Fishing Rhino

It used to be Star Wars, then Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now, it's a tossup between The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and Big Trouble in Little China.

No, Raider was not abducted. He accepted an offer to be their leader. He rules with an iron ladle.

First thing to do regarding starting the motor. Drain all the old gas out of the entire fuel system, and replace it with fresh fuel. The water pump impeller should be replaced, and the housing checked. Lower unit should be drained, and filled with new gear oil. The electrical system should be checked. Battery should be tested. All wiring connections should be checked for corrosion. Was the motor stored properly including fogging the engine? If not, you may have rust in the cylinders. At the very least, you should pull the plugs and put some oil in them, then turn the motor by hand. I'd consider getting someone to scope the cylinders to determine their condition. That's just for starters.

If you like Marvin, then you have to love Rocky Marciano. If memory serves, both hailed from Brockton, MA. Rocky retired undefeated. He even beat Muhammed Ali in a computer generated boxing match, long after he was retired. How could Rocky lose? All the stats were fed into the computer. How could the computer have a boxer with an imperfect record beat one with an unblemished record?

Home Depot because of convenience, and, I know where the stuff is inside the store. Lowes build one nearby a couple of years after HD. Went to it a couple of times, but I wasn't familiar with how the inventory was laid out. Didn't see enough difference that it would be worth my while to learn where Lowe's kept the items I use on a regular basis. Never seen a Menards, let alone been to one. Til now the only place I say Menards has been on the side of a race car. I thought they sold furniture. Don't ask me where I got that idea because I could not give you a coherent, logical answer. Ahh, that's the new thing I learned today. Menards competes with Lowe's and HD.

When you say that it will be docked at a family camp on the water, does that mean it will be in the water for several days at a time? If so, make sure you have an automatic bilge pump. Nor likely but even new boats can develop leaks. Fittings, hoses, etc., can and do fail. Even a small leak at a hose fitting can put a lot of water in the hull over time. The other downside to leaving it in the water is that it will accumulate scum at the waterline and can be a bit of a pain to clean it off.

Let me tell you about Grampa, and be forewarned. When he says, "I fished there once, but it was a long time ago", means he knows the place like the back of his hand. We used to have a "friendly" competition when we fished together. There was no need for a ruler, a scale, or a calculator to keep track of the score. It was simple, but could get complicated at times, to keep score. We called it, The Al Lindner competition. The winner was the fisherman who caught the most species. Usually, it included largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, pickerel, bluegills, crappie, and to a lesser degree, rock bass, trout, salmon, etc. Varieties of sunfish other than bluegills were also fair game. Grampa won over ninety percent of those competitions, thanks to his trusty, tiny, Lunker City sluggos. Don't be fooled, those tiny sluggos also caught some lunkers as well. The competition could get spirited, and disputes often arose as to whether mussels (shellFISH) counted. Did snagged waterfowl count? You get the picture. Those issues were usually determined by the captain's word is law. To dispute that constituted mutiny. So, the owner of the boat we were fishing from had a distinct advantage. Speaking of rock bass, my first fish yesterday was a rock bass. Grampa introduced me to rock bass at Lake Quinsigamond. Yesterday started off badly. I hit a deer on Hell Huddle Road, about five miles from the reservoir. It was on one of the hilly winding stretches of the road. I was only going about twenty five miles per hour. I rounded a sharp bend and the deer was grazing on the side of the road. It bolted directly in front of me. It was impossible to avoid it. The right front corner of the truck knocked the deer off to the right. It got up, staggered a bit, so I kept going. This was just before daylight, so I wasn't going to go knocking on anyone's door. The only damage to the truck was that the impact broke the clear plastic shell on the headlight assembly. Heck of a way to start the day.

I was going to put on my hat to work in the yard, but it's too small.

Seems okay for me. There had been a few days that were really sluggish. Got the "cannot be found" message, but if I let the computer sit for a few seconds, the page I wanted would be up. It had been painfully slow, but seems about normal to me now.

