A Blast From the Past



That's what I'm calling an incident that occurred as I was returning to West Neck Marina this afternoon from Milldam Creek. I had been down there fishing since about 10 o'clock this morning.

It wasn't until I hit Marker No. 27 on the North Landing that all the traffic finally had cleared, so I moved on up to full throttle from about two-thirds. Simultaneously, though, the overheat alarm went off, and I was forced to shut down for about 25 minutes, waiting for the motor to cool.

I went through a stretch of the same problem with my Yamaha 115 on the old boat several years ago. My mechanic finally eliminated the problem by removing the outboard's thermostats, and I never had him replace them. The important thing was that I never had another overheat alarm while I owned that Skeeter SX-170.

The problem with my SX-190 today was that I had sucked up some of the green slime from the areas I fished. Both thermostats had more than their fair share. After cleaning them good, my mechanic put the thermostats back in and checked them for several minutes with no further indication of overheating. We agreed to leave 'em in unless the problem gets as bad as it was with the old boat. In that case, we'll likely remove 'em from this boat on a permanent basis, too.

Here's a shot of my best fish of the day, which tipped the scales at 3-7. I also had a 2-2 and a 1-0. Both bigger fish came out of Milldam, while the small one was caught in West Neck. It's somewhat of a miracle that I even got the 3-7 in the boat. I had another rod extending over the side with a spinnerbait attached, and as luck would have it, the fish got the line tangled in that spinnerbait. Fortunately, I didn't lose either the fish or the other rod, although I didn't figure my odds were very good of salvaging either one.

I might never have even cast for this fish, had I not seen him make a huge swirl in the water against the shoreline. As luck would have it, I saw the swirl at the same instant I was ready to make another cast, so I altered my target just a smidgen and let it fly. I was just letting the bait (NOT a soft plastic) rest on the bottom when, suddenly, I saw my line moving to the left and gathering speed. Then came that good feeling an angler always gets when you set the hook and feel that solid weight on the end of your line, then watch as he takes some drag. The battle didn't last long, but it nevertheless was oh so good and really made my day, because, up to that point, I hadn't put a single fish in the boat.

My buddy, Jim, was on the water again today, too, but like me, found fewer fish than yesterday. He ended the day with this bass, which weighed 1-6.

We neither one had a topwater bite this morning, and the fish were coming off wood again.

My trip to Milldam was the result of finding stained water in Blackwater, which is where I went this morning after spending some time at the Pungo Ferry Bridge. I didn't have any luck at either location.

It's a safe bet that Jim and I won't be returning to the water this weekend. I may spend a little time cleaning my boat up the way I like, 'cause I didn't have enough time to do it today, but we both plan to wait until sometime next week for another fishing trip--hopefully before the rain I saw in this evening's weather forecast arrives.