Mittry Lake Fishing Report – TIMES 2

As you may recall I’ve been working on The Tin Can.  In spite of the fact that it is a very basic absolute beater its kinda my favorite fishing boat.  You may have read my latest update on it in “The Tin Can is Back… Again” where I talked about going through the carbs, fixing some stuff and changing the center of balance.  I decided it was time for some on the water testing.  I still have a pretty beat up prop, and it may be over propped a little, but I decided I needed some baseline data for the new setup.

Of course, I threw some rods and a tackle bag in the boat on Friday afternoon and headed out.  I would say it was a comedy of errors, but it was more a tragedy of errors, except nobody died of even got hurt.

It wound up taking me almost four hours from when I started getting ready to headed out the driveway.  Wow.  The days of just hooking up the boat and heading out may be gone.  After putting away all my tools, I went to get the tractor.  I park trailers out back with the tractor and a homemade tow bar setup that drops into the three point.  You can buy one, but when I tried they website I tried to buy from kept jacking up the sale.  I made one.  That was a few years ago, but it’s worth a mention.  It’s one of my better shop made projects.

The tractor wouldn’t start.  I could probably just jump it.  I hadn’t used it in a month maybe so that old battery probably just needed a boost, but the last time I used it it had been slow to crank.  Time to replace it.  DANG IT!  The date code shows that cheap Walmart battery isn’t even 8 years old.  Already?  I need to get a new one?  Off to Walmart where they refused to honor the five year warranty on that 7-3/4 year old battery.

The last time I had a battery in the back of my truck it fell over, the acid leaked, ran over the fuel lines on the top of my gas tank, and created a fire hazard.  You can read more about that in “Fortunately, I Wasn’t a Fire Ball.”  I spent a little time finding DOUBLE plastic tubs to set the core in before heading off.  It went okay, but the current version of the exact same battery doesn’t have hold down ledges on the ends.  It made tying down the battery a bit of a challenge.  I managed to, sorta kinda, wedge it in place, but I’ll be adding a lashing strap or an over battery tie down soon.  If you want to see that solution let me know in the comment section below.  I could probably make a short video of it.

With the new battery installed in the tractor I moved The Tin Can around front and hooked it to the truck, and the trailer control module in the truck immediately told me I had a turn signal out.  I couldn’t see anything wrong with the light, except it was help up with zip ties.  I got a new taillight (single assembly LED light) out of one of my boxes of parts and changed it out.  The truck still said I had a turn signal out.  Dang it.  I checked all the wiring and everything looked good.  Finally I tried unplugging the pigtail from the 4 pin connector and connecting it to the 7 pin with an adapter.  Okay, there is a problem with the 4 pin on the truck (*1* maybe).  Okay, everything worked.

The trailer was all hooked up latch lever was down, chain was connected.  Off I went.   As I made the turn from the dirt road where I live onto the pavement and all of a sudden, it felt funny.  If something doesn’t feel right check it.  I pulled over, walked around back of the truck, and found the trailer hanging from the safety chain.  My brain refused to comprehend it for a moment.  I could see the latch was secured.  I dead lifted the tongue of the trailer up off the ground and rested the coupler on the ball so I could put the jack down.  Then I started trying to figure out what happened.  Eventually I figured out that the part that hooks onto the bottom of the hitch ball was jammed so far up inside the coupler that it looked like it thew coupler was on the ball properly.  About the only tool I had in the truck was my emergency shovel.  I had to beat on the latch lever of the coupler pretty hard with the shovel in order to get it to release.

Okay.  Finally headed for the lake.  Launch went fine.  It was harder starting than I thought it should have and took a bit more warm up than I thought it should to idle, but eventually it did.  Off I went.  It ran like garbage.  Well at least it was running.  My first spot produced no fish.  In my second spot I caught a dink on a Square Back Minnow and then I broke off what felt like a better fish.  As the sun dropped below the horizon I switched to the old school Curly Buzz Frog I originally design specifically for this lake.  Well technically I was fishing the current version that you can actually buy the molds for.

When you have a rough day, or at least when I do, my fishing always seems to suffer.  I keep plodding forward, but it can be tough to get int he right mind set to fish effectively.  I didn’t expect much after I got the boat in the water, and I didn’t get much, but I did get bit.  Better than not getting bit.

I did get one roll on the Curly Buzz Frog.  I think I did everything right, almost.  I dropped the rod, reeled up slack, and set the hook.  I felt a tiny little bonk, and then nothing.  Thinking the fish was gone I started reeling in the line to make another cast when I realized my line was going left and right even though I was reeling straight.  I started burning in the line, and the rod loaded up.  Felt decent.  Not a dink anyway, and then the line went slack again.  I had just barely exposed the hook point.

I was having a tough time so I decided to head in while I still had some light.  In spite of the fact that the motor was running poorly it still got up to a decent speed.  I couldn’t really check out how the knew center of balance was working.  The trim had quit working earlier.  Then it started working again.  Unfortunately I got it trimmed to high and I had to cut the speed way down.  I made the turn into the main channel, tried to correct course, and the steering locked up.  I fought with it a bit, thought i had it freed up, and as I made the zig zag around the big island to head across the lake it jammed up again.  I cut the throttle forced it around, and managed to get it pointed in a direction that would generally get me across the main lake to the ramp.

