Tired of learning from my mistakes Part 2
I recently noticed my trailer bunks were getting in bad shape with a tear in the carpet on one of the side bunks. I bought new carpet and treated 2x4s to re-do all 3 pairs of bunks. I got the carpet glued on the boards and needed to drop the boat off the trailer long enough to change out the bunks. Hour job TOPS! Of course dropping the boat off the trailer also meant a fishing trip since I needed to let the bunks dry out some after launching. (My wife hates my line of logic!)
I got on the lake and decided to check out some of my usual haunts to see if there was any baitfish activity now--there hasn't been any there all summer. I made my 1st pass and recorded it in my Terrova track recording mode. The 1st pass I put a couple of keepers in the boat and lost a couple good keepers at the net.
As I was repeating the 1st track with the Terrova in cruise-control, I got a crankbait hung in my transducer cables on the transom. No big deal! I got down on my back deck and crawled my big butt UNDER my rod holders so I could reach the bait and wires. I had the remote for the Terrova around my neck. I was letting the Terrova do the steering and the cruise-control was set at 1.8mph. What I failed to notice while distracted was I had hit the directional button, disengaged the Auto-Track and the motor was in hard turn, 180 degrees back toward the direction I had just come. This was not a good situation and the 1st thing to tip me off was a couple of my rods bending UNDER THE BOAT toward the bow. I did realize what was happening and killed the Terrova but the damage was already done. 4 of my 6 cranks had wound up in the TM prop! I raised the motor up, got out my pocket knife and started cutting my way to the prop. Once I got the baits free, I got my tool box and started to take the prop off, no little deal without a deep well socket. I finally got the prop nut off and found this:
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps1zdm1d9x.jpg
After cutting for a couple of minutes I managed to get the line off without any getting into the shaft seal (fingers crossed). I got the motor back together and started on sorting out the cranks from this;
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...psoxc6cheh.jpg
After 20 minutes or so, I finally got everything sorted out and re-rigged. I ended up with 9 keepers with 3 lost good keepers at the net. Every fish I caught was barely hooked and I know I lost others that hit, loaded the rod, but came off as soon as I started reeling. I usually don't see this on crank crappie.
I got back to the ramp and my 1 hour job ended up being over 2 hours but my trailer now has new wood and carpet on the bunks. The bunks I took off were being held together by the carpet. I took the longest 2 bunks and folded them in half to go into my topper on the truck. I was running on borrowed time with those. I thought I had changed out the bunks once before but realized the bottom 2 sets were factory--15 years old. Hopefully these last me another 15 years.
