Fishing With Face

Thanks Face! I declare you the Wizard of Fishing.

Welcome! But that title's already been usurped. Plan to win it back this year, starting in about a week =)


Winterized the boat. Took 2 days, though a solid chunk of that was building the tools I needed and clearing the gd stinkbugs, which are out of control again. Gave it a hard wash to get all the horses#$% off it so it didn't stain, scrubbed the interior of slime and sweat so it don't mold, bleached the livewells, drained the hull, greased the jack, scrubbed the trailer, and unloaded a ton of gear so it don't hold moisture and rot. Oil change was a dream save for the monkey that wrenched the filter on. Has any one of you DIY and just have it come off? Or are you crushing and tearing the s#$% out of 'em too? Fingertips, you fools.

Rigged up a bit of kit to make sure the motor don't crack and split. Just snagged a tote and harvested a bulkhead connection out of an old Coleman cooler. Torched a socket and pressed it through the tote for a clean hole, then installed the bulk connect. Cut the ends off an old hose and slid those over a bit of conduit and clamped it, there's a 4' hose with male + female ends. One end to tote, one end to rabbit ears. Fill tote with water and let it run. Once motor heats up and thermostat opens, kill water, wait for it to almost be gone, then fill tote with antifreeze. Wait until everything starts pissing green and kill it. Only cost whatever a gallon of Prestone costs. Pull the plugs, squirt in a bit of 2 stroke, put boat in gear, turn prop by hand to coat the cylinders, put plugs back in. Boom. Done.

All gear out and stored, all fabrics washed, all batteries in the basement. 1yr down. 30 to go.

Oh! And I put $20 in the first day. Week later put in another $20 cuz wasn't sure how far I'd be going. 5 trips later I dumped in $40 of Rec90. And 7 trips later I winterized it. That's $80 for 14 trips and 2/5ths tank remaining. Told ya, petro =) And shout out to Yamaha. Not only was everything disturbingly accessible, there's not even a fleck of dust anywhere under the hood. I don't even know how it breathes, cuz it doesn't appear atmosphere can get in there...

And next is pond, so a memory lane for me...

I remember being ~12 and begging Pops to let me have the pool (24' above ground) so I could turn it into a panfish pond lol. "We're not even using it!" lol. I always said I was gonna have one, "even if I had to dig it myself." And to think, I had to fight Pops to even get Garden Pond v1.0...



Lol, I was so proud of the giant goldfish this produced. So much hair algae I couldn't even see them, tossed em as feeders. 6 months of no attention, not even a pump, later, and fantails and comets big as my hand.

Then MegaPond v1.0... remember the waterfall? Lol, y'all said it would rot in a year and it rotted in 6 months lol. Leaked like a sieve, too, but man was I happy...



Until spring, when my lack of pumping and leaking falls just left an ugly mess requiring a full week's worth of labor to rectify...



But now I finally got it (I think). Last month's fix has been it; the only water I've lost has been to evap or overflow. And even that overflow got fixed, bringing the level up to record highs. My filters work almost too good, and the only problem I have with my homemade contraption is the pump gets vapor lock every 40days or so. Not sure if that's a temporary issue or because the very top is not submerged, but it just happens sporadically. Knowing it happened is simple - the current stops. And with the fix literally being "turn it off and on again" with 100% success rate, I don't really consider it a problem.

I haven't lost a fish in many months, not even baitfish (other than predation). Both pike, both perch, and at least the white bass fuzzed up with the last big water change, but every single one kicked it. I haven't been able to see any of them much with my exploding plants, but the last I saw one of the pike he was completely clear and sported a bulging gut. Clean and hungry, can't ask for anything more, and I am very happy how this all is going so far. I even managed to keep hair algae completely at bay this year; it never developed past a few wispy strands around the buried logs and roots of my plants. In all my only problems seems to be too much success, as all of my plants completely exploded this year and took the water over...



And this is a "pruned" pic. Those hyacinth previously had everything but the cricks. And that in the foreground left is the result of one cherry tomato falling in the garden. 2 bitty plants sprouted from it, right in my fish graveyard. Turns out the old ways still work =)

Not much to do with this. Chop the veg, pump out the deep end sludge and drop the water a few hundred gallons, then hope. I just can't decide whether to run the pump all year and risk the pump, or store it and risk the fish ><

Quote: Face

then fill tote with antifreeze. Wait until everything starts pissing green and kill it.

