Editor's Log
Electronic Greetings from Yamamoto Central!
November 18th, 2008
Who Cares What it Costs?
An amusing side benefit of fishing with clients every day are the little surprises they leave for you, sort of like cute little time bombs, merrily ticking away and just waiting for the chance to catch you napping. For that exact reason about once a month I found it was a good idea to clean the grass clippings…no, how silly, I mean line clippings out of the innards of my various pumps.
Pumps, bilge or otherwise (don’t ask me how mono clippings and all that other crap make their way into livewell pumps), aren’t really being all they can be when they’re wrapped up with monofilament clippings. With apologies to my buddies in the Army, mono-laden pumps are sort of like an “army of none”, a particularly disheartening discovery to make when a big storm with attendant waves stands between you and the best looking chunk of cement on the planet, the launch ramp.
Of course by big storm I’m referring to the little afternoon disturbances that so often await the unwary in the Boulder and Virgin Basins there at Lake Mead, or in Padre and Wahweap Bays on Lake Powell – nothing like closely stacked and breaking eight, or even ten-footers to both get your attention and place a max demand on the bilge pumps, and don’t even tell me you only have one.
Believe me #6 - I know there are more fearsome boating conditions out there than I encountered and I welcome you to send me your sea stories which I am sure will prove to be most entertaining. However, be warned that I feel no compunction whatsoever when it comes to lying in order to assure that my waves were taller than yours, my winds more fierce in nature, and the woman more beautiful that awaited my return to home port.
But enough of that for now; back to cleaning the pumps. The last boats I had long-term relationships with were fine craft, but below decks they were a madhouse. That area was packed so full of pumps, plumbing, transducers, wires and valves that you couldn’t have driven a flax seed in there with a sledge hammer, much less expected a fat man to contort himself sufficiently to actually access the pumps.
Believe me #7 – there’s nothing worse than cleaning the bilge on a bassboat. Packing wheel bearings is more fun if you ask me.
Here’s where the old age and treachery come into play. You may not be aware of the fact that in return for a brief afternoon fishing trip most of the kids in your neighborhood will stand on their heads until the cows come home, just to be sure that not even a single speck of monofilament lurks therein to threaten your pumps and systems. Who cares what it costs…bribery is alive and well, it works, and I never again had to stand on my head again.
Believe me #8 – for best results and fewer arrests it’s usually a good idea to notify the parents shortly before you haul their kids off to the lake to pay your bilge cleaning debt.
There’s one other monofilament cleanup chore I performed more regularly than monthly (refer back to my earlier remarks about the little surprises your clients will leave for you to discover later). That chore was cleaning the monofilament out from under the propeller’s thrust washer – that’s the thingie that slips on the outboard’s prop shaft just before the propeller goes on. Mono wrapped in that area will do the following: Quickly make its way into the rear seal on the prop shaft. Destroy that seal’s sealing qualities. Invite a large quantity of lake water to invade the inner workings of your lower unit. Make you look like a big dummy when your marine mechanic is lecturing you about maintenance as he digs out a wad of mono and replaces gears and bearings in your freshly trashed lower unit.
Believe me #9 – if when re-spooling all the guide rods you discover one that’s extremely low on line or even empty, go ahead and get your block of wood and prop wrench out – you will find your missing mono hiding just forward of the prop’s thrust washer.
And by the way, monofilament fishing line isn’t the only culprit awaiting the opportunity to attack your rear prop shaft seal. At warp speeds even a small piece of floating polypropylene ski rope will wrap around the prop, advance to the prop shaft, cut the prop shaft seal, migrate forward on the shaft, completely plug the water pump impeller and have the high temp/low water pressure buzzer and bells going off faster than you would believe.
Further, when this little scenario plays out on your way back to the barn on the next-to-last afternoon of pre-fish for a BASS Invitational…well, just let me say that you’ll be missing out on two things – supper that night and the last day of pre-fish.
Spend a little time performing preventative tasks and your fishing time will be more enjoyable and far less stressful, believe me.
Good fishin’
Jerry Puckett