First fishing trip last night at Pt Defiance. no fish, but good time anyway...

finally got the Ride all decked out the way i want it and hit the water last night.  was going to launch out at Brown's Point but it would have been too much of a PITA without a cart (gotta remedy that asap) so i headed to Owen's Beach instead.  got on the water later than i wanted, just before 7pm.  found out that my transducer install was unsuccessful.  dang it.  first there was no reading, then it read about 6 feet the rest of the time.  back to the drawing board on that.  the GPS worked fine though, and so did the rest of the gear.  

i paddled out to the point, inline with all the other trollers since i didn't know what depth i was at, so i just followed the crowd.  i had between 80 and 120' of line out according to the line counter on the reel.  i tried to keep the line at about 45° which would give me a depth of roughly 56-84'.  i was using an 8oz banana weight with 3 feet of line to a chartreuse UV 6" Konezone flasher rigged to the outside hole to act like a dodger too with another 3 feet of line to a UV B2 squid&spin'n'glow with herring smelly jelly on it.  never got a hit but neither did the other 20 or so boats out there.  i didn't experiment with lures as i was more out to get things figured out and learn the ropes.  

the rudder mount that Austin Kayak installed failed and one of the two fasteners broke or came out and the rudder was useless near the end of the trip.  it was a bit annoying but no biggy though.  looks like a simple fix.

weather and water conditions were perfect.   the incoming tide made the trip back a bit more of a workout to be sure.  people on the beach were curious and i talked to a few folks about it.  the other boaters were nice and i did my best to stay out of their way.  a few curious looks and "how ya doin'"s.  one even slowed down on his run back when he got near me so as not to send too big a wake my way.  that was nice of him.

still lots to learn and figure out but that's half the fun right?

i don't have a waterproof digicam yet but got a couple mediocre pics with the cell phone cam.





hopefully i'll get the rudder mount and 'ducer squared away in the next couple days and get back out on the water next week.  

Bobby

Congrats on the baptism trip. 

Dude, tee-shirt and shorts.  You were dressed for the air temp.

thanks! and yes i was.  it was a calculated risk.  i was within swimable-before-hypothermia distance from shore the whole time and there were power boats galore around me.  i grew up swimming for an hour at a time in the sound.  shivering like mad afterward but still alive.  maybe i was tougher in my youth.  or dumber. 

anywho, got the rudder fixed.  the mounting screws weren't tightened during installation.  even with lock washers one was all the way out and the other was barely finger tight.  took them both out, added loctite and reinstalled.  no sweat.  just gotta remount the xducer and i'm back on the water. hopefully this sunday.

Bobby