Trying to load the boat (on the big motor like an idiot) back into the tree by the ramp, and broke off my stern light.  Finally loaded up and headed home everything went fine.

On Saturday morning instead of just going into the shop and making molds for people I decided to take a quick look.  Well, that quick look turned into a full morning of working on the boat.  I didn’t do any mold making or mold design on Saturday.  I was going to read the spark plugs, and I immediately found a spark plug boot that wasn’t properly snapped down.  It seemed to start easier on the trailer so I moved on to the trim.  I found some damaged wiring that was not the problem, but I fixed it anyway.  Finally, I discovered the ground for the trim relays was pinched against the trim relay mounting bracket behind the little rubber vibration bushings.  It was getting a ground albeit it a bad one.  The trim work work once in a while, then make a Zzzzzt noise and quit.  When I moved the ground over to the lower starter mounting bolt the trim worked flawlessly.

Finally, onto that steering.  I asked Google if the steering cable from my new Vevor steering was compatible with my old QMI steering hub.  It said no.  Absolutely not.  Well, that might be why it jammed up.  Here is the thing.  A month or so ago when I installed that cable in order to save some time, and because it looked the same I had asked the Google AI if it was compatible and it had said it was.  And it worked when I tested it.  It wasn’t until I was headed down the lake on pad in almost dark when it showed me in the real world how incompatible it was.  I’m an experienced boat, and I have experienced an array of failure modes over the years.  I didn’t panic.  I had adjusted and made it back safely.  That really wasn’t an issue because of the trolling motor though.

I switched out the steering helm for the Vevor helm, and after knocking some broken chunks of metal out of the cable installed it into the proper helm.  I spun the wheel back and forth and everything moved easily.

I have had a 36V trolling motor on The Tin Can on 24 volts for a decade give or take.  It works just fine.  I don’t remember exactly why, but it works.  Trust me.  Maybe not so much with these fancy new systems with the computer controls and the fly by wire, but that old MG Tour 36V didn’t care.  On 24 volts it performed like a 24 volt trolling motor had on that boat in the past.  A year or two ago when I was rigging stuff I picked up a nominal single 36V (38.4) LiPoe battery.  I decided it was light enough instead of buying a small fortune in batteries for all my boats I would just use that one for all my boats, unless at some point I need to use more than one at a time.  I have enough 36V motors I can change everything over to 36V.  The TIn Can already had a 36V.  The ProCraft came to me with one.  The Triton has a 36v that the previous owner had been running on 24V just like I had on The Tin Can.  A while back I bought a “spare” 36V from a buddy I had planned to go on Whisker Seeker.  One trolling motor battery, and just move it to whichever boat I was going to use.  Well it performs.  On The Tin Can on 36 volts with a mouse ear prop it moves fast.

I was a little over heated from working on the boat out in the sun all morning, so I headed inside for a giant mug of iced tea.  After resting and cooling off I told my wife I was going to go out for what might be a highly annoying boat ride.

No issues getting to the lake.  Trim worked just fine.  Motor started just fine.  Still a little harder than I thought it should, but it started and idled quickly enough.  I parked the truck, and backed the boat off the ramp.  It wouldn’t turn.  I tried, and it would not turn.  I shifted into neutral, let the boat bump gently off the dock, and spin out towards the lake. I spun the wheel back and forth and it felt fine, so I put it in gear, and gave it a little throttle.  Nope.  Would not turn the direction i wanted.  Finally, I turned around and looked at the motor.  It was backwards.  Turns out the gearing in the Vevor Helm is backward from the gearing in the QMI helm as well as being incompatible.  If you put the cable in the same orientation it turns backwards.  I asked Gemini AI (Goggle’s search AI) and it said that was not the case, until I said you are wrong.  If you put the cable in the same way it absolutely turns the wrong way, I’m looking at it.  Then it admitted when looking up the actual… if you are seeing a theme here its don’t trust Gemini AI (or Google search in AI mode) to give you answers based on real information.

Well with the motor running better and trim working properly, I pointed the boat at the middle of the lake and decided to see if I could make a test run just to see how everything shook out and just steer backwards.  NOPE!  My reflexes took over, and I cut the throttle and jammed it into reverse to keep from running into the bank.   Not wanting to waste another afternoon I decided to just start fishing down the bank.  I flipped one keeper bass on a Version 4 RFG (the first one that I actually released the mold for sale), and that was about it.  The areas I had available to fish were grassed in pretty heavily.

Other than discovering just how fast the boat is on the current trolling motor setup it was pretty uneventful after that.  When the mosquitos started to swarm I headed in.  Didn’t take all that long on the trolling motor.  If anything it’s a little to fast to control.  I have to set my direction, step on the switch, and then ramp up the speed with the other foot or a rod butt.