The Drought Continues

Charlie dancing with his lovely daughter

Wee, it's hard to believe that I haven't been out in the boat for a month now, time has been taken up with my mother, having the boat at the dealers, and this week a wedding of my good Friend Charlie Teasley's daughter Morgan.  Normally this week would have been where I take off a day and Chuck and I go fishing on Mille Lacs.  We have done this for maybe 15 years now however we both decided that attending the wedding was as important as fishing so on Monday my wife and I headed up to Alexandria to the bible camp they always stay at to a celebrate.  Morgan is a wonderful girl and has found the perfect mate in Jim, her new husband.  He is a bonifide river rat and we had a great discussion about catfishing for blues and flatheads on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers down by St. Louis, Missouri, we even discussed the possibility of going down and fishing with him sometime, maybe Jug fishing for catfish, which sounds like a blast!  He also fishes for snapping turtles and claims he can clean one in about 15 minutes, which is pretty incredible.  I had a great time talking about the opportunities to fish in a different area of the country as I used to love to catfish back home.  This week's picture isn't of fish but of Charlie dancing with his daughter, a very proud moment for Charlie and his daughter Morgan.  Chuck said that it was worth giving up for sure and I definitely would have to agree with him.  I do miss fishing with him but maybe next year for sure. Morgan is a very pretty young lady and has no problem speaking her mind as the pastor officiating the service acknowledge, and so did she!!  I also got to spend some time with Dan Hoene, another friend of Chucks who often fishes with us.  Dan is a great guy and if fun to hang around with.  Both Dan and Chuck have had issues with their hips and legs and both exhibit extraordinary courage for sure.

Connection of motor to Lowrance HDS

Last Friday I helped my friend Bruce Wiley connect his new Xi5 Motorguide trolling motor to his Lowrance HDS 7 touch.  His boat was in Garrison, MN so we headed up around noon and started working on it about 2:00. His neighbor and friend Wayne mounted the motor and wired in the NMEA network so I connected it all and fired it up.  There were a few things I needed to fix first but when I did fire it up the depth finder did recognize that there was something there but I kept getting a Not connected error message.  One of the problems with the Lowrance HDS networks is they can be quite complicated and it can take a while to figure out how everything works, or should work when setting up.  Running out of patience on trying to get the Lowrance to connect to the Motorguide gateway I finally called the Motorguide help line and they walked me through the steps in the Lowrance menu to look for the Gateway, connect and to start using it.  Because I know something about what I am doing it took less than 3 minutes and a few buttons pushed and we were all set.  Launching the boat in his lake te motor preformed flawlessly!  Now when we are at Lac Seul, Bruce will enjoy the same convenience of electronically being anchored rather than having to manually drop and anchor, lift it up, reset, and dealing with the anchor slipping.  The Motorguide will hold your position within 5 feet of where you set it and there are a bunch of really nice finite controls like moving in any direction in 5 foot increments.  I am anxious to see it at work the next time we head to Lac Seul which looks like it will be on September 13.

I am finally getting out on Sunday as one or our engineers at work, Kam, asked me if I would take him and his brother fishing this weekend.  Of course!!! I have been waiting for someone to step up to the plate and ask me to go fishing.  I do plan on getting my jon boat ready to go and I do have to back and visit my mom soon as well, pick some blueberries as my brother steve said they were beautiful last week.  So much to do, so little time, oh well.