Well, I tried. Let me remind you, I'm Mr Idiot (in oh so many ways). I get on the water, first time with the new electronics, and I can't figure out how to turn the transducers on. Get on the radio, ask around, some smug types told me not to worry about it, just go home. Very welcoming, everyone is a newbie at some point. I'll take my licks and pay my dues. Some guy asked what electronics, Garmin 8610, he says I have that one, go to 68 and I'll get you sorted. And he did.
Then I'm looking for my buddy, he wasn't where I thought he was, got coords from him and headed out.
Get there and want to start trolling for fish, my *brand new* high performance electric downrigger from Scotty isn't counting the feet as the line goes out. It powers up fine, it retrieves fine, just doesn't tell me how deep I am. OK, so my kid and I will stack on the other downrigger. Except he is sea sick (took the meds, they didn't work, I do the night before and in the morning, works great for me) so he doesn't want to fish. OK, I'll fish, let me put this fancy new fly by wire Yamaha 250 in troll mode. OK doke, 600RPM, that should be slow enough. No such luck, the boat is moving 3.5mph and my line is almost horizontal.
Dag nabbit, I am not going home with the skunk on after 3 months of lock down. Put some year old frozen squid on (the bait shop was closed when we got there) so squid is all I had. Now I'm jigging in 300 feet of water. My buddy got on the radio and said "you are not going to have any fun jigging at 300 feet". You know what, he's right.
So I motor in and try and find some rocks at 200 feet. All I found was sand and I have only caught 1 halibut in my life and it was by accident, I was targeting rockies and drifted over some sand.
At this point, I've tortured my kid enough and we headed in. We did manage to launch and dock without screwing up the gelcoat so some success? And got home (see my trailer questions thread) with the boat on the trailer. Some how.
So I've learned a bunch
- I need a kicker or I need to figure out the troll mode better. Does anyone know how slow that Yamaha will go? I have a 3 blade prop that the dealer picked out. I do not want to go to a slower prop, in fact, I'm considering a 4 blade prop because some youtuber compared them and he got better MPG with the 4 blade. I think he drives a Parker.
For kicker, I'm looking at Yamaha's 6HP. All I need is for it to move me at 3MPH or slower. I usually troll at about 2mph.
- I need to learn how to look at google maps in satellite mode and find the rocks. I also need to pick Alan Tani's brain and my other buddies' brain about locations.
- I need to spend some time learning my electronics. Barry programmed my MMSI into his radio and tried to do a DSC that was supposed to jump us both to channel 70 and it didn't, left us on the main channel and everyone started yelling at us again. Fun times.
- I need to find a quiet, no audience, harbor and practicing docking. Launching is easy even by myself but docking is hard in that delicate gelcoated boat. I was so spoiled by the Triumph, docking? Hold my beer, let me just ram the boat against the dock and tie off. Not so much with gelcoat, actually requires some skill. Have I mentioned I'm Mr Idiot? See, I told ya!
There is probably more but that's some homework for me. Boat is back to "Driveway Slayer".