Boddies Mill Pond, 5/30/2022

After a long hiatus, Debbie and I are finally back out and on the water. We headed over to Boddies Mill Pond near Nashville NC, and it was a beautiful morning to be on the water! Debbie immediately picked up a small bass from the lilly pads near the dam. We began to work our way around the pond and up Big Peachtree creek. The big catch of the day was Debbie's 2lb 14oz LMB out in deep water in the channel. She was using a Watermelon and Pearl 5" Yum Dinger stick bait, 2O WS hook, 12lb mono, her new Zebco Bullet-MG reel, and a Gx2 6' rod. Here's a few pics... 

 

 

New Bullet!

 We love our Zebco Bullet reels. I hear folks say, all the time, "pushbutton reels are for beginners and kids". Not so, and they've never tried one of these. It has 9 sealed ball bearing assemblies, and even uses them in the line pickups for the oscillating spool. It casts a mile like a bait cast reel, has a tremendous retrieve rate of almost 30" per revolution of the handle (similar to about a 7.5:1 bait cast retrieve rate), and the ball bearing pickups allow the use of braid with no problems. We fish all day, not a single blow-up. I can't say enough good stuff about them. 

Anyway, we recently picked up one of the new Bullet  MG reels....same reel but with a lighter magnesium construction. After one day of use, I can say that there will be more of these in our lineup!

New Jon Boat Seats & Bait Lights...

 While doing some updates to the Jon Boat, I recalled all the back pain I had when we were out on the boat more than a couple of hours. I felt like I needed better seating with more back support. Debbie got on the Cabela's website and found the seats we had been looking at in their store, recently. She got those ordered up, and they arrived in no time flat! I removed the old seats, added additional fasteners through the 2x6 riser I had installed previously to raise the seats, and installed the new seats. WOW, what a difference they made! 

While at it, I replaced the old LED bait lights that were on the front of the lower seat frames. They're only about $5 at Ace hardware, and lasted almost 6 years. Very bright, and help when doing a bit of night fishing. 

 

 

Jon Boat Trailer Adjustments and Updates...

The parts all came in and it was time to get the new-to-us trailer updated and adjusted, and get the Jon Boat on it. I readjusted the front winch location, moved the spare tire bracket, readjusted the carpeted rails for the boat to rest on, installed new wheels/tires, packed the wheel hubs with grease and painted them, installed new LED lighting, installed a new Reese tongue jack and wheel, and repaired a ground wire issues in the wiring harness. It turned out great and I can now move the boat around with one hand. All together, I guess we have about $500 in the whole trailer project, and it'll now alow us to sell that all-aluminum Triton MC trailer and get it out of the yard :-)

 

 

 

Sealing the covers...

 This is why the Jon boat was half full of water when I pull the cover back... I forgot to seal / waterproof the cover last fall! Just like a tent, anywhere the cover touches something, water will run right through if not sealed. I grabbed a few cans of tent waterproofing from Walmart, and treated both the Jon boat and Bass boat covers. Just put the cover on the boat, spray until wet, and let dry. We had some storms the very next day and all was dry inside. Yay!

Coming out of the mothballs...

We've been down with some personal illness, work about the house, and family stuff...so the boat and fishing took a back seat for a while. Now that we have a new-to-us trailer to get it on, it's time to get busy. I pulled the cover off, and mush to my surprise, it has LEAKED. The boat was 1/2 full of water. Boy, was I disappointed! More on that, later.... Time to get her scrubbed up. I used some foaming carpet cleaner, a bucket of dawn / water mix, as soft scrub brush, and got after it. It all came clean and is ready for some updates / repairs... 

 

 

Found a smaller trailer!

We've been looking for a smaller trailer for the Jon boat. Using the converted motorcycle trailer works, but it was kinda big and a bit tough for me to push around in some places by myself.You can see in the photo below, the size of the trailer was a bit much for this boat. However, we needed to work with what we had, so this trailer has worked well for the last 5 years.

Debbie was scouting around on marketplace all the time, and ran across a jet ski trailer that was perfect for our application, and very cheap. We snapped it up and brought it home. We're going to   convert it for the boat, and sell the MC trailer. He's a couple of pic of this diamond in the rough...

We have a bit of work to do, but it should work out nicely!