25 July:Hero to Zero in 24 Hours - Boat For Sale

[Tawn]

First off thanks guys for the concern and kind words about my hand. It's about 95% healed and doing well.


I wish my fishing report was as good as the hand but it didn't work out that way. It went from everything going perfectly Wednesday with John & Marty to everything going wrong yesterday.

I took they day off to get my boat cleaned up and put back together. Between fishing on the Lucky Strike 3-4 times a week, a busted trim tab, an epic bottom paint failure and then the deal with my hand, my boat hasn't been in the water since May.

I started with reinstalling the electronics; a Lowrance HDS-8 and a HDS-10.

The regular fishfinder function looks like crap, and that's an insult to crap! It's horrible...it looks like a bunch of noise and clutter on the screen and about every second or third time I drop the anchor the screen goes nuts and says I'm in 1' of water. To restore the functionality I have to reset it!

I reset it to the default setting without any improvement. Toyed with sensitivity, ping speed, surface clutter and just about every other variable and only managed a marginal improvement.

The only thing that has changed is I had BOE remove some regular ablative bottom paint another shop managed to slather all over the through-hull last fall and repaint it with the special transducer paint and update the software.

I don't believe it's the paint because they also painted the side scan transducer and it seems to be working normally.

I'm going to sit down and re-read the owners manual, but I have a bad feeling the transducer face was slightly damaged when they had to remove the regular ablative bottom paint.

Additionally, the Lowrance won't go to "calibrate" when trying to enter the fuel tank size under the vessel set up menu. I want to use the electronic fuel gauge function but I guess I'm stuck with using a note pad to keep track of engine hours so I know when I need to refuel.

Anyhow, decided screw working on the boat, let's go LLing. Rounded up four friends and left at around 2pm. Based on what I saw on the Patent Pending on Wednesday with Marty and John and from what I was hearing from the Happy Harbor guys, I figured we wouldn't have an issue getting our 10 fish quick.

I stopped at the fuel dock on the way out, got to shooting the sh!t with some guys and ended up pulling away without paying for $240 worth of gas. I didn't realize it till I was coming out of the creek and to avoid turning around, I called Dawn and promised her I would stop in today and pay up. Not the way I was hoping to start the trip.

Found our spot on Holland Point pretty quick. They seemed to favor the red fish bites over bloodworms. In that wind, the anchor drug a little and we ended up on a mixed pick of perfect sized LLing spot and 10"-12 Perch. Being so confident we would wack the rockfish, I told my friends to throw the big perch back.

After we had about 50 spot we headed across to where John, Marty and I had nailed them the day before (at the same time of day none the less) and where all the Deale boats had said they found their fish that morning.

Drove up and down that edge no less than three times looking between 16 and 28 feet without seeing a decent set of marks on the barely readable meter.

By 5:30-6:00 I was getting a little desperate. We finally tried working on some marks I wouldn't normally fool with and came up with a big old zero.

Wind was out of the Northeast at every bit of 15Kts against an strong incoming tide. The boat wanted to set funny and the baits were being swept up even with 1/2 oz of weight. Looked around for my 1oz weights and realized they weren't doing me much good laying in the backseat of my truck!

Finally decided around 6:40 to accept defeat and headed in.

I get up this morning and look at my phone and there on Facebook is Greg with a limit of big fish he caught up North....perfect....just the way I wanted to start my day! BTW, Greg, you're now dead to me...LOL!

I've decided tomorrow I'm going to list my boat and all my fishing gear for sale and take that money and invest it in a lawn mower racing team.....that's the only thing I can think of that is stupider than fishing!

All kidding aside, I guess I needed a little lesson in humility. Tomorrow I'm going down to try and figure out the meter issue. I haven't a clue as to how the anchor has anything to do with the FF going crazy. No wiring has been monkeyed with so I don't buy that it's electronic interference but I'll be damned if I know why the windlass is affecting the meter...the sidescan isn't affected, just the old fashioned fishfinder function....I'm open to any ideas you guys may have. Sunday I'm working for Kenny MacEwen on the Janet M...going to make the fish pay for this humiliation!

[Skip]

Just when you think you have fish figured out .............................


Feel your pain - some times fish mess with your head.

From what I hear - the newer fish finders can be tricky to set up. You might want to put boat batteries on charge - then see if it works better.

Guessing -just a guess - the windlass draws amps from a low battery - fish finder " starves " for proper voltage and goes crazy.

If that is not trouble - my dad always had me check / clean the ground wires. 90% of time - this fixes 12 volt troubles.

[Chessie27]

Ah Ha!! So you are human!!! Good to know you can't catch them EVERY time I don't know nothing about electronics except how to turn on and off but sounds like Skip might be on to something, particularly if the boat has been sitting for that long, the batteries might be weak. I would start with a charger. Good luck!

[5th Tuition]

Tawn, I went to the BOE lowrance/simrad seminar and the units ARE sensitive to voltage. Additionally, I hardly use my regular FF anymore. The downscan shows a lot less clutter.

Today we (Patent Pending) had another great charter. We went into EB just above #2 and whacked them. Anyone who wasn't on the water today, missed a beautiful summer fishing day

Back out on a charter Sunday.

5th(Marty)

[Tawn]

Skip & Marty,
I believe you may have hit the nail on the head regarding the EZ Anchor Puller affecting the meter.

That windlass uses a ton of juice and if I remember correctly it only affected the meter early in the trip Thursday.

After we ran the boat for awhile (and charged the batteries) the puller stopped blanking out the meter.

The funny thing is, it only affected the fish finder. The chartplotter and side scan functions were unaffected when operating the windlass.

I'm going to throw the charger on it and try and figure out what is causing all the static and interference on the fish finder. If it is a damaged through-hull, I'm just going to suck it up and rely on the Down Scan function for the rest of the year. I'm not about to pull it back out and lose another 2-3 weeks of the summer getting a transducer changed out!

Thanks,
Tawn

[B-Faithful]

Tawn.. You need a bad day now and then so you know its fishing. You have been on the fish all year.

[drichitt]

Fishing in the upper bay has been stupid good. We all feel like the best fisherman out there Capt Chris Dollar indicated in one of his recent fishing reports that he cannot remember a time when the fishing in the upper bay was ever this good; at least since 1990. There are acres and acres of fish to choose from. I have been following your story and glad to hear your recovery is coming along well. Good luck with your continued healing and electronics issue. If your electronics problems get totally frustrating, Marty has a guy who is mobile (Craig White of Chesapeake Installers) and, from what I hear, he is a wizard and reasonably priced. I intend to use him next time I have an issue.....Don