After 6 months of my Mercury 6hp being in the shop for lack of parts, I bought a 4hp Yamaha a few weeks ago to just finall get out on the Mosquito. Then I f@cked up my car key so I lost a weather window. Then I remembered that I needed to redo my CV number plate, so that delayed me another weather window. Finally got everything to come together today and I wasn't going to miss out.
Alongside my motor luck, I have been on a roll lately with the skunks. Doesn't matter what I target, I can't catch sh!t. Yesterday I took my first Steez refurbished rod from the new job out for some casting practice and no bites. Two other spotty trips in the last week got me a couple very aggressive bites where I saw the spotties come out and grab it but didn't connect. I haven't caught anything since January 23, which means I haven't caught anything since I moved from LA County to the OC. So as of yesterday, 12 straight trips with no fish.
Anywho, I showed up at Huntington Harbor at 0700 this morning. Took my time inflating and organizing the boat as I had a couple new tools, and I was refreshing my memory on how I liked things done.
So 30 minutes later, I put it in the water. I put together a new fuel line for the Yamaha, since the Mercury has a weird thing about it where the fuel line stays attached to the outboard. Primer bulb not priming....troubleshoot and remember that the primer bulb's arrow goes toward the engine. Okay, turn that around! Phew!
Nope!
Still not priming. Sigh....google it while I'm in my boat at the launch ramp. Took a minute to understand, but I learned a trick to take the fuel line off at the engine side, put my thumb over the end of the line, squeeze the bulb, release my finger, squeeze again, reapply finger, so on. Gas comes flying out. Phew! Jam it on the outboard. Let's go!
Nope!
Now what? At this point I'm clueless and becoming demoralized. Google more things. Stare at it. Still clueless. I'm 20 minutes into troubleshooting this outboard and a guy walking his dog who's been watching walks up and asks what's going on with it, and starts helping me troubleshoot. Quickly he sees that the release clip for the kill switch isn't there. Oi! I flashed back to how during the sale, the mechanic just shoved a wrench under the kill switch button, and I didn't think to find a new clip! Thankfully I have a small assortment of caribiners in my boat's MaGyver pack and one fit perfectly underneath. We solved it!
Nope!
Eventually he points out that the gas filter isn't filling up. That leads me to believe that it's switched over to the internal fuel tank instead of the external line. He finds the switch on the underside. Flips it. It kicks...It starts!!!!!!! Holy hell what a mess that was. Carl was my angel today.
Now the yammy is purring and I'm ready to roll. Then the boys from behind the counter at Charkbait pull up in a DIY pilothouse caravelle and I compliment them on it and reintroduced myself. We traded engine problem stories of the morning and then they told me they found some biting turd rollers right outside the harbor, hanging below bait balls. I thanked them for the tip and shoved off.
Perused the area they mentioned for a solid 20 minutes, but just couldn't find anything other than some stray marks. Some bait popping here and there, but no bait balls and bass on the meter. After a solid look and some fan casting, I made my way to Izor's.
My dumb carabiner release clip:
New rod holder. Transom holders were getting in the way, and the PVC extensions on my milk crate weren't convenient either. I don't know why I didn't think of a Scotty holder in one of the benches earlier. Might add a whole workstation to this bench but we'll see.
Got to Izor's and didn't take long to find some marks. Dropped a tandem 5" swimbait rig down and jigged, then decided to also drop some dropper loop squid strips and stick it in the holder. Squid strips started getting torn up, and I really needed to get the monkey off my back, so I started to focus more on the strips. Marks were coming and going, so I plotted around looking for some consistency. Ended up back in the same area and found larger schools. Seemed like whitefish the way they were schooling and the aggressive pecks, but eventually I got bit on the drop and pulled out my long awaited, bonafide, first fish in the OC since moving to the OC! Ending a skunk streak on the 13th trip!
A short checker! Honestly my first calico in a long time, though.
Monkey off my back. The bites dwindled quickly after as the tide shifted. As I was metering around, a big lone dolphin came cruising through and I got distracted by getting it to swim alongside me for a few minutes. Tried to figure the species out and I think it was a white sided dolphin. I'm sure I've seen them before but this one struck me as odd being alone, and the dorsal fin seemed more pronounced. Had to be 8'. Big, old, wise melonhead.
And a mystery bird (what is it? Looks petrel-y but not a shearwater) that was hanging out surprisingly close to me, like swimming right up to my outboard. Certainly not as aggressive as the shearwaters Tom and Steve dealt with today, but surely it must have been in their little bird astrology section of their little bird morning paper to be more daring today.
With the tide turning, I decided I was over this pithy bass bite. There were 5 other boats in the area and I never saw anyone else hook up. Decided to check out the beach. When I arrived I noticed tons of cormorants over a mile stretch, so I put a 6oz torpedo 3' in front of a 5" sexy smelt swimbait and trolled for about a mile before I felt like the mid-afternoon slow troll was gonna put me to sleep.
Got back to the ramp and talked with another boater who got towed in for electrical failure. Then saw another getting towed in. Strange commonalities today between boat problems and the petrel family asserting themselves. One dink calico but it was great to be out on the boat again, and great weather. I was almost hoping to stay out long enough for some good chop to shake off my rust with mediocre conditions but the wind just didn't pick up through 2pm.
And, of course, here's news. As I was mentally prepping yesterday to head out for the first time with the Yamaha outboard, I got the call from the mechanic for the Mercury.
"Hey just wanted to check in, we'll have it done by Tuesday at the latest!"
Of course!
