Keep Swinging

It was tough for us. We seemed to start out the day plagued by minor
mishaps. I'ld snag up in a tree, and Robert would snag up in the opposite
direction.

Finally I nailed a 2 pounder on top only to find out the drain valve was
jammed in the open position on the livewell. I turned all three pumps
(recirc, aerate, fill) on continuous to keep some water on the fish and
proceeded to try and fix it. I pulled the control out of the dash (after
breaking off the control knob) and the cable wouldn't move. It didn't feel
jammed in the sleeve though so I figured the valve itself was stuck.

A look at the valve determined I didn't really want to try and work on it or
pound on it down there in the bilge. Finally I decided to just plug that
opening in the well, use just the recirculation pump, and use the pump out
and fill pump periodically during the day to get fresh water in there.

Plugging the drain in the livewell wasn't quite as easy as I figured it
would be. The plastic screeen that keeps junk out of the valve assembly
would not come off. It would turn, but didn't seem to be losssening up any.
Finally I drove a screwdriver through it and tore it off.

Of course nothing in the boat was the right size to plug that opening, but
by tightening down a compartment drain plug really tight and mushrooming the
rubber I was able to get it to work as a passable plug in the hole.

We had a working livewell finally. I don't know how long that took, but it
was a while because by the time I picked up my rod and started to throw that
popper again all of shadows over the areas I was casting to were gone, and
so was my topwater bite. I made some efforts to work the areas where there
were still a few shadows and went nowhere.

We started working senkos to pockets and outside points. Robert and I both
caught several shorts, and I picked up a 4 pounder on the a long cast to
straighten out my line. We stayed with it for a little while, but finally
we decided that all we were going to catch doing that was little fish.

On the way up to one of our flipping spots we pitched a senko up under some
dark cover in another area and picked up another 2 pounder, but that was the
only bite in the area.

Flipping was slow. A 3 1/2 came on our first flip spot. It was the only
bite, but it was a quality fish. A couple more like that would have really
done the trick for us. I hit my second flip spot. An area where I had lost
a 4-5 pound fish last week, and proceeded to cuss and swear at the trolling
motor. It would quit working periodically. Finally I determined it had to
be a loose connection in the head. I could step on the peddle and swing the
motor left to right and it would start woking again for a while. I fought
it for a while and finally determined I could work it like that, but not
while pulling the current and trying to maintain the best flipping distance
from the bank we were working.

With 4 (we fish for a five fish limit here) fish in the well I decided to
gamble on catching one decent kicker fish in a back water lake. A deep lake
(for here that's ten feet) that doesn't usually grass up thick in the summer
time. We actually spooked several keeper fish in the 2 pound range on our
way in, and if things had worked out a little better I planned to keep
throwing blindly to those spots in reserve for the trip back out.

Finally we got to the mouth of our little lake, and I dropped the trolling
motor. I'm pretty familair with the lake and often pick up a fish on
certain cover right at the mouth so I had angled the boat to the other
side... just a little too much. The nose of the boat was back in the brush
before I could step on the switch to correct position.

I knew better than to try to and muscle the boat with the trolling motor. I
just let it bounce back and driftout a little first. Unfortunately when I
stepped on the trolling motor peddle it just went flop. It broke a steering
cable. Dang it. I wasn't going to quit though. I figured we had between
11 & 12 pounds of fish, and any decent fish might give us a respectable
limit.

I pulled the TM up and taped the shaft up hard with electrical tape so it
wouldn't turn at the swivel point in the shaft. Then I loosened up the
clamp on the mount so I could turn the whole motor by hand. It worked sort
of. We wallowed our way down my deep section throwing senkos blindly at the
cover we wanted to fish. I managed to keep us at the ideal range about 1/4
of the time. LOL. We did pick up one 12.5 inch fish. That proved to me
there some fish there if we could have just controlled the boat better and
sliced and diced the area more effectively. It was tough. Hoping for a
hail mary fish I motored up wind to the top of the area and tried lobbing
crank baits at the cover, and then did it again trying to work a drop shot
along it, but the wind just wasn't giving us the optimal drift.

Finally with 30 minutes left we headed in. We had only 4 fish. Our limit
weighed 11.49 pounds, and our big fish was 4.06 pounds.

It was a tough day, but I can't complain. We had all that adversity we
still caught plenty of fish. If we count the shorts we probably caught 20
fish yesterday, and I managed to boat 4 keepers for a middle of the field
total finish. We just kept swinging. I doubt if we really fished
effectively for more than 3 hours out of the day, but we did ok. I'm
actualy kind of proud of us for our efforts. I recall days not that long
ago when nothing broke, everything worked the way I thought it should except
the fish, and I came in from summer tournaments with one 13" fish ashamed to
even bring it to the scales.

We even still even had a couple sodas left in the ice chest at the end of
the day. The ride back isn't so bad when you've got good company and yer
sipping on an ice cold cola.


--
Bob La Londe
Fishing Arizona & The Colorado River
Fishing Forums & Contests
http://www.YumaBassMan.com



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com