The Ranger 620 Saga Continues

Empty Hole where my HDS12 used to be

On Friday Lisa at Frankies sends me an e-mail....Dave, we have a problem.......we are missing a few parts that we thought were part of what we ordered to fix your trolling motor and kicker motor however that is not the case and we had to reorder some parts.  Well, OK, it is supposed to be real windy on Saturday and on Sunday we had a family reunion in Eau Claire so even if I had the boat, it would be a stretch to be able to actually use it. Besides I also had an appointment with Lakes Area Canvas to have a bimini top custom made for the boat. on Monday June 12th. My goal was to have everything mechanical done by this Saturday and the top ready to go by June 23rd, in time for my next trip to Lac Seul with Bruce and Pete. Therefore I simply made the arrangement, I would pick up the boat on Monday, take it to the canvas place, when they are done, Frankie's can pick it up and bring it back to the shop, I will pick up the boat on Saturday morning, June 17th.  Seemed like a good plan. Well I get a call from John at the canvas shop on Tuesday morning, someone had broken into his "secured" area, got into my boat and ripped out both the console HDS 12 and the bow mounted HDS 9 however the 3rd HDS 9 that I had on the dash above where the 12 was mounted was pretty much unscathed as it had a gimble lock on it that takes time to figure out.  I ran up last night to assess the damage and took some pictures.I would definitely give a shout out to DuraSafe Locks.  Even when they tried to remove it, the lock held fast and the only damage to it was the gimbal mount itself, an easy thing to replace.  Of course instead of carefully twisting off the cable connectors, they apparently just cut them on the 12. The console is scratched up and I worry about how they are going to fix my glassed in transducer now that the connector end is cut.  I was concerned about some of the other things in the boat like my tackle boxes however those were left alone.  Although some people say you'd have got all new stuff, I have over 30 years of favorites accumulated and it would be difficult to think about restocking, especially those classics that just work.  I have plastics in there that just aren't made anymore but sure are the ticket for Lac Seul.  And of course does anyone know exactly how much stuff you have?!?!?

Previous location of my bow mounted Lowrance

The criminals only grabbed what they could easily pawn for money, leaving a lot of what I consider
nice stuff behind, thank the Lord! Because Frankie's has to put the trolling motor together as well as the kicker motor, it will be interesting to see if any parts are missing because these things simply were left apart in the boat. The thieves were somewhat more considerate with my front bow mounted HDS9 as they took the time to actually undo the cables. This means that only the yellow ethernet cable will need to be replaced. Of course the panel was broken and a new one needs to be ordered from Ranger but beyond the missing HDS9, it wasn't too bad in the bow section.  I was thinking about using tamperproof screws when mounting the new ones however someone made the point that they could do more damage that way, I guess it makes sense.  Luckily I removed all of my fishing rods and reels from the center compartment.  The rod storage holds at least 12 rods and at an average of $500 each, that would have made a bad situation even worse.  I guess there are worse things in this world but it seems like my luck is about reached a peak when it comes to the boat!

So, what else is exciting in the world of Fishin' With Dave?  Grandpa's tractor, the Ferguson TO-35 has not been running too good so I took off the carburetor and cleaned it however that made it even worse! Last week I took it off and sent it to Ohio to get rebuilt.  It arrived yesterday and I got it on, she started right up!  Ran perfect, the only thing I had to do was lower the idle screw to get it to idle at a slower speed.  With that I was able to grade my pole shed driveway enough to make it decent again.  That was a total relief as I couldn't even finish mowing the back acreage last fall.  You can be assured that only Non Oxygenated gas will be run through that thing going forward.  Now that we have received a lot of rain in the last few days, the grass is looking pretty good.  The garden is up, complete with potato beetles on the newly sprouted potato shoots.  Will I have the boat back this weekend, I really only care about June 23rd when I have confirmed a trip back to Lac Seul.

Getting Things Fixed

Initial Installation

A while back I purchased a new Lowrance HDS 9 Gen 3 to sit on the dash of my Ranger, above the flush mount HDS12 Gen 3.  The idea was to use it as my main chart source with the appropriate maps and it would be easier to control my bow mount Motorguide from a single machine.  Luckily the units talk to each other so there are a lot of advantages to having a setup like this.  After selling my old HDS 7 to Bruce this left me without a unit for my Jon Boat so I decided to network another unit to my system, one that I could remove and mount on the other boat.  My original idea was to use a Johnny Ray mount however the first time I used it the HDS9 popped right out of the mount on the first big wave we hit.  Somewhat unnerving I decided to just remove it for the rest of the day until I could figure out something.  I did come up with a scheme using electrical ring terminals secured to the Johnny Ray then using long tie wraps, secure the top of the mount to the terminals.  This actually worked OK but seemed somewhat awkward, especially when I wanted to move it.  As stated last week, I had holes already drilled into the top of the dash so I wasn't too interested in making more so I started thinking about a better idea.  At first I bought a Stabil Mount, a customized aluminum electronics mount made for this type of equipment.  Unfortunately after receiving it, it dawned on me that their might be a much easier and cleaner way to do this.  Although the Stabil Mount was nice, it had some limitations. After staring at the situation for a few hours, I finally come to my senses and decided to

