Hello Folks,
How many of you are old enough to remember that classic Deep Purple song "Smoke On The Water"? I know that I am... LOL! I guess that means I'm a "Classic". Fog was rolling across the Susquehanna River hills yesterday morning as the sun rose and reminded me of that song from my youth.
It was only 46 degrees when I left my West Willow Street home and headed to the Pequea boat launch. Jeff B. (CHRGD) was meeting me at the York Furnace launch at 7:30 am. I arrived at the Pequea Ramp around 7:20 am, prepped my jet rig for launching, and ran across the river to pick up my buddy for a great day of smallmouth chasing.
I was warmly dressed in a fleece jacket, hat, gloves, and sweat pants over my shorts. I knew that as the morning progressed that it would get warmer and I would be stripping off layers of clothing. In fact, by the time I returned to the dock, the air temp was 79 degrees, an increase of 33 degrees in the five hours we were on the water.
Heading into York Furnace to pick up Jeff B.
It only took a few minutes to load Jeff's gear and we headed north to the Safe Harbor Dam to start our morning of fishing. Look closely at the video below for the three mature bald eagles we spotted. It's not unusual for us to see these eagles early in the morning as we run along the Conestoga River channel. Two eagles flew out from the shoreline and the third was perched high in a tree close by watching us as we passed.
I started the day by throwing a Boogerman buzzbait and Jeff hooked up with our first smallie using a War Eagle Screamin' Eagle... Cool, "no skunk in this boat"!
As we entered into deeper water, I switched over to a Cotton Cordell Super Spot and landed this nice 15.5" smallie...
My second bass came along about 30 minutes later and was our lunker of the day measuring in at 18"...
Jeff kept up with me as he landed his second bass before lunchtime...
I lost a very nice bass along some rip rap while chucking a tube soaked in juice (Bang). Jeff also had a few hits that failed to hook up. It was just one of those days.
The Safe Harbor Dam was not generating a lot of water on Wednesday. In fact, it was one of the slowest water days I've seen from this location in quite some time which helped explain some of the reasons for the slow bite we were having.
While out on the water, my oldest brother called me to inform me that our Uncle Jim (New Bern, NC) had passed away on Tuesday. That put a damper on the morning activities. I knew that my Uncle Jim had not been doing well for quite some time, but was not expecting him to die.
I now have one biological aunt surviving and three other aunts living. The reality starts to set in that my parents' generation are all passing and we are the next oldest generation. Although I am 57 years old, I do have cousins who are in their 70s! That's hard for me the fathom.
I dropped Jeff off at the York Furnace launch a little after 1:00 pm and headed back over to the Pequea ramp. This was only the second time that I "trailered" my boat alone. It went quite well until I got home...
I pulled the truck and boat into the driveway and decided to wash down the boat and trailer. There was a scum line beginning to form and I wanted to catch it before it got too hard to hose off. After washing the boat and greasing the impeller, I set the rubber small ramp up that I use to push the boat up and over the concrete lip at my garage doorway.
Everything went well until I got to the ramp and then the boat resisted going into the garage. I tried about five times until it finally went in as I expected. When I walked to the back of the garage, I noticed that the plug to my battery charge was pulled out of the wall... Hmmmm?
What had happened was that the plug had gotten stuck on my LED trailer lights and cracked the lens. The lens then shredded the orange coating to the electric cord, but not the wiring (Thank Goodness). I was upset knowing that the sealed lens had cracked!
So, I called JC Nuss at Lakeside Marine this morning to see what a new trailer light for the passenger side would run me. I gave him the invoice number for the part when I purchased the trailer lights back in 2007. He'll be looking up the item and letting me know what a replacement LED light will cost... Why Me, Lord!? >:(
Take Care and Be Safe!
Dad
