thomas15

Nice rig. Best of luck with it.

This has been a horrible season for me. Mostly because I've had a lot of issues with my outboard. Well I stuck to it and finally two weeks ago got it all sorted out. I've been out but not for strictly fishing but just to gain a bit of confidence in my motor. Today I went out just to fish. Went to a place on my lake where I generally have the best results. The water is a bit muddy and the temp about 86deg., quite sunny, about 4PM, not the best conditions for fishing. As I pull into my spot I remembered this comment above and put on the biggest worm I had at arms length, a Berkely 5.5" Rib Snake in pumpkinseed on a drop shot. On my second cast brought in a approx. 3 pounder. Vey happy about this and appreciate the tip.

We have both a Sun Dolphin and an Old Town yack. I wouldn't use the sun dolphin for fishing, it's just not heavy duty enough. There is a .hugh quality difference between the SD and the Old Town, I think the SD was less than $250.00 the old town was 4 and change.

Collect 'em all!

My guess is he forgot the plug. We all do this at least once but the time I did it I figured it out before I got the boat off of the trailer.

fishnkamp, you are correct in that it's not that I cannot afford to have repairs by a service marina, it's generally not rocket science and I want to know my motor, not have my mechanic on speed dial especially when I'm 2 hours from the launch ramp. The next time I replace the water pump it will take 30 minutes because I know how to do it now and when I put it back together I did it correctly. Part of the problem for me is I want the motor to run as near to perfect as possible. I could have forced many trips this summer with a rough idling motor that stalls at weird times or some other performance issue but I'm fussy and as you say I want to have confidence in my motor. I don't want people staring at me at the ramp because my motor sputters and farts. I want to be the one doing the staring at others that have this problem and around here that's about half the boats on my local lake. The reason I posted this thread is because if this problem is happening to me there must be others having the same or similar and you know misery loves company. It's running good now finally. I can idle it at about 750-800 RPM and run the boat at 2.4 MPH for an hour and still have plenty of fuel pressure. On the other hand I can still get my full 5500 RPM and this pushes the SS Minnow at an amazing 34 MPH. I think there is still a bit of room for improvement with respect to getting the mixture screws perfect but I'm happy at this point. One thing I have discovered is one of my three (6 gallon) fuel tanks doesn't work right. I think the problem is the vent on the cap but the motor doesn't run properly with the cap very loose. So I'm just gonna pitch it and move on. As an unrelated comment, a vehicle towing a Tracker that looks to be fairly new, actually brand new, pulled out in front of me this evening and got on the turnpike. The launch ramp is 3+ miles from this interchange and yet this boat was still spilling out a tremendous amount of bilge water. I cannot conclude otherwise but that the operator had one heck of a lot of water in his boat. I don't know much about boats but I do know that they are made to be on the water, not filled with water. I never have water in my bilge ever, I'm thinking about filling the well with water to make sure the bilge pump still works.

I don't know anything about this particular motor. But I do have an opinion. It appears that there is something not quite right with the motor. I'm not impressed with the fact that it was rebuilt last year because it's not running right now. If the fix were something simple then the owner would fix it before selling it. If you really have the hot's for this boat then make a deal with the owner, agree on a repair price, lets say $300.00 He gets it fixed for that or a lower and you pay that amount above the agreeded upon price. Suppose you agree to buy the boat for $2000.00 Agree that you will give him as much as $2300.00 for the boat but it has to be in good running order. My gut tells me he will not agree to this. But as another poster said, my crystal ball is also broken. Maybe I'm suffering from a bad attitude but it took me from the second week of April until this weekend to get my motor running properly for this year. A 2-cycle outboard motor, it seems, runs on 75% engineering, chemistry and physics and 25% magic. If your not good at the magic part then you can expect to have a great season watching others catch fish while you study your factory service manual and try this and try that. In it's basic form all you need is fuel and spark. Mostly fuel. The fuel has to arrive to the combustion chamber with just the right amount of air, no more, no less. Dirty carbs, whooped fuel lines, leaking fuel lines, old gas, improperly adjusted carbs, poor performing fuel pump and so forth are generally the problem. The rest is a lack of magic.

One positive did come out of the experience. I've always worked on my cars and pick up trucks and have accomplished major engine repairs and have a lot of tools. My experience and understanding of 2 cycle marine motors was limited though. All this has now changed. My outboard is not some old and beat up machine, it's in good shape and ran fine last year so I had a hard time dealing with this years issues. I had a real aversion to taking the carbs apart. Actually,I found out that there really isn't that much to them. I purchased one of those gallon cans from Auto Zone that you dunk the carbs into and let soak. They are $30.00 more than I wanted to spend but worked nice. I'm going to keep gasket sets on hand and in the future at the first sign of trouble I'm going to tear them down. My motor (a Mercury 50 HP) uses zip ties as clamps to hold the fuel lines under the motor cover. These are special zip ties made for this specific job and do a better job of completely sealing the hose to the barbs. I also found out that the tachometer on my console is not reading correctly. I'm trying to get the idle down to 900 RPM and the motor is stalling. I purchased a hand held lazer tach from amazon for $15.00 works great. I'm happy with 900 RPM but once I get it on the water and verify that all is well I'm going to go a bit lower in steps. One other good thing is I know that my fuel lines are all new and in good shape. What I'm striving for is a few good trips on the water to build up my confidence in the machine so that I can take a few trips to one or two large lakes some distance away and not worry about the motor giving me fits.

