Feb. 18, 2007
After 32 years of tournament fishing you’d think I‘d have experienced everything that could possibly go wrong. We’ve all experienced trouble on the trail, but let me tell you about my latest nightmare! After the U.S. Open this past fall, Tom Swankier drove up to Lake Mead with his truck and my wife Darlene drove my truck from home. What a great wife, she’s always so supportive and willing to help. The next morning Tom and I left early for the Columbia River for the upcoming FLW Series event. It took 16 hours to reach the Columbia from Las Vegas and pretty close to the national debt was charged to my credit card for gas!
Pre-fishing day one was great; we found a good area of smallmouth. The next day we went back to check on one of those areas, particularly “Casey’s Pond”. A long ridge came out over a mile off the area I was fishing, about seven feet. As I turned the corner on the long point I hit bottom and destroyed my prop. The river had dropped seven feet overnight. The next day I hit another rock. Two props down, one to go!
The first day of the tournament I went to my spot, stayed there all day and caught a nice limit and my co-angler had three nice fish. With about an hour and a half left I decided to go to another area and help him get his limit. I attempted to start the engine – nothing. I checked everything. I called my marine dealer and still could not get it started. A boat stopped and loaned me his jumper cables. Nothing. The problem with the cable was the wire gauge was too small. You need regular car jumper cables.
Trying not to panic, I disconnected the crank battery and hooked it to my trolling motor battery. Nothing. By this time I was fit to be tied. Another boater came by and I asked him to come back and get me at five minutes to 4:00 p.m. We then tried the trolling motor in an attempt to get to the marker buoy and tie up there. I never made it the marker buoy.
The other boat did show up and I had two choices: lose my weight or leave my boat in the middle of the river. So I dropped anchor and we jumped into his boat (according to FLW rules). My boat partner and I had to weigh in together. This was probably the dumbest thing I did, leaving my boat floating down the Columbia River.
We made it to weigh in but we were late and therefore lost some weight. The local Ranger dealer agreed to take me back to my boat which was about 30 miles downriver. As we were approaching the area where I remembered dropping anchor, I saw no boat! A sick feeling in my gut told me that my boat was gone. So many things went through my mind. We kept heading downriver for a few more miles and I saw an outline of what I hoped was my boat.. As we got closer, there she was, just as I’d left her. Big sigh of relief! The Ranger dealer towed me back to the nearest launch ramp and Tom showed up with my trailer – by now it was about 8:00 p.m. I still needed to find a Mercury guy to figure out what was wrong with the motor. They checked everything and it turned out it was the battery. When we got back to the motel I found out the breakers had gone out and I didn’t get a full charge the previous evening. Problem solved!
I called my partner for the next day to let him know we had a boat. But the nightmare didn’t stop there. The next morning I awoke to find a still uncharged battery so I called my co-angler and explained we needed to take his boat. Well, because I told him the night before that we’d be taking my boat, he hadn’t charged his batteries. To make a long story short, we had power on day two for about two hours, but I got him a limit and he was in the money on the second day.
I used my boat on day three. My co-angler was in the top 10 and I told him I would get him his limit. We went back to my spot and had a good last day. He finished in the top 10. After talking to many dealers and my rigger, one of the things I learned from this experience is that even with the new boats and all their electronics and push buttons, you cannot count on a standard heavy duty battery.
If you stay in one spot for more than five hours running your live wells and your electronics without starting your engine, you’re going to run your batteries down. Same as if you’re fishing night tournaments and you sit on one spot all night, you’re going to run your battery down. Make sure you have a good set of heavy duty jumper cables. I know there are other ways to fix this problem, and there’s definitely something to be learned from this experience. What a great soap opera! But if this helps someone from making the same error, then so be it.
We will be coming out with an update chip soon for your new units, X-28, etc., to fix problems dealing with shallow water. Now I’m going to take some Tylenol and work on my reels!