It's been a long, but good day. The new aluminum fairlead came in for the synthetic winch rope this morning. I installed it. While I don't think the distance to the fairlead was the primary cause of the wire rope jumping the spool, out of caution, I moved the new fairlead closer to the winch.
I got done about 11:15 this morning. With the winch operational, I decided to go crappie fishing. Jut before I left, I got an email saying the new transducer for the Xplore will arrive Saturday. I was on the water by noon. I tried my best to target crappie with the Megalive 2, but I just was not successful. I could find fish and cast at them, but with the wind, there was no way to see my jig. I don't know if it was the small size of the jig or the changing of the angle with the wind. I tried an 1/8th oz jig head with a 2" soft bait and had no luck at all. I finally gave up targeting fish.
I put my 1/64 oz jig with a 1.75" soft bait back on and just trolled at the lowest speed into the wind through schools of crappie. I did catch one this way. Then, I cast into the wind and just let the wind push the boat at will back over the schools of crappie. I started catching fish after fish this way. They were all small. The largest one was about 9 1/2 inches. I decided to keep that one presuming I would catch larger ones, but did not. Since filleting one fish is not too practical, I started keeping fish that were around 8". I must have caught 30 crappie releasing most of them. I kept a half dozen or so and filleted them when I got home.
Now that I seem to have learned some basics of catching crappie, I need to learn how to catch slab sized crappie!
The SI is still not working, which is why hummingbird is sending me a new transducer, but I focused primarily on the forward facing Megalive 2 anyway. The winch worked great. I'm scheduled to drive to NC on Tuesday to pick up the new trailers. I'll then need to modify the small one for loading the boat and return my neighbors trailer. Between this and doing the fall plant and archery season right around the corner, I'm not sure how much more fishing I'll get in this year. I'm itching for that Kayak Terrova, but with little time available, I'll probably wait until the holidays and see if it goes on sale.