New installation

simply mount another gimbal mount, one which comes with the unit anyway, solidly to the dash via a custom cut plastic plate which I made, that would serve as an adaptor using the same holes as the Johnny Ray yet mount it solidly on the dash.  The good news it it worked very well as the HDS9 is now ready for any rough water situation.  It looks pretty good as well, something that was important to me.  It is still very easy to move the unit from one boat to the other by simply loosening the side gimbal bolts and removing the unit and I did not have to drill any additional holes in the dash.  I suspect that one could have simply got by with the single HDS 12 in the dash and use the split screen however admittedly the 2 units is awfully nice once you get used to them.  The other advantage is now I can buy lockable gimbal fasteners that protect the unit from easy theft, definitely an advantage, however my luck is that I would lose the key!  As long as I was drilling and screwing things together I decided to add 2 RAM rod holder bases to the back end of the boat.  I have 2 up in the bow and 2 at about the front row of seats in the console area, these are about 18" form the back of he boat and will work well for the guys sitting in those seats.  They will also work really well when I am trolling more than 3 lines as it will help to keep the rods better spaced out.  The boat has 2 built in rod holders on the back by the gunnel however they are the type where you simply insert the rod butt into the holes and it sticks straight up.  They are pretty good but don't work well if you are in the back and want better access to you rod tip action as you are always looking up.  Mounting these takes some patience because you need to drill screw holes into the inside gunnel of your boat.  These holes need to be countersunk otherwise the gel coat will crack when you start turning the mounting screws.  I use #14 stainless steel sheet metal screws which hold really well.

A Flock of Wild Turkeys by the Pole Shed

This weekend was a thought of going up to Mille Lacs and doing some deep water trolling in what we call "no man's land".  Sunday was the chosen day however my brother Steve called, mom had fallen down the steps, he had bought a used chair lift and it would be a good idea to get it in.  I headed to Eleva to help yet fortunately for me Steve had already installed both of them, had the top one working and had to deal with the something on the bottom one.  Although late for the heavy mechanical stuff, this is where my electronic background really did the heavy lifting!  Seems like the chair on the second one was stuck so we took apart the housing and got to the control circuit board.  The onboard fuse was blow, and indication that the main drive motor was jammed, which it was.  Using a socket we turned the drive motor enough to free the chair, it was obvious where it was jammed.  Put a new fuse in and voila, it worked just like new! Not a bad deal for $200 total.  Hopefully mom isn't too stubborn to use it but that's another story.  This weekend is Labor Day and the river is still high but is down about 1.5 feet. Unfortunately it has been raining like crazy up north and all that water has to go somewhere as I expect it to go up again.  I would like to try and do some of that deepwater trolling before walleye fishing season officially closes on Mille Lacs on Tuesday, September 6th. Besides that I am getting ready for our Lac Seul trip in a couple of weeks.  I'd like to make some salsa from my tomatoes, just to much to do, so little time!  I leave you with a picture of at least 2 broods of wild turkeys hanging around the property.  There must have been at least 20 of them in front of the pole barn on Sunday morning, they have been eating out of our ground based bird feeders so I don't feel too sorry for them!
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Troubles with the Boat Electronics!

