No Fishing This Weekend

Engine Winterize Screen for the Evinrude

Time is starting to run out on Soft water fishing as deer hunting is now 2 weeks away.  Earlier in the week I visited with my new Cardiologist, Dr. Sigurdsson  With the 2 ss's in his last name I was sure he was of true Swedish origin however we got that cleared up pretty fast.  He is originally from Iceland, and a good doctor he was.  We discussed my aortic replacement surgery back in 2010 and the discussion that was had at that time with the surgeon regarding a possible aortic valve issue, which according to the surgeon at the time, was not an issue back then  Well, Dr. Sigurdsson heard something he didn't like and ordered an Echocardiogram last Friday afternoon.  Of course they don't tell you anything other than the doctor has to review.  On Sunday, while watching the game at my neighbor Tim's I got a message on the MyChart app, from the Doctor, he was working on Sunday morning!  Basically I'm going to need a valve job sometime in the near future.  The obvious symptoms are shortness of breath,  and here I thought it was because I am getting fat and old.  The next step is to followup with my regular doctor and discuss my options but at least it will not require open heart surgery again.  Apparently aortic valves can now be replace via arthroscopic surgery techniques where they get into your leg artery then push a catheter with a new valve up to your heart then deploy it.  Although it doesn't sound fun, it's probably much better than the alternative.  All of this explains why I have a hard time doing anything these days that involves some physical work.  Sunday was going to be the ideal day to take the Ranger out and do an end of the season run as well, winterize it.  The boat is powered by the new generation Evinrude Etec which is a two stroke and has oil injection.  Not feeling too much like doing anything Plan B was to put muffs on the water intake and start the engine outside my garage.  The Evinrude has a very nice system for winterizing.  There is a screen on the main engine display that is on the dash, one find this screen, then while the engine is running, press the red Winterize Engine square and voila!  The engine idle speeds up to warm the engine up before injecting more oil than normal into the system, which essentially fogs the engine.  Pretty slick if you ask me!  I changed the lower unit oil this summer so that is good to go as well.  All that's left is to vacuum it and put everything back in its place before the cold sets in.  Of course this marks the end of the open water fishing for Minnesota this year, with the current weather, ice fishing isn't too far behind!

New 14 Bushel collection system with 54 inch dethatching rake on front

Staying with the "getting old and lazy" theme, Fall is here and the leaves are dropping like crazy from
the trees.  Last spring I sold my old Lawn tractor system to my good friend Greg Kimblom.  Along with the tractor went the dethatcher/bagger system, the 47 inch snow blower attachment, and the soft cab for the winter.  This meant that the newer model John Deere lawn tractor needed to be completely reoutfitted for the fall and winter.  As stated early, not having the energy to install it myself I simply hauled the tractor to Rogers, MN to the big JD dealer there and had them install the first of what will help me to minimize my work come this fall and winter!  My wife found a contact that sells year old management units, similar to what we used to do when Lyn worked for Polaris, we could buy a new snowmobile and ATV every year, keep it for a set period of time then sell it for enough to pay for the next years new model.  This spring we bought a 2017 John Deere 734 27.5hp, all wheel steer, fully hydrostatic drive, with a shaft driven 60" mowing deck deck.  The old one had a 54 inch deck and I really wasn't sure of the 60" but it turned out pretty good as well it doesn't take as long to move the entire 2 acres that I do....Duh!.  This unit can really vacuum up the leaves as it has a separate blower attached to the mower deck pulley, and with the amount of leaves, it really fills up fast.  After deer hunting the tractor will go back in to get a new 54 inch snow blower as well as a new soft sided cab.  The new blower will be 7 inches wider than the old one, that should be nice if it moves the snow a quickly.  Maybe we will get lucky, buy all this stuff then it doesn't snow.  Trust me, I would not mind that a bit!  Maybe we will have to go back to this post next March to see how we did.

