I'm not sure when I'll get out on the water next since I have a surgeon's follow-up appointment tomorrow which is my usual Wednesday fishing with Josh. We had such a drastic change in the weather over the weekend and the air temperature dropped into the low-30s last night. It has been struggling all day today to get back to 50 degrees.
Last week, 50 degrees at nighttime was the norm with high-70s during the daytime hours! :)
Jeff (CHRGD) contacted me this morning and said that last weeks water temperature on the Susquehanna River gauge read around 65.5 degrees. Today, it reads 52.5 degrees! That is a 13 degree temperature drop in the past five days. I'm not sure how the bass will respond to this drastic temperature change, but I can guarantee you that they will in one way or another.
Since I had my knee replaced back in July 2011, I have been thinking of ways of making my boat a safer environment for me when I return to using it on the river. One of the things that I have been contemplating is adding a grab bar around the console.
My console is a custom made console and, therefore, a pre-fab console grab bar from G3 like the one they are currently using on the 1860 DLX model does not fit it. So, I needed to come up with a better idea and one that won't break the bank. I think I did it!
Check this out...
I bought two large eye bolts, stainless steel locking washers, and stainless steel bolt nuts. This was the necessary hardware I needed to build my homemade "Console Grab Bar".
I started the project by measuring and spacing where I wanted to place the two eye bolts. I needed to be sure that there were no functioning wires running behind the drill holes.
I used a smaller drill bit to start the holes and continued to drill several more times with different size drill bits until I reached the required hole size for the eye bolts.
For each eye bolt, I added one bolt nut on the outside of the console and a locking washer and second bolt nut on the inside of the console... This gave me the necessary distance that I needed to securely tighten the bolt without bending the aluminum.
And here is my homemade "Grab Bar" for the G3...
Pretty cool, huh! I can now stand up from my console and grab the bar to assist me as I climb the stairs to the front deck. One more way to make my boat a bit more safer since my surgery.
Take Care and Be Safe!
Dad