Lowrance HDS12

Man, one almost has to be a computer engineer to deal with the issues that I have been having with my depth finders and associated electronics on my boat, it's got me running in circles.  Let me explain my set up.  Back by my console is a flush mount Lowrance HDS 12 Gen 3 unit, a 12 inch color screen that is pretty sweet.  On the bow is a HDS 9 Gen 3 which is ethernet connected to the 12 so they will talk to each other, share maps, waypoints, and also if you are knowing what you're doing, will allow you to view the sonar screen from either unit.  Everything is also networked together with what is known as a NMEA 2000 network, a technology that allows communication between a number of separate modules and allows them to either be viewed on the HDS units, and or controlled by them.  These things include stuff like my Point 1 compass that came with the boat, it provides a GPS signal that my outboard motor uses for speed, fuel usage, distance traveled, which can be linked into my HDS or displayed on the display that came with the boat (RPM, Tilt, other stuff) which is communicated through the NMEA network.  Also my front trolling motor is linked to the main HDS unit and you can control it from the console as well, my sonic hub (audio server) is controlled via the network.  Here's is where I am having an issue.  Because my bow and console unit are networked, I should be able to control from both locations, but that doesn't work.  Also the ability to switch sonar views (Console transducer is in the back of the boat, bow unit is connected to the transducer in the trolling motor) has been an issue.  Well after watching a few YouTube videos I finally figured out the settings to allow me to switch it.  It now makes sense but it was painful getting to that point, I must have accessed every menu in the unit.  The next thing is to figure out how to get the SonicHub menu bar on the bow unit.  I have a suspicion that the network connections up front are not correct and I have picked up a few parts to hopefully make it right.  We'll see and if so the network may have been set up incorrectly from the start.  I would be glad if this was the problem.  I am a stickler on features that don't work as I like everything to work as it's supposed to.  I probably could get by without being able to control the sonichub from the back only but hey, that's just not right!  Also I expected the units to share trails but have learned that this is not the case so I have to download them from one to the other.  They do each have a wifi feature and maybe I can learn how to transfer via that.  I did figure out how to put a picture of me holding a walleye as background wallpaper which is pretty slick.

Well, by the time you read this the ice should be off of Mille Lacs Lake, quite early in modern

Almost off!

historical terms.  Open ice is defined by the ability to drive from Isle, in the southeast corner to Garrison, in the northwest corner without encountering any ice. Unfortunately the latest developments with the walleye regulations leaves much to be desired.   The fishing season has been deemed catch and release only with no live bait to be used. You can imagine that this is a real blow to my baitshop friend, Bill Lundeen as he sells a lot of live bait, leeches, crawlers, and minnows.  The has been a lot of talk regarding this as being totally ridiculous and true to my vow not to make the blog political all I am going to say is that I agree with the ridiculousness of the whole thing.  Managing the lake as though it's a farm is impossible and I am afraid we will never see Mille Lacs back to it's previous glory of being the premier walleye lake in Minnesota.  Oh well, I am pretty good at trolling shad raps and lead lining so fishing should be good, maybe because there will be no one around!  That is really sad considering how many fish are in the lake now. I am anxious to get the boat out soon and see how she runs after it's first winter.  Mom is back at the rehab center and we went to see her on Sunday, she looks a lot better.  Hopefully by the weekend I will have everything figured out!

Ma Donna



Ma Donna



Last Saturday we said our goodbyes to my friend Kevin's mother, Donna Aiona.  Having graduated high school with my dad, she was a fixture in Eleva, living right across the street from the church.  We grew up just a couple of houses away and with Kevin and I's love for fishing, all of us friends simply called her Ma Donna.  Growing up in a small town meant that you really had to mind your P's and Q's and with Donna, it was no exception!  If you were goofing off or slightly out of line, she'd let you know it right now.  Having a house full of kids which included Brent, Michelle, Eddy, Kevin, Warren, Camille, and Valerie as a visitor you simply became one of them.  It was actually pretty nice as you never had to worry about where you stood with her.  At the funeral Pastor Kermit Solem said it well, with Donna nothing went to waste.  Kevin and I spent most every weekend hunting or fishing and those activities were appreciated in the Aiona household.  Whether it was suckers that we caught out of the river in March, trout in May, Sunnies and Bass in the summer, squirrels in October, nothing went to waste.  She was a pretty good cook as I always look forward to seeing Kevin as she would with out fail have something for us kids.  My fondest memory of all came on Thanksgiving Day as a teenager.  I suppose Kevin and I were going deer hunting in the afternoon so arriving at the house just before dinner, Donna was putting the finishing touches on her Thanksgiving pie.  She asked if I would like a piece of homemade squash pie.  Now as a teenager, squash wasn't necessarily in my list of preferred foods but what the heck.  Well, it looked just like a pumpkin pie anyway.  It was delicious!  You see pumpkin is nothing but a big squash anyway and like Donna, she used what had come out of the garden a month before.  She finally got to use those cooking talents and became a cook out at the high school....the perfect job and I am sure she had the opportunity to straighten out a few of the boys while she was at it.



April 20th???



