Dog Days of Summer Report

I was out of commission for a few weeks while my old boat was in the shop. Thankfully, the problem was diagnosed as being less serious than I originally feared, but I may not be out of the woods yet... My head gaskets were leaking and my heads had to be re-torqued. The leak I noticed was on both heads and very small. Long story short, the compression numbers are still good, but 20 psi lower on each cylinder than they used to be. My mechanic says that I have an immense amount of carbon build up in the engine causing my loss of compression. That would make sense because I am the world's worse at not running the boat hard. I do very little running and probably never even get the engine good and warm in a days fishing. The mechanic gave me a bottle of Yamaha Ring Free and I've been running it with every tank of fuel. I'm still on the shock treatment and the motor is running like a top, but I'm not getting the top end that I used to. It's only turning 5100-5200 RPMS at WOT, instead of the 5600 RPMS I used to get. I'm hoping that running it will open it back up, but Idk...as long as it doesn't blow up, I'm OK with it running a little slower. I don't care to run 60+ MPH anywhere and I've never caught a fish on plane LOL

On to the fishing. I've been out a couple trips since the boats been back and I've spent way more time riding and running the boat than I have fishing, but the fish are still cooperating. I'm still catching them on brush in 20-25 FOW on live bait. They aren't jumping in the boat, but with some patience I've managed a few nice catches. A 1 man limit by 9:00 - 10:00 AM is doable with persistence.

Here's a box shot from Aug. 15. It felt odd being on the water opening day of deer season, but I enjoyed it!