I hope that works for you. I've seen the green seize other kinds of pumps. You talk with anyone else ever put green in there before? I've run pink in places before, but green creeps me after locking a few things up.

Quote: petroglyph

I hope that works for you. I've seen the green seize other kinds of pumps. You talk with anyone else ever put green in there before? I've run pink in places before, but green creeps me after locking a few things up.

Not a word. Can't imagine there would be; it's only a flush out to ensure the water's gone. Only word was to use propyl since I'd be dumping it everywhere. Hell, I even wrapped lips to blow/ suck it all out lol

I'll take a crusty pump over a cracked block 10 times out of 10

Man, this year's becoming tough to let go...



It was probably one of the worst years of fishing, as boat problems caused a late start and we never really found the flow. But while success was spotty and hard to find, the act has been some of the greatest I've had. Perhaps due to growth; the kid's no longer a complete anchor. The last several times I've taken him (often now with a drop off at the crick for him to fish alone) he's got everything he needs already packed up and ready to go. It's made for a more enjoyable trip. A "success", even if the water's not been cooperating, ya know? Growth. Happy parent =)

But now it's all but over. Noticing some 40+ minnows still alive in my home pond, I figured the pond would be pretty much closed. And it is. Everything's slowing down and shutting up, metabolism's falling, and the warm water fish are going dormant. The whump of a bullfrog has been replaced by the boom of quail hunters, the crack of a beaver tail replaced by the crack of rimfire. The water's dying down and the woods are filling up with small game hunters and guys sighting their rifles for the post rut. And having just returned from a cig break, my neighbor says the lake is shutting down, too. Just 4 perch this morning, when he usually comes back with a cooler full. It kinda hurts. It needs to be April right now, not the beginning of the Long Night ><

I barely wet a line. DEC came in with beaver remediation 5yrs too late and really f#$%ed an already f#$%ed watershed.. Dunno why but they stopped their bi-yearly busting of the sluice clog, instead letting it go completely to seed. I actually fished from it yesterday, the overgrowth good enough to hold 270lbs of man and dog with barely a squish. Sluice overrun, they had to bang down part of the dyke, which dropped the water some 2 whole feet and left all the weeds that just reached the surface to mat across the entire thing. I must've went a day or two after they busted it, as the track marks were still very sharp and fresh, and returning not 5 days later the damn pests had the dyke cut packed full again. With fishing a loss, I spent a good 45 min busting it up, sending a deluge into the woods and down the canyon.

Nothing else to do I left the kids to their desires. Cut the dog loose, kid was fine trying for pumpkins and golden shiners, so in a copse of pines upon a bed of needles, I just went to sleep.

When this becomes every day, I will know I have made it...

Quote: Face

I barely wet a line. DEC came in with beaver remediation 5yrs too late and really f#$%ed an already f#$%ed watershed.. Dunno why but they stopped their bi-yearly busting of the sluice clog, instead letting it go completely to seed.

Can someone translate that sentence into English for me?

A sluice pipe lets the pond drain before it crests the dyke and destroys it. Beavers pack it full of mud and sticks because they're beavers. DEC comes regularly to clear that out, so we don't lose the dyke. They stopped coming, so the 24" pipe (thanks to beavers) is now a 35sq/ft patch of ground covered in grass and trees so thick me and my dog can stand on it.

Quote: Face

A sluice pipe lets the pond drain before it crests the dyke and destroys it. Beavers pack it full of mud and sticks because they're beavers. DEC comes regularly to clear that out, so we don't lose the dyke. They stopped coming, so the 24" pipe (thanks to beavers) is now a 35sq/ft patch of ground covered in grass and trees so thick me and my dog can stand on it.

DEC? Department of Environmental Concerns?

Conservation*

Sorry, I forget each state calls them something different. The wood police. Forest 5-0. Constabulary of the cricks. Think many states call them "DNR"? (Dept of natural resources?). The state police that patrol the undeveloped, in other words.