Upgraded my fish finder to a Garmin UHD 64CV. Last one stopped powering up almost two months ago, been going blind and that only worked for a little bit. Wired up the new one and then realized that it isn't compatible with Navionics. which was a bummer. I thought the ad mentioned it. The one that does use Navionics is another $400 on top so it's not like I can afford that. This one's a nice upgrade from my last. Doubled the screen size, the GPS is a contour map and not just the White Void, and some interesting options that I haven't bothered to dive into yet. But I'm gonna have to keep using my phone for the quality relief maps, which is a bit of a pain.
Also changed out my aluminum prop for a stainless steel. Hoped for a speed bump. Hard to tell in the chop today but was running 12-13mph all day no problem which is great for the Mosquito. On a glassy day maybe I can see some real top end gains.
Goal for the day was do a rundown and make sure all that stuff is up to snuff, and check out the bass bite on the horseshoe.
Launched about 0615, out of the harbor and into 1' chop for about 7 miles. 5-8mph wind already, was supposed to be calm in the morning...
Got to my first stone and there were definitely fish up and down the water column, water was about 69º. They didn't want flukes, slow pitch, swimbaits, or irons. Moved to the next. Same deal. I heard it's been more consistent in the afternoon though it seemed like most of the current would be in the morning. Halfway to my third spot and my outboard sputters at WOT, back it off and save it at idle. Can't do anything other than idle or outboard dies.....nothing appearing to clog the cooling intake, fuel pressure seems fine. Clueless. And bummed. Only rational thing to do at this point would be bounce ball all the way back to the harbor, troubleshooting whenever I got a fresh idea, but for naught.
Then after almost 2 hours of idling and not catching halibut, I'm half a mile outside the harbor. I decide to film the outboard so I can show my mechanic the issue. Mechanical issues tend to disappear before my eyes about 2/3 times when I video them. I'm not sure if I should take this as a magical gift of mine or the tech gods playing games with my ignorance. I pop the cowling and start pointing at stuff and then give it some gas and bam it's fine! I'm relieved, but also WTF, that really took a sh!t on my plans for nothing. Does the carb just need some extra air with the cowling off? Because that is the only possible explanation for how that fixed itself.
Did some laps outside of the harbor to see if it would f@ck up again and it seemed to be performing great. Decided to keep fishing. Didn't go back to the horseshoe, went toward the HB flats. I wanted to meter the water in my AO that I was killing the bass for the first half of the year, but turned real scratchy lately. I pulled up on the first spot and saw a few marks but not that much. The rest of the area was almost completely void of life. MY PETS! They're gone!!! Very sad. Guess I'll wait for a water temp shift before I check on them again.
Headed to Izor's as I heard it was going off like the horseshoe. It was now noon, well past the tide but maybe the afternoon wind, which was starting to really kick, would turn on the fish. Gave it about an hour, saw lots of marks, but only got a couple short nips. I looked up and realized all the private boaters were gone and only a couple cattle boats remained. Probably smart choice on their part. so I headed to the barn to lick my wounds.
I feel like a big boy now, having a screen wider than it is tall! Some decent marks around Izor's.
Popped off the carb and I'm soaking it in cleaner now, but it doesn't look bad at all. I'll stay off the pelagics for a couple trips.
The videos addressing and magically fixing the outboard, pardon my language:
https://imgur.com/szvDqYDhttps://imgur.com/fnQHRGrI think I'll give it another go on Monday.
