Helluva Day!!

Helluva day sums it up!  We started the morning off good, got on the road by 6 and met up with some guys at the Mav that told us fishing at Strawberry is real good right now.  We got a little breakfast and headed for DC.  Parker launched the boat and I parked the truck.  I came down the ramp and saw Parker in the front of the boat and I was thinking, what is he doing!?  I called out to him and asked just that, he responded the battery is dead.  I’m like what!?  Parker “Yeah the battery is dead it won’t turn the motor over”.  Parker then told me the fish finder was on, when I launched him he said it started picking up fish, he cranked the motor and everything died.  That is when I remembered the last thing leaving Yuba asking is everything turned off?  Yes, was the reply, but I should have double checked!  This morning as I was loading the poles in the boat I heard a clicking noise coming from the transducer of the fish finder and I was thinking is this still on? Again I thought that is weird but did not check anything.  So Parker was setting up the trolling motor to come in and get me.   Right then I knew I should have went to the truck and got the jumper cables to jump start the boat.   I didn’t and wished later on I had.  We decided to go fish with the trolling motor and worry about the battery later, yep famous last words.  We did fish from the dock all the way to the Island, which is when we wish we had gotten the big motor running, because of course the wind kicked up and started howling.  In the meantime Parker had landed one fish on the JoD, a nice football sized bow. One fish in 3 miles of trolling!  We were beginning to wonder if we were going to catch any at all.  Parker exclaimed “the summer doldrums are upon us.”  Back to the wind!  It was pushing us all over the place and just as I am getting real tired of the wind and wake boarders coming within 30 feet of us.  I am ready to call it because the trolling motor was not handling the wind and extra wakes of the boats and I get hit hard, it was running back and forth and the boat was going all over the place.  We landed tis football, but I did not even care I had, had it.  I put my pole away and was done.  We started toward the dock.  We were still 3 miles from the dock and the trolling motor was keeping us steady in the wind but not moving us forward.  I decided that was it I am changing the battery from the trolling motor to the big motor and going home, all we had on board were some small leatherman pliers.  I was working at getting the battery disconnected and then Parker remembered our big set of leatherman pliers in the tackle box we use for catfishing.  Sure enough they worked at getting the two batteries disconnected and setting up the trolling battery on the big motor.  Parker kicked it over and the motor started right up.  I was frustrated and being very grouchy at this point but noticed as long as the wind was pushing against us we could still troll with the big motor.  I told Parker, I am fishing we came to fish and I am fishing.  He followed suit, feeling more confident that we could get off the lake in a hurry if need be.  We trolled back into Rainbow Bay and I get a fish on, a little planter which we quickly released.  This was caught on prism cowbells.  We landed it and quickly released it, we decided not to keep any today.  We got things back in order and was going along when I get another big hit.  This time I gave the controls to Parker because I could tell this one was a nice fish, I was thinking it was a big brown because it was not jumping and staying down.  Got it to the surface and it was another football shaped rainbow, this time I took a pic with it and quickly got it back in the water.  We trolled for another half hour or so and had no more hits.  We needed to be off the water by 11:30 to get Parker home for the day’s activities being it is Pioneer days in Utah.  We loaded put the batteries back in their proper places and made sure everything was tuned off and loaded up good.  I have now put a socket and wrench in the boat that fit the battery cables!  Put the charger on the motor battery and charging it.  Other items that we took care of during the last half of our fish, Parker loaded a speedometer app on my phone so we could tell how fast we were going since the batteries in the GPS went dead and I had no more to put in it.  Yep Helluva Day!!  It turned out great, but I was too stressed out about things I could have corrected and didn’t, totally my fault on all points.  Next time we will be ready for little annoyances though.