So winter's grip this year doesn't seem like it would ever end.  Last week I was in Colorado while we were having a blizzard back home.  To be quite honest, last weekend looked more like the middle of January then it does the third week in April.   I snapped this picture in the morning before we had a chance to head to Eleva for the funeral.  Sort of depressing isn't it!  The good news is that we do need the moisture and these record April snows are just what we need to alleviate the drought conditions of last fall.  Never the less it's getting pretty frustrating.  I guess from one extreme to another, last year the apple trees were in full blossom, the ice had been gone off Mille Lacs for a month now to this, a solemn winter scene as the ice on Mille Lacs is still over 30 inches thick with 12 inches of snow on top.  It's suppose to be 70 this weekend and as I write, most of this snow is gone already.  It will be an interesting Minnesota Fishing Opener in 2 weeks.  I did call up to Brindley's Harbor, the resort we stay on at Leech Lake and Greg confirmed that the ice isn't even out of the harbor yet with 36 inches of ice on the bay in front of the resort.  I wanted to check to see if they'd even be open for our annual trip.  Having moved us to the new log cabin which is available year around, it's not a problem.  As for fishing, Team Walleye will just take it as it comes as whatever Mother Nature dishes out to us, it will become another story to remember with my friends on opener.



Lowrance Point 1



Time is running out to get the boat ready.  The cold weather has put on hold pretty much everything from getting it cleaned out to re-spooling line on the reels.  I decided to get a new external GPS receiver for my boat and got that hooked up this week.  Finally figuring out the where to mount it, I'm pretty impressed as it locked into every satellite it could receive as the boat was in my pole shed with a steel roof.  Normally I cannot get a very good reading inside the shed.  This should really enhance my tracking abilities in the boat as the built in GPS only updates once per second while the external receiver updates 10 times a second.  This might seem trivial however I do notice a difference between the performance of my old Garmin GPS and the one built into my HDS10 unit.  Last Saturday I had the chance to join my brothers and sister in taking my mom out for her 79th birthday.  She's looking pretty good for having put up with us all these years.  It did give me a chance to stop at Scheels and buy a new rod for opener.  They have a great guarantee, break it for whatever reason, bring it back and we'll give you a new one.  I guess you can't beat that!  Coupled with a nice Shimano CI4, it's very light and sensitive, perfect for opener...........if we can get out.

Networkin' with Dave (or Dave the IT Guy)

I have to admit that technology is really starting to wear me down!  My first cell phone was in 1990, what they called a bag phone.  It sat on the front floor of the car, with a rather large device stuck in the trunk and an antenna coupled through the back window.  Wow, a phone I could use in the car, just like at home, a simple 10 key number pad and a send button.  Fast forward to 2011, I have owned a Blackberry now for 2 years and trust me, I still haven't figured out how to really use it to it's greatest potential.  That will probably never happen.  Well, it's time for me to upgrade my depthfinder/gps on the back of my Ranger 620T.  Working with Bill, we have done some horse trading and I am finally ridding myself of the reliable Genetron for something a little more technical, a Lowrance HDS-10.  It came with Structure Scan/Side Imaging which can literally scan the bottom up to 500 feet either side of the boat.  Included is a down scan feature that more clearly identifies objects under the water, such as those sunken Spanish galleons in the middle of Mille Lacs.  Adding to the mix, Lowrance has a Sonic Hub made by Fusion, which is the same manufacturer of my current stereo system.  Along with my front depth finder, a HDS-5, they can all be magically hooked together via cables, software, and sweat to talk to each other.

So it goes like this........... The HDS 10 is the basic display and also serves as the main "server" in my new boat network.  The Structure Scan/side imaging module consist of a oblong shaped transducer that is feed into what appears to be an Ethernet Hub.  My HDS 5, in the front of the boat is connected to the hub via a 25 foot Ethernet cable.  From the Hub is another Ethernet cable that plugs into the HDS 10.  Now the Sonic Hub is really a NEMA2000 network device.  NEMA 2000 is a communications protocol and consists of a network tree of parallel connected devices that can communicate with the server (HDS10).  Because I have a factory glassed in, thru the hull transducer, I see that the boat had been pre wired with a NEMA 2000 based water temperature sending unit.  This makes sense as most water temperature sensing is done at the externally mounted transducer, so with a thru the hull transducer a separate temp sensor was installed.  So, I have this branch looking network assembly that has a cord to power the network, a temp sensor port, a Sonic hub port, and a cable going out to the HDS 10.  All of these cables crisscrossing my boat will allow me to switch displays on my front and back HDS units to track each other, I will be able to observe the structure scanning on both units simultaneously, as well control my stereo system via the depth finder screen.  This will allow me to change songs, channels, volume from both units, which is much better than kneeling down to adjust everything.  The unit comes with an Ipod dock and can be plugged into a Sirius Radio, which in turn can display the latest radar weather reports on the HDS10.  Uffda!