Trout Fishing with Bill

Absolutely a Beautiful View from the boat landing

Last week was quite busy, busy enough that my usual weekly post didn't make it.  One of the best reasons was that I had to prepare for my annual trout fishing day with my friend Bill Lundeen.  Admittedly it really doesn't take much on my part however the excuse sounds pretty good!  We settled on Friday as a date as the first part of October has been quite wet, yet there was a good reason to get our date finalized fairly soon as it isn't getting any warmer out.  As it is, there was snow on the ground as I approached Onamia, as well the standing water in the ditches has a thin crust of ice overlaying them.  It was still 30 degrees as I pulled into Bill's driveway at his newly remodeled home on Cove Bay.  It is sort of strange not meeting Bill at the corner tackle shop, as he officially sold his business, Lundeen's Tackle Castle, about 2 months agos ago.   35 years ago I fished Mille Lacs almost exclusively.  Living in Brooklyn Park at the time, my normal route up to the lake was to take Highway 47 to Isle and would stop at Portside to get any bait I needed.  When I moved to Dayton, the new route to Mille Lacs was up 169 and my new bait shop became Lundeen's Tackle Castle.  We have become great friends that essentially started as a business relationship, and it's been a great one!  We have trout fished every year since 2014 and this was our 5th trip to our secret lake that will remain so!  October is a beautiful month to fish as you can see on the picture above.  It is a small lake that is quite deep, over 100 feet and we speculate that it may have been an old mine pit at one time.  The water is crystal clear and has a landing but not for a traditional boat/trailer as one has to carry the boat down to the lake.  As we get

Bucket full of trout.

older it isn't getting any easier for sure, and my spot is in the front of the canoe, that in itself is a challenge!  It takes about an hour to get used to sitting in the canoe, but eventually one get's his sea legs and we spent over 5 hours to get our 10 rainbow trout.  this year wasn't my best performance as my attempt to try a different tactic didn't turn out so good.  Normally we use small hand tied crawler harnesses with a smaller spinner blade on them.  Deciding to try inline spinners, I did catch the first fish but really struggled after that.  Luckily I did get a few more hits but Bill was the star of the show this trip.  It probably was as simple as changing my lure however its not that easy in the canoe and as well, attached to my line was a Water Wolf Camera, which I used last year to get some great shots of the trout hitting my lure.  It is heavy and bulky, maybe that made all the difference.  I don't know but again, not complaining.  Looking at the first picture, one get's the idea of how peaceful and beautiful it was on Friday!  By the end of the day we headed home with a nice bag of rainbow trout.  Not terribly big, maybe 10 - 13" they are excellent on the grill.  Although planted in the lake, by fall their flesh has turned a light pink color and are just delicious wrapped in foil and thrown on the grill.  It is surprising how well these fish fight and the first one on the line almost pulled my pole out of my arms.  It was a great day on the water with my good friend Bill.  Admittedly the canoe is getting more precarious as I get older and may have to tackle that problem in the future!  Maybe we will start looking for a more flat bottom boat to make fishing a little easier.  We'll see as there are plenty of them on Craigslist and I don't think it would be that bad to haul it around.  That will be a great discussion for the ice house!

New Snowflap System

The other item that has taken a bunch of time is getting a new set of receiver mounted snowflaps ready for this years ice fishing season.  These flaps are necessary to help keep the snow from accumulating on the front of the wheel house as it's pulled down the road.  They do work pretty good however last year I was determined to get a new pair that will give even better protection to my wheel house.  Having basically assembled them, it became evident that my receiver ball mount would not work as the snowflap assembly was too thick to allow the mount to get far enough back in the receiver to get the hitch pin through.  Figuring the weather is changing fast, I'd better get going on getting this taken care of.  Really all that needed to be done was to get an extended ball mount then cut the actual flaps to the right height, securing all the bolts and do the final adjustments.  Well, try to find and extended ball mount, it's not that easy as Northern Tool has a lot of stuff, just not one with a 3 inch rise.  The guy at Northern was very nice and suggested I go back to U-haul up the road.  They had just what I needed and with a few measurements and actually hooking up the ice house gave me the drop created by the tongue weight, whether the rise was adequate, and the final adjustments needed to get that perfect fit.  Cutting off the bottom of the flaps with an ever handy utility knife, tightening everything up.  The last task is to attach a 2 5/16" ball to the mount and everything should be good to go.  These new flaps extend out about 4 inches from the bumper and hopefully will give me better coverage.

