose wires or wire not hooked up for the float switch. Now what? No idea. No fuses blown or breakers popped. So, I put it all back together. I guess I will have to replace the float switch itself and see if that was the problem. It could have gone bad, but I don't know why it would have. So I moved on to the Humminbirds. I installed the updates and the 1197 didn't change. The ony way I can tell if I am any happier with the 997 is to take it to the lake. Must be there is an problem with the rear transducer, since the update didn't change anything. So I took the wire harness apart and took the transducer wire out of it. I taped a line to it and started pulling it through to check it out (and have a line to pull it back through with). It was coming really easy, which caused immediate concern. Sure enough, shortly the other end of the wire came out with no connector on the other end. So I pulled on the connecter end it was cut about 2 feet from the end. Well, I guess now I know why it was saying no tranducer connected. No fixing that one. I'll see if Jeff has one or can get me one quick. If not, I'll get one coming off BBC. I'm going to get a jug of brake fluid tomorrow and bleed the brake system tomorrow or Thursday too.
May 16 - Not a whole lot fishing related today. Worked all day, then went supply/grocery shopping tonight. I did pick up a new tube of gel super glue for the boat and labels for the label maker. I got home and downloaded the most recent updates for my Humminbirds. I'll have to update them tomorrow night and hope that will resolve my transducer issues. I got the proof of the new jerseys tonight.
May 15 - I woke up to rain this morning. First of all, Happy Birthday to my dad. He died a couple years ago, but he surely isn't forgotten. He liked to travel, so he is in my truck and goes with me everywhere I go. Still traveling, just now I have to do all the driving. I used to get him to drive if I agreed to buy dinner. Miss ya pops. Not only is it raining this morning, but very cold as well. The big trees behind Chuck's house are really swaying in the wind this morning. Wind, cold, and rain. Not going fishing in this crap. No way. So we watched Bassmasters, then putzed aronud in the garage for a bit. I got the truck all loaded up and ready to go. Chuck has gone through some of his stuff and has given me a ton of stuff to give away to the Vets at the Hookin' Up Heros event. Incredibly gracious of him. Tons and tons of baits, a few tackle boxes, and two bags of hats. I have to take it all home and go through it all get it ready for new homes. Can't wait to give it all away. I made it home in about 3 hours. It rained pretty hard which made it really hard to see driving up 75 with all the traffic. Once I got off onto 57, it quit raining. I got home and parked the boat in the garage. It was actually starting to look pretty decent outside. Even a little sun peeking through. Still really windy though. So I pulled the boat back outside and opened it all up and took everything out of it to start the drying process and make sure nothing was wet in it. The poor boat was in the rain for 3 straight days. It is completely soaked from one end to the other inside and out. I took all the tackle boxes out of it and spread them all out on the garage floor, along with life jackets and all that. The rain suits and stuff are hanging up in the garage to make sure they're all dry. The boat got to sit out in the sunshine and wind for about 4 hours. It made quite a difference. Most of the boat is pretty dry now. The floor will take days if it has to sit in the garage. Hopefully it will be nice tomorrow night, and it can sit outside for awhile again. I need to download the newest software for the 1197 and 997 and install them. Maybe that will make my transducers work, but I doubt it. Probably just make my Interlink not work. But Doug suggested I try it, so I will. Too lazy to take the batteries out and look for the leak and the bilge wire tonight, too, so that gives me something to look forward to.
May 14 - Gameday. Finally. Given the $2 dollar entry fee and $5 big bass pot, this is a high stakes event. The event is the MadWags Memorial DK Open. David Wagensomer was one of us fishing guys and a good friend to many us who died of a heart attack recently. So the tournament has been renamed in his honor and dedicated to his memory. The weather is the big question of the day. It is cold and kinda windy, but dry so far. We all do the typical BS session and tournament meeting and all that jazz before we took off. I meet my partner and we load his stuff into the boat. He is new to this kind of stuff and has never driven a truck with a trailer before. It sounds like today can be quite the learning experience for him, given his newness. We get launched and I decide not to run to Muskamoot Bay. Given the wind speed and direction and uncertain weather, that's just not a chance that seems right to take this morning. So we make a long minute and a half run into Anchor Bay. We start out in front of MacRay Harbor. Once we started fishing, I said I wished I had run to the next set of buoys instead of stopping where I did. I was throwing that gold/black red eye shad and get a 3-10 pretty quick. Awhile later Jorji, puts on a pearl/chartruese crankbait and hooks up. He says "I think it's a nice one." He was right. Like 5-3 nice. That was the biggest smallmouth he has caught. High fives all around. We're just shy of 9 pounds a half hour into the day. All on the area I said I wished I hadn't stopped at. Figures. I thought it was too shallow. There was a cluster of boats in the corner, and in a little deeper water, but we stayed away from them and did our own thing. I explained the Ben Trodder (bent rodder) phenomenon