Anyone pulling cranks at Patoka lake?

[raporter]

Hit the lake twice this week. Best results was trolling jigs 1 to 1.2 MPH. Nibbles greatly enhanced the catch.

[Moveon]

Hit the lake twice this week. Best results was trolling jigs 1 to 1.2 MPH. Nibbles greatly enhanced the catch.

I've not been up to Patoka much this year, but sure wish that I would get motivated to get myself up there. I'm getting reports from Larry that he's having a hard time finding the big crappie after being off the lake for three months. He went back to work for a few months after retiring.

Are you catching the crappie deep still? We normally catch them off deep brush piles but Larry said he was not finding the fish in the deep brush piles this summer for some reason.

I'm finding my crappie near the submergent vegetation. Leafy Pond Weed or Milfoil is prevalent in Bluegrass Pit and the other old coal mine strip pits down here in Warrick County, IN.

I finally got the Eazy Troller Plate installed and used it for the first time. It's really slows my boat down too much. I was only going 0.5 mph with the plate in the down trolling position. I had to increase the rpm's to get going faster and the boat motor makes too much noise. I'm planning on cutting a new hole position so that the plate will only go down to 45 degrees. I can still lower the plate all the way down if I need to go very slow. But I want to go at about 1.0 to 1.5 mph at idle speed. I'm just trying to figure out a way to make the notch in the aluminum look as good and clean at the other factory cut notches. They look like they were cut out with a water jet and computer controlled or something. Very clean cut with precision and accuracy. They really should make a three position on these trolling plates at the factory. But I can figure something out sooner or later.

I checked the rectifier and it's faulty so I got a new one and plan on installing that myself. I have a new Clamp Amp meter to use to check the amp flowing out of it at full throttle to see if I'm charging the battery up while running the engine. My Optima Starting Battery is always in need of charging and it take a couple of hours to charge it back up to full. So I figured I'd check the rectifier and sure enough it had some bad diodes and was not charging my battery. Heck I was trolling all day long at idle speed and you would think that it would put some juice back into my Optima Battery after running the engine for two hours or more. But the thing only puts out about 4 amps at full throttle so maybe just idling around does not generate enough amps to charge the battery back up. I know it takes a lot of juice to start the motor up. And I don't check the battery every trip out. Maybe every 4th or 5 th trip. The motor always fires right up when I try to start it.















I've been working on my old truck trying to get it fixed up to be more dependable. I had the values adjusted for the first time since 1986 when I bought the thing. It sounds a lot quieter now. And then I had a leaking valve cover gasket repaired. So I'm hoping I don't keep losing oil out the valve cover. It was getting on the engine and I feared the engine would catch on fire. So I cleaned the oil up with some degreaser. It's smelling much better now. LOL The guy even adjusted the carburetor for me at no extra charge. I'm hoping that all he did was increase the idle speed needle as I can always turn that back down if I need to. If he adjusted anything else I may not be able to return the settings back to where they were. The truck starts fine when it's warm but it's a bear to start when it get's really cold. And it's harder to start the colder it gets. I've been looking for a new truck and have my eye on a few right now. The problem is they want TOO MUCH MONEY for the things. Some cost almost as much as my house when I got it back in 1987. Some of the new Nissan 4x4's cost around $34,000 and that's way out of my budget for now.

I also found out that I have a bad tire. I had a friend who was following behind my truck tell me that my right rear tire was wobbling. I took it into Pep Boys to get the oil changed and had them look at the truck's tire. They said the Tire was bad. It's a pretty new tire. I had replace all four tires after finally getting all 4 ball joints replaces. The one ball joint literally fell apart in the shop after they took it off as it was worn so bad.

So I'm slowly getting the truck back into shape where I can trust it on a longer trip to Patoka and Back.

I saw a new GMC or is it a Chevy Colorado Truck. It's a 2012 model and king cab with extra room in the back. I wouldn't want to sit back there for more than two minutes though. Looks like that space is better suited for a suit case or small tool box than a human. They only want about 19,000 for it.

And I found a nice 2010 Toyota Tacoma for sale just last night. But they want about 19,000 for it but it's a automatic and I wanted a manual transmission. I like to shift gears. But it's loaded and very nice. I could see myself driving in that Toyota Truck. It's PURTY too. I have a sneaky suspension that that one won't stay on the lot very long. I wanted to order a new Toyota and make it mine but this is the wrong time of the year to do that according to the salesman. But he was a pre-owned salesman and perhaps he just wanted to sell me a used car instead of a new one.

[raporter]

Yep, still catching them deep while jigging. Doing some vertical jigging too. Pulling jigs with nibbles has been the ticket the last few times out. Strange year.