Getting Things Buttoned Up

4 Series 32 AGM's and the charger

After all the electrical work on the boat prior to going to Canada, in the end it didn't make a hill of beans difference in the performance of my electronics.  Almost everytime we were done fishing an area I had to turn the master switch to the jump position to get the outboard motor started.  Of course hindsight is 20/20 and admittedl I was probably too smart for my own good!  Thinking I could solve all of my problems with some rewiring and a boost circuit, along with the assumption that the AC voltage at the docks could be bad, like they were at Fisherman's Cove, I was loaded for bear!  As you might have read, I rewired the power to the console area, added a new power distribution methodology, cleaned up my boost converter, yet still it was like I did nothing.  In the boat I added a USB charging port for charging things such as cell phones, my Ipod, and other things.  It has a  built in volt meter so I can easily monitor the battery voltage at the power distribution center, and there is where my first clue appeared.  Normally battery voltage should stay above 12 volts however the voltmeter showed 11.6 and it was falling.  In about an hour it was down to 10.5, low enough to cause major problems.  I even brought a special AC voltage booster for the power at the docks but the plug in voltage at the docks was adequate to assure a good charge.  Even so after about 4 hours, I was in trouble.  Add that to the fact that power went out the night before our last day and therefore it was really a problem as the low battery from the day before didn't even have a chance to charge fully.  On top of this, I had to keep the power on to run the baitwell pumps to keep our minnows alive.  Well I made it through the trip, inconvenienced but still got back to the landing.  The discussions started centering around whether or not my main "house" battery was starting to get a weak cell as it sure acted like it.  Once home I charged everything up then removed the house battery and took it to Pete's and had him load test it.  Yep, it is weak for sure.  Well this would explain everything that was going on for the last 2 months.  So I run series 31 AGM's as they are truly maintenance free and because they are in the floor do not require any maintenance on the electrolyte. In addition, I always keep my onboard charger plugged in as it has a maintenance mode to keep the batteries healthy.  I called my dealer as these batteries are about 39 months old, they have a 36 month free replacement and I assumed a pro-rated formula after that.  NOPE, 36 months, that's it.  I explained this issue has been going on a while, I guess if I would have checked in May it would have not cost me anything.  Frankie's stated they would talk to the Interstate Battery rep and we will see what they can do.  In the mean time I needed a good battery so I bought a replacement ...... $360 ... ouch!! I trust Frankie's will do everything they can for me as they always do, but a warranty date is a warranty date.  Interesting as I put in the new battery and connected it the positive cable sparked when it touched the terminal, that's not necessarily good.  I found the source of the current draw and put a switch in to shut off certain parts of my electronics without affecting my pumps and other safety features.  All the stuff I did a month ago is still a great idea, but honestly, may have not been necessary.

Getting the pig going!

We go home on Friday night, September 21st and on the next day, our neighbor Tim had his annual pig roast.  He gets about a 230 pound whole hog and has a specially made pig roasted where he first brines the whole carcass before putting it in the smoker and pouring the smoke to it.  It takes a good 12 to 18 hours to completely cook it however it is quite delicious, especially with his own homemade barbeque sauce.  This year along with the food, he had entertainment, our old neighbor Bots and his band called Blues Driver.  They are pretty good but admittedly I really didn't know many of the songs as I am not much of a blues fan!  I still appreciate good music and they did an outstanding job for sure.  This weekend will be getting caught up around the house as we had our first freeze a week ago so everything is changing quick.  I need to replace the vacuum system on my new lawn tractor as I am not raking nothing!  The boat still needs to be put together and the lawn needs fertilizing, sprinkler system blown out, trees trimmed and the average high is only in the low 50's.  I have talked to Bill and it looks like we have a trout fishing date set for the 12th.  I am hoping to get back on the river this weekend but we'll have to see.  Last weekend was my good friend Big Dave's son's wedding in Alma.  We drove home that night and I got my first speeding ticket ever.....damn.  Oh well not much one can do about it.  I am also trying to get my new mud flaps to fit my truck, getting ready to pull the ice shack.  My 45th class reunion is on the 13, no rest for the wicked, as they say!!