The real problem will be simply trying to learn every menu, option, configuration, setup and I am sure few thousand combinations of all you can do with the system. Just interpreting the Side Imaging displayed what it all means will be a challenge in itself. I had a tremendous amount of confidence in the Genetron as I could anchor in 20 feet of water, put a 1/8 ounce jig with a leech on, drop it off the back of the boat all while watching it fall to the bottom, move up and down, and get hit just like winter fishing with a FL20. I am sure it will take a bit of getting used to the new system and I only hope it is as good as what I am replacing. Here is a picture of what the display of the side scan looks like. Of course this technology has been the rave for a few years now, started by Bottom Line (now Humminbird), I can see it will take a lot of trips this year to finally figure how to interpret what the transducer is looking at, not that I am complaining . Sort of feels like a new episode of Sea Hunt!  This weekend has snow in the forecast for the Saturday morning, hopefully the last.  I have committed to spending both Saturday and Sunday taking a Motorcycle Riders Safety Course, a 16 hour classroom and riding skills class at a local motorcycle dealership.  I guess we are never too old to learn the right way to do things.  Next week is Easter then maybe a chance to get on the water and try my new network out, if I get it installed by then!

Biding My Time

In preparation for possibly participating in Wisconsin's fishing opener next weekend, I decided to take my boat out on Sunday afternoon, the better of the two days.  We got a nice rain on Friday/Saturday and although Sunday was somewhat windy, I found a small lake west of town that had a nice landing, making it easier for me to test my strength.  My Ranger has a 115 hp Suzuki Four Stroke outboard.  I am constantly amazed by these motors and their unbelievable ability to sit all winter with nothing more than Sea foam added to the gas, and start within one or two revolutions of the engine.  My previous 115 Susy did this and my new one came through the winter storage as though I had just shut the motor off 5 minutes ago.  One thing about the new boat is it doesn't idle as slow as the old boat, which consistently trolled down to 1.9 mph.  The new one is about 1/2 mph faster, which is not a big deal and may be related to the fact that the motor is still tight and needs a few more hours to loosen up more.  This also gave me a chance to test my new Lowrance HDS5 sonar/GPS for use with my front trolling motor with the built in transducer.   The GPS worked very well however the sonar took too long to lock onto the bottom and in a 3 foot weedy bottom, it did not even acquire. This was pretty frustrating and reading the manual did not offer much help.   Later that evening I posted the problem on Walleye Central's Electronics Forum and on Monday I had some great replies, including one from Lowrance's customer tech service.  Apparently there are setup selections you have to make in the main system's menu for your specific installation.  Changing to the suggested settings, I attempted to get a reading off my concrete floor and it worked great.  My 2010 maiden voyage was a success as I solved some issues that required some outside help.  I am ready to hit the big water.   Although casting for crappies yielded nothing admittedly I did not try too hard.

 The weather in Minneapolis continues to be about 2 1/2 weeks ahead of schedule.  The lilacs are coming into full bloom and my fruit trees have exploded with blossoms.  Luckily my good friend Bruce got his 4 honeybee hives in place on the back part of my land just at the perfect time.   With 5 acres of land, a large garden and a small orchard, the bees are a welcome addition.  I remember a few years back a neighbor (and not the most congenial) challenged me with a sense of displeasure "Dave, I understand you have bee hives on your property, I have to say that we have noticed a considerable increase in bees around our house".  Responding, I asked her if they were about 3/4 of an inch long, big and fat.  "Yes, that describes them perfectly, they are all over my flowers."  Without even flinching I stated that she really has a problem with bumble bees as my honeybees look almost like flies and she was obviously mistaken and misinformed .  Having just been outmaneuvered, she left without saying another word.  Most of the other neighbors find it fascinating and a side bonus is Bruce brings me enough honey to last for a whole year.  It tastes especially good knowing it came from my property and surrounding area.

The bees perform a very important function of pollinating all the fruits and vegetables throughout the growing season.  My yields on raspberries, apples, pears, cucumbers, and blueberries are second to none and I always have a bumper crop.  The middle picture is of a honey gold apple tree and the white blossoms are of a pear tree.   Feeling better I planted my potatoes and onions in the garden today.  This year I went with an interesting variety of potatos including Yukon Golds, Kennebec, Norland Red, All Blue (a blueish purple fleshed type), and Cal White.  Could make and interesting looking potato salad!  Along with the potatoes I put in onions.  Using plants instead of bulbs gets me larger and better keeping onions.  I know last year most of my onions averaged over 4 inched in diameter.   My garden center had some 8-10-42 ferilizer, which is a great for starter and root crops.  Time will tell. 

Hopefully I will have a great report from Wisconsin next week.