to Jorji, and we got to witness it a little. We just fished around and got a bite here and a bite there. I got another 3-10, then a 2-3, then a 3-0. We had our limit, but surely nothing spectacular. I switched to a chrome/blue Rat-L-Trap. Caught a couple on that, one that was 3-4 that helped a little. About 1230, I decided to run north a little to try some old areas. There just wasn't an action bite at all anymore, so I decided to drag that stupid tube. Caught a non-helper pretty quick. Then got a nice 4-12. I took the hook out and gave Jorgi my rod and told him to throw it back there as far as he could, in case there were more. He almost immediately hooked up, but ultimately lost it. I finished with my fish and took us back up there on the trolling motor. We got back to that area and I immediately hooked up with a 5-4. I hit the waypoint button to mark the spot, but my GPS told me I had already marked that spot. I was fishing and catching them off an old spot I had and didn't even realize it at first. That was it for the fish catching for the day. It was time to head in. We ended up with about a dozen fish on the day. Our 5 biggest went 22-7. That got us 4th place and my 5-4 was big bass. I ended up with $118 dollars and about $350 in prizes (including a new Leverage Landing Net) for my troubles and my $7 investment today. We had a great cookout afterward, and more story telling and BS'ing. As for Jorgi, he seemed pretty happy with how the day went, and seemed to learn a lot. A new fishing buddy now hopefully. No new problems with the boat to try to fix tonight, for one day in a row. all in all, a great day. I gave my waypoint to Justin and Cy before I left, cuz they were goign back out. Hope they wacked 'em there. Not sure what we're doing tomorrow. Hafta wait and see what the weather does. The forecast is really nasty. I want to fish, but sure not bad enough to do it in bad weather. Then back home to reality. Boo! I don't get to come back until July I don't think. Bigger Boo!! Long day, kinda tired, off to bed.
May 13 - Friday the 13th. We launched at Crocker today and planned to spend the day figuring out the mile roads. The weather was cloudy and nasty looking. Fishing was even slower today than yesterday. So slow in fact, we decided to go to a canal and catch some largemouth, just to say we caught something. It started raining on us and rained for about 30 minutes. Not hard, just enough to be a pain. Before we started fishing in the canal, I told Chuck he had to catch one before I was going to fish. So he caught one on the first cast. And the second cast. We went about a third of the way into the canal, and had caught all of them we wanted to, so we headed back to the lake. Once the rain stopped, it got progressively nicer and nicer. It was pure sun and pure calm. We ran south a ways to look for clearer water, but found nothing but mud. We stopped to fish some deeper stuff, just because the water was clearer. I switched the 997 to down imaging, from GPS, and it looked horrible. No detail at all, and giant pixels it looked like. It looked like something you would see on a Humminbird unit in 1998. Surely not on the newest technology out there. Messed with that and it never got right. I took the 997 wire harness apart and took the 1197 up there and hooked it up to see how that looked. Same thing. Looked terrible. It was fine when I put it away last fall, but isn't now. What the heck is going on? I kicked on the bilge pump once and promptly pumped most of Lake St Clair out of the boat back into the lake. Where in the world is the water coming from and why didn't the auto bilge kick on? The fish just plain quit eating once it got too slick, so we headed in to mess with the electronics and try to find the water leak. Back to Chuck's boat repair center/house we went. We started out by filling the boat with water to see where it was leaking out, assuming it would be leaking in in the same place. No leaks. Maybe there is a hose come off either the livewell drain hose or livewell overflow hose. So we emptied the water out of the boat and filled the livewells. If there is a hose off, the water will come out the plug hole rather than the drain hole. Once they filled up, water came out the overflow holes only, just like they should. Opened the drain valve to see what happened. If there was a hose off, the water would come out the plug hole rather than the drain hole. Water came out the drain hole just like it's supposed to. Hmm? Only one option left. A hose issue with the livewell fill hoses or a pump cartridge has come out of its casing or something. Only way to check that is to take the batteries out and get down in there and look. Sure ain't doing that tonight. Now why won't the auto bilge kick on? I got looking and didn't see the orange wire hooked to the battery. Must be I never hooked it up. Wires are easy to miss when hooking stuff back up, since there are so many of them and some of them are pretty small. Not the first time I missed that wire actually. That must be it. I looked around with the flashlight and stuff, but couldn't find it. Guess I will look for that when I take the batteries out to look for the leak. Today was Chuck's oldest granddaughter's birthday, so we went over to their house for a birthday cookout. That was nice. Got back from that and got a few rods tied up for tomorrow. I have never met or talked to my partner for tomorrow. I would like to go to Muskamoot bay, but we'll have to wait to see what he says and what the weather is like. I'm confident we can catch some in Anchor bay and a few different spots at the mile roads. I just think the biggest concentration of big, easy fish is at 'moot. Finally get to go fishing for real one way or another.
