Uffda!

All I can say is time sure does fly.  It seems as though I had just finished my last post and here it is, another week..............uffda.  For those who don't really understand what Uffda mean, click here and you can learn more about it!  So after 5 days of fishing in Canada, there has been plenty of things to do around the house, with the main objective of getting the jon boat out and running to fish the Mississippi River this summer.  Last Summer my Canadian fishing got in the way but have vowed to not let that happen again.  Last Friday was our annual trek to Brainerd International Raceway (BIR) to watch the NHRA drag races.  These are the big boys like John Force, Tony Schumacker, driving funny cars and top fuel dragsters that hit 320 mph and cross the finish line 1000 feet down the track in less than 4 seconds from a dead stop.  It's pretty incredible to watch as the round just shakes as the cars fly by.  As always we are guests of my good friend Kevin Sonsalla.  My neighbor Lory Brasel went with as it is always a good time with Kevin.  Friday is a qualifying day so the big boys start their first round at about 3:00, make a run then go back to their tents and tear down the motor completely and rebuild it, ready for the second round of the day at 6:00.  Kevin gets us into the Tony Schumacker tent where we can watch them rebuild the engine, have a nice dinner, refreshments before heading back to the track.  On one of the Funny Car runs I decided to record a video on the phone and in this case one of the cars blew an intake manifold, which in turns blew off the entire body.  I caught it on the video which is above, stop it at the 8 second make and you will see the resulting explosion and as the video ends you can see the body parts floating to the ground.  It was pretty amazing as I have been told that this is a potential failure so it is made to blow up safely, sure...... These engines run of Nitromethane which has 2.3 times more power than gasoline.  I have been told these engines at full throttle us 1 gallon a second.  Either way it was fun and quite amazing to see a car go that fast in that short of time.  Enjoy the video!

David Grant and a 22 pound King Salmon

So my second goal was to get my jon boat out and ready for fishing the river this weekend.  The
motor hasn't been run in 2 years and even though it has Non-oxygenated gas in it, it still isn't good to sit that long.  The other issue is one forgets about the nuances of the motor, like this 25 hp Mercury tends to flood easy and doesn't need to be choked very hard.  Once the water cuffs were put on, a few pulls with the choke fully on and the engine sputtered to life.  Unfortunately that's all it did and it would not run consistent.  Remembering it had a tendency to easily flood, a quick run to the auto parts store and new plugs seemed to help somewhat but no entirely.  The next step was to drain the gas and put in some newer stuff.  The gas smelled OK but one never knows so after finishing that task, a few pulls on the rope and voila, it started then stayed running!!  This Merc 25 hp has a goofy system whereas the throttle and gear shift is all in one.  You can only increase the throttle slightly before it shifts into gear as you pass a point on the twist grip.  Well up to this point it would simply kill once you passed that point however this time it kept running, and boy did it smoke.  Another sign of being flooded, it seems impossible that it could happen that fast.  Anyway she cleared out and after filling the tank with new gas, she's ready to go for the weekend.   It was great to get everything going and am looking forward to getting back on the river for some great smallmouth and catfish fishing!  Needing a nice fish picture for this week, my good friend David Grant sent me this one of the 22 pound King Salmon he caught on Lake Michigan this week.  I remember fishing this time of year on Lake Michigan in my 16 foot Lund Pro Angler with a 50 hp Merc.  My friend Kevin Aiona and I would go out and get kings, Coho's, and Lake Trout as we had the boat decked out with down riggers.  One can fish 3 lines per guy so we always had 2 lines down on the down riggers, maybe 40 - 60 feet down.  To the side we had Dipsey Divers that took your bait down and away form the boat, I suspect those were about 40 feet down.  The last two line were straight back of the boat, we used brightly colored crankbaits or J plugs.  We would get plenty of fish and the great thing about it was we'd take turns fighting the fish while the other guy reeled in all of our gear.  This meant we could fight the fish directly instead of keeping the motor running so we would not get tangled up and having to reel the fish against the 2 mph boat speed.  Anyway Dave, that's a nice fish and I'll bet it tasted great!

So the plan is to hit the river this weekend.  Hopefully there will be some nice pictures of the results.  As stated before, our next trip to Lac Seul is planned for September 17th, admittedly I'm so spoiled!!