My 2009 Nitro Z-7 had this same exact problem. The motor would rev up, but the boat would take what seemed like an eternity for it to labor its way up onto plane. My problem was not enough pitch. The motor revved, but did not have enough thrust. I bought it new at the BPS in Foxborough, MA. They thought I had changed the prop. I had not changed it. They swapped it for a prop with two inches more pitch, from 21" to 23" if memory serves. Problem solved. How you have the weight distributed is also a factor. Too much weight in the stern will cause the stern to squat and be sluggish getting up on plane. In the meantime, here's a handling trick you can try to provide additional lift at the stern. Steer the boat slightly left and right when you take off. It pushes the stern sideways a bit providing additional lift. It may take a bit of experimenting on your part to get the technique down. How much steering input and how quickly you steer back and forth are what you'll need to learn.

I wouldn't use a ratchet strap for additional security. You run the risk of damaging the finish where the strap passes over it. Road grit and grime can get trapped between the strap and the finish of the boat. The results would not be pretty. This brings up another point. Be sure to check your tie downs frequently at the start of your trip. Boats are often loaded slightly off center. The boat will usually center itself during travel, which leaves one of the tie downs loose. Tighten it. Checking them, and the strap on the winch should be part of your routine at every stop.

Get a tube of dielectric grease. Apply generously to the female connector on your trailer plug (don't have it oozing all over the place). You can also apply it to all the light plugs on your trailer. It will not conduct electricity across contacts, and will prevent corrosion. While you are at it, do the same for the running lights, connectors and bulbs. You can also use it on fuses. It will insure that your circuits have good contacts. Good to do it as part of your routine maintenance than to have a bulb burn out and have to struggle with a frozen connection. One other thing. Every time you stop, feel the trailer's hubs to make sure they are all running the same temp. Keep in mind, the side of the trailer that gets the most sun will be slightly warmer than the wheels on the shady side. You can also take a quick peek to see if any wheel is slinging grease.

I'm curious. What gear is there in the lower unit of a trolling motor? Aside from the wiring, the drive motor, with the propeller shaft is what is in the lower unit plus some seals. Speed and direction (forward and reverse) are controlled electrically, or electronically, if it is a digital trolling motor. Unless, you are using a small outboard as a trolling motor.

There is this handy tool that is perfect for dealing with backlashes. It's known as scissors. I'd recommend surgical scissors.

For information about any particular BPS, go to the Bass Pro website, then go to their "store locator" page and click on a store in your area of interest. It will tell you of any activities, sales, etc for that store. I'm going to put in a plug for my new favorite tackle store, Tackle Supply Depot. It is very much like Tackle Warehouse, but it is based in western Connecticut which means that in most cases if I get an order in before three p.m. it will ship that day, and I'll receive it the next because I'm in zone one for UPS. The longest it takes is two days. Shipping is free on orders over fifty dollars. Their web site has a map that shows how long it takes for a shipment to your address. You can also show up at their door and pick up your order. I don't know if it's standard operating procedure, but I have placed three orders with them, and tucked into each order was a coupon for ten percent off on my next order. The coupon does not apply to everything. In my case there were a couple of items that did not qualify for the discount. When I enter the coupon code for my order, it will show which items qualify for the discount.

Yes, I have experienced it. And no, I wouldn't worry about it, yet. It was shipped on the eighth which is a Saturday. "Shipped" means it was packed and ready for pickup. In reality, the shipper did not receive it until Monday. Two days later would mean a Wednesday delivery. Weekends, and holidays are not counted in the second day option. If you don't receive it by Wednesday, give them a call.

I edited the first post to include an image of the Sawdy ramp which I also placed here for those who may come back to this thread and not see it.