May 12 - Got up and headed for Chuck's. I made it over there (after a pit stop at Bass Pro of course) a little before noon. We were quickly off to the lake. We launched at Selfridge. With all the fish stories of everyone catching hundreds of fish, and big ones, I couldn't wait to get out there. As we were pulling away from the dock and I turned the 1197 on, it said "TRANSDUCER NOT CONNECTED" and went into demo mode. I checked and it was plugged in. I turned it off and back on, same thing. Wiggled the wires, pushed them in harder, etc, same thing. Ugh! Messed with it and told it not to do demo mode, so I could at least use the GPS. We started out in front of the air base. I tied on a tube and was dragging that while I tied up some stuff. One ate that tube, but I lost it. It was pretty slow, with just one here and one there while we fished that area. The water was very dirty. Not much of a surprise, since I have NEVER come over here and found the water and weather to both be cooperative. The few fish we did catch were decent sized up there though. I caught some of mine on a gold colored red eye shad. The rest I caught on a green pumpkin/purple tube that was just dragging behind the boat while I was fishing a moving bait. Dragging a tube is too boring to just do that. Had one on a spinnerbait, but it came off. We ran down to the mile roads to check some stuff out down there. More mud. Right now, all of the fish are going to be up shallow looking to bed. All of the water shallower than 10 feet or so is mud. Fishing was pretty slow all of the places we fished at the mile roads as well, but the fish were smaller. Same techniques and results, just smaller fish. I had never been to Muskamoot bay, and always hear stories about it in the spring, so we rode that way. On the way over there, for some reason I looked back at the Power Poles. They were half way down for some reason. I took the straps off and put them in the truck before we left the ramp. I had no intentions of using the poles, but read on BBC about running them all the way down and running the pump for 10 more seconds, then all the way up and ten more seconds several times to make sure the pump is totally prime. I did that during our run to the mile roads. Just stopped in deep water a minute and did it. Anyways, back to the poles. I hit the remote, but nothing happened. they were just sitting there. I went up front to use the button, thinking maybe the remote quit working. Hydraulic fluid going everywhere. One of the T fittings failed. They are just push in connectors, and one of the ears that holds the line in broke, allowing the line to come out. So the pump quickly pumped all the fluid all over the place and the poles went all the way down. Nice. In the middle of the lake. So, I used the net to grab the knuckle and pull it back up. Chuck held it up while I tied it to the rear cleat. Pretty sure I could hear circus music playing in the distance. Did that for both poles and we're on the way to 'moot again. Very interesting place. Not what I envisioned at all. The water was crystal clear in there. The wind was blowing hard enough that the water was all ripply, so you couldn't sight fish. You could see dark spots, but there was no way to tell if they were little sandgrass patches or beds. So I would just throw my tube at the dark patches. Some had fish sitting there, and some didn't. Sometimes I would see fish cruise away from the spot before we got to them. We caught a few in there. We just fished one little spot, but there were lots of boats in there and you could tell there were more areas that were holding fish. We just checked out the one area and left. While running back across the lake, the rope around one of the poles slid down over the bracket allowing it to fall. Stop, use the net to grab and lift it again, get the rope undone, redo it higher and better, and retie. Once I get the rope the way it needs to be, Chuck lifts the net off the top of the pole and brings it back in the boat. Now though, the handle is full of nice 52 degree lake water. When Chuck lifts it up to swing it around, it promptly empties itself all over me. He thought that was pretty funny, and so did I once I figured out what happened. Now the circus music is playing loud and clear. And the net is very goofy shaped and the hoop is creased at the point of teh new goofy shape. I reshape it to near normal and the crease turns into a break. Nice. We make it back to the ramp unscathed from there on. Good thing, cuz we got hydraulic lines to fix and electronics to figure out tonight. When we got back to Chuck's, I took the wire harness for the 1197 apart so I could plug the 997 into it. "NO TRANSDUCER CONNECTED" Apparently, there is a problem with the transducer. It was fine last year, but now it isn't. That stinks. Off to Ace Hardware for hydraulic repair parts. Got new brass T connectors and all that go with them. Put it all back together and refilled the reservoir, and all seems good with that. We'll have to test them out tomorrow. Enough for one day.
May 11 - Get through today and it's off to Chuck's for a weekend of catching smallies on Lake St Clair. Can't wait.
May 10 - Work all day and teach all night today and tomorrow, so no fun, fishy stuff happening.
May 9 - Somehow while I was typing today's update, I managed to hit the "Alt" key as well as shift when I typed "May". Alt and A at the same time select all. I was in the middle of typing May when that happened, so when I hit the Y key, it turned the entire blog into the letter Y. Everything. Every bit of it. Months of stuff, including the Hookin' Up Heros story from last year. Gone. Forever. That all makes me extraordinarily unhappy. So all there is now is today, and I guess we start from here and go forward. So here we go. Today I took the truck and boat to get the new stuff. Brad thought I was coming tomorrow, so he wasn't ready for me. Didn't have the artwork done or printed. So I left the boat and will have to pick it up Wednesday and he will do the truck while I'm there. Can't wait to see what he comes up with. Gonna be sweet. When I got home, I went for a run, then finished the lawn. Once that yucky stuff was done, I got the tubs out of the fishing room and loaded up and into the back of the truck. The truck is completely ready to go and I just have to put the bad weather bag in the boat when I get that back and it is also ready to go. Talked to Chuck today a few times and he is still chasing the gremlins with his motor. We'll get it going the way it's supposed to.
Be sure to drop me a line at eric@bassinwitheric.com and let me know you stopped by.
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