Getting Ready for Fishing Opener

My New Weld Job on my Trailer Step

With the late spring and my previous trips to Texas, fishing opener is rushing upon us at lightening speed.  Add on top of this that the ice has not officially off of Leech Lake, things are moving fast and thankfully the weather is cooperating very well, I think things although will not be normal, will be just fine.  In fact looking back some of our best fishing it occurred when the ice went out later, in fact on of the best years in the history of Team Walleye was when there was ice on the lake until the Monday after the Saturday opener.  Never the less there is a lot of things to do before next Friday.  The boat needs to be cleaned up, all my electronics needs to be reinstalled, rods, tackle and needed equipment needs to be put away, and as you see to the picture on the left, my trailer step on the winch tower on my boat trailer actually broke the weld off after installing my Eazy Steps.  These steps are the real deal as getting older they become a real advantage and anything that makes it easier to function, I am all for it.  Unfortunately the setup was less than ideal so I asked my friend Bruce Wiley to help me fix the problem.  The other day we took my baby out of his storage and over to his shop where he fixed the broken weld on the step, and in addition welded in a triangular bracket to really shore up the mechanical strength of that step.  After mounting the step to the  post and in order to secure it, the plate needed a hole drilled through to accommodate the bolt which secures the step.  Thinking it would be easy,  the hole had to be drilled right through the weld material.........uffda! Confirming to Bruce my success in the challenge of drilling through his weld and his comment, well it was 7018 Rod, 70,000# tensile strength, You're not playing with kids here!!!  One thing about Bruce, you will never be given a half quality job, it's the best or nothing!  The drill did get through the weld but may need re-sharping, and I could gain another 70 pounds and still be good, at least for that step.   One is very lucky to have friends like Bruce to count on but as usual, there is a lot more work to now be done, the bare metal needs to be coated and cleaned up for sure.  At least that should never be a problem again!

Sky on Fire Last Night

The other disadvantage of the late spring is all the yard and garden work needs to get done.  The apple trees are trimmed but the raspberries still needs work.  Stopping at another friends house, Ricky,  we hooked up his tiller onto his Kubota tractor and is ready to till the garden this week. It really takes the grunt work out of getting the garden ready as my onions and seed potatoes are in and ready for planting.  A normal year would have seen this stuff already done yet it was only last week that the water got turned on down to the pole shed.  Even that was an issue as the water lines were still froze deep down, surprisingly how deep the frost really was.  Hopefully this weekend will get a serious hurt on all the things that need to be done.  On top of this we got a new "used" John Deere Lawn Tractor, Model 734, 27 hp All Wheel Steer last weekend and has added additional issues needing to get done before the serious fishing starts.  I guess the list goes on and on and on!  Still it's important to stop and appreciate the beauty of Mother Nature as seen here, the sky is on fire. 

May is turning to a busy month and hopefully everything will get done as needed.  As you may have read in previous posts, the bass fishing trips taken in the last few months have really set the stage for fishing bass in Minnesota this year.  Admittedly I am anxious to try wacky worming smallmouth bass on the Mississippi Rive behind the house with my new fishing buddy, David Grant or Jack's son Ben,  we'll see if he can keep up!  The last few weeks were dedicated to restocking my plastic worm selections as the Bass Pro Stik-O Worms have worked very well and the crayfish/orange colors should work well on those smallies.