I didn't put the barrel at Webster. It's at the Sawdy Pond "ramp". I put in that picture to show what the ramp looked like when we got back last Friday. There were two barrels full, plus a lot of trash on the ground near the barrels when we got there at 5:30 a.m. When we got back to the ramp five hours later it was as clean as it is in the image. Don't know who cleaned it up, but I was glad to see it. I'll take a picture of the Sawdy "ramp". It doesn't look anything like Webster. It a dirt laneway with two levels. The upper level is where rigs with trailers park. The lower level is kept open, and vehicles without trailers park out near the road leaving the lower level open. It ain't pretty, and the channel is tough to navigate, so you don't see many nice rigs launching there. It's best for car toppers, canoes, kayaks, and Pelican style boats. If it were a nice navigable trip from the ramp to the pond, the fishing would not be as good as it is. A couple of years after that outing, they killed off most of the vegetation with a herbicide. It about killed off the fishing. Hadn't been there for about three years so I decided to give it a shot. While not as good as it was back when, it was decent.

he "grand experiment" has been an unqualified success. Every bit of scrap/trash has been put in the barrel. Since I put the barrel in a convenient, but out of the way place, I have not seen a single piece of litter at the ramp. I remove and replace the barrel liner every other week, give or take, when the barrel is half full. No one stole the barrel. No one has used it to get rid of their home rubbish. Last Friday, I went fishing at Lake Webster. There were two barrels overflowing with trash. When we got back to the ramp, someone had emptied the barrels and picked up all the trash that was on the ground. There is a public swimming area at the ramp that gets a lot of use on nice days. Here's an image of the ramp at Sawdy. It is on the return trip. You can see a culvert that runs under 177, and the ramp is the light color just to the right. You can just make out the guard rails on the road. The upper level of the ramp is where vehicles with trailers park and the lower ramp is kept clear to provide access.

Actually, it's not a cover. It's a twofer. Two boats on one trailer. Want to fish a limited horsepower lake? Flip the top hull over. Clamp on a trolling motor, and off you go. With a little more ingenuity it could easily be converted into a house trailer. That would make it a threefer. Or, maybe, it becomes a life capsule.

I used to keep my gear stacked in various containers in the large center compartment in my boat. I had containers stacked on each other which required some digging to get at the bottom of the storage area. I wanted something that could stand on end and be readily available without excavating the storage locker. I started searching around in the storage container sections in Walmart and other stores, and this is what I settled on. With some leg work, you can probably do something similar, but on a smaller scale for your boat. Whether in my canoe, or the nitro, I fish out of my tackle bag. I carry 3 3700 plano stow aways and one of the storage boxes I get at Walmart in the household section. I have a "basic pack" that contains all of the plastics I use regularly.

Wear and tear. Depreciation. It happens to everything we buy. As others have said, if you worry about scuffs, scratches, dings, and other cosmetic damage, you won't have much fun fishing. Look at it this way. Take the cost of any vessel. For the sake of discussion, let's make it one thousand dollars. Then, divide by the life expectancy. Let's say five years. That's 200 dollars per year. You use it forty times per year. That makes its cost five dollars per fishing trip. Don't worry about the dings and dents. If it gets to the point where you cannot live with it, sell it and buy another new one. There's a buyer for every boat and a boat for every buyer. Or, you can just rent a boat and not worry about the dings and dents.

" That's a 12 volt trolling motor, not a chance that'd work on an 18 ft. boat fishing all day...even in calm water. Let's be generous and add in the 10 lbs of thrust for wind and current: 66.3 lbs thrust. We'll round that up to the 70 lb., 24 volt motor. Again, not a chance that'd work all day in wind and/or current." I'm not so sure about that. I have a Nitro Z-8, 20' 4", with a 75 pound thrust Motorguide. I can run it all day, and it's not a digital motor. The newer, digital motors will run much longer on the same battery setup. If there is no wind, I run the motor on 1, and the boat moves plenty fast enough. If the wind gets up to 10 to 15 mph, I may kick it up to 2. In a good wind up to 25 mph, 3 is adequate. I've never had to use 4 or 5. If I want to move faster than the unit will move the boat, I can leave the motor down, get behind the wheel and use the big motor. It will move the boat faster than the trolling motor can at max output, 5, without straining the shaft on the trolling motor. I don't use the trolling motor to move the boat from one spot to the next if it's more than a hundred feet. It is getting time to replace the batteries which with the boat, now in their sixth year of use. It has worked fine for me, on large and small bodies of water.

Leesa Mattress? Can't you buy one?

Plus ten dollars for parking. It's still a bargain. It includes all the stuff you need to be legal, personal flotation devices, oars, etc., are included in the price.