I spent a considerable amount of time and money preparing for this season. So to that end I collected a lot of new baits, in particular topwaters and swim baits, tackle storage and two new rod/reel set ups. Made a list of things to do to the boat before the fishing got started. Some of the tasks that I really wanted to accomplish were to replace the housing on my TM, install a new FF, mount a new pitot for the spedo and replace the impeller in my outboard. I tried to do the impeller last season (the third season I had the boat) but couldn't get the shift linkage to separate. I decided to not take no for an answer this spring and soaked the linkage and used heat and it began to turn but finally it broke the horizontal shift shaft in the motor cowl. So, from there I ordered both a new vertical and horizontal shaft, two weeks passed before I could resume. To get the to the horizontal shaft I had to remove the carbs. Even with that it took a bit of coaxing but finally I'm ready to start the motor. Hit the key and it wouldn't start. I figured out that I damaged one of the carb gaskets so I ordered another. Two more weeks pass before I'm ready. Once on the water the motor is running horrible at idle. So I try to adjust the carbs but cannot get it, then I get a mechanic to adjust them, running better two more weeks later. I use the boat twice, for an hour each time. I'm not happy with the motor so now I'm going to find out just exactly why it is running so bad. I replaced all of the fuel lines, quick connectors and clamps from the fuel tank to the carbs. This took 3 or 4 weeks because I had to order some of the connectors and I'm short of free time. I get all this together and installed and still it's running poorly at idle. So I attached a pressure gage and clear tube to the fuel line after the fuel pump (I had rebuilt the pump two years ago) and found that I didn't have enough pressure and still had some air leaks. So I rebuilt the fuel pump again. And installed new spark plugs and dumped 16 oz of seafoam into the fuel tank. Put all this together and still not as good as I want so I finally bit the bullet and soaked and rebuilt the carbs. I hate carbs by the way. But I did it and reinstalled then, made a few slight adjustments and finally the motor is running up to my expectations. I know this is a long rambling rant. I've been fooling around with the boat from mid-April to the end of July, it really killed the season for me. Now I have to get out and fish, which I'm going to do starting this weekend. Hopefully.

Up till last Friday, I had spent about 2 hours on the water this season. Last year when I winterized the motor it was running well. So in the spring I decided to change the water pump impeller before my first trip to the lake. This set off a series of disasters and several mini crisis that have really put a damper on this spring/summer fishing wise. To make a very long story short, The first time out the motor idled rough and sputtered but ran fine at speed. I had the carbs adjusted but this didn't solve all of the issues which in one form or another continued until last week. I suspected a fuel problem but resisted the idea that the carbs could be dirty because the were fine last fall when I fogged and winterized the motor. I literally changed every inch of fuel line from the tank to the carbs. I replaced both of the quick connect connectors on the fuel tank and the motor, installed new spark plugs. Rebuilt the fuel pump and rebuilt the carbs after letting them soak. I also put a 16oz can of seafoam in the fuel tank. I didn't and couldn't do all of this at once and hence it dragged out for weeks/months. I fabricated a device to measure fuel pressure and used a clear hose to check for air in the fuel line. I also discovered that the tachometer in the dash reads about 200 RMP high at idle so I kept setting the idle speed too low. Had it on the water last Friday it was ok, have run it on the muffs several time and all seems to be well. I'm not going to pop the cork until I have one more good trip on the water but I think I've got it. There was a lot more drama in the mix of things but it's all a bit boring so I'm just transcribing the highlights. My motor repair's greatest hits. So to summarize I believe the biggest problem I had was an air leak somewhere in the fuel system. When I first installed the clear tube to check the fuel line for air there was a lot of air in the line. Now there isn't even a trace of air in the fuel line. Gummed up carbs I believe contributed to making the motor run rough.

Grew up in Belmar, lived in Tuckerton until 2004. Now happy as a clam in PA with the exception of the fishing which is not good here.

I have spent a total of less than an hour fishing so far 2016

The phrases "good fishing" and "Lehigh Valley" really don't belong in the same sentence. But welcome to the forum anyway.

Try a self storage facility.

Yes I "fish" Beltzville as I live less than 1/2 mile from the Pine Run launch. I haven't fully figured it out yet, sometimes I get lucky! LOL. So we are basically neighbors. I have one small kink to work out on my motor once that is fixed if you want to get together to catch nothing at Beltzville no problem, just let me know.

Nice rig, good luck. Question, have you ever fished in that little pond near STS Tire off Rt. 209? I think it's Silver Valley Rd?

What Kevin22 sezs

Not knowing what wessel you decided on getting but assuming something 16-18' aluminum which is basically what I have, allow me to say that I do not pilot my boat into water less than 3 feet at anything more than a crawl and I try to cruse in minimum of 8-10 feet of water at any speed. I know my home water fairly well but still being in a hurry in shallow water is not a good idea unless you hate your boat. However, bumping into the lake bottom at drift speed shouldn't be a cause of concern. Boat electronics "fish finders", by the way, are really not an accurate description of the kinds of electronics we have on our boats. DI and SI units may show fish but they are mainly for locating structure that should hold fish. I say this so that you don't get your expectations too high. Others may disagree but I think if I had only one sonar I would have it at the console and look for structure, then move to the bow to actually fish that area. Having 1 good unit with a big screen, SI and good resolution are better than having two so so units. On Edit: None of my business really but if you were to ask my opinion I think you would be better served using what you have for now and concentrating on learning boat handling skills and keeping the crew happy. It is not as easy as you might think. But by this time next year you will have a much greater feel for what you want in electronics instead of relying on what the advertisements say. Save up you money and get good solid electronics that meet expectations.

This is going to be my third year back after about 15 years off. In the past I fished the bank in small shallow ponds, now I have a boat in larger deep impoundments. Nothing that worked for me in the past works now. Last year, while dismal, was better than the previous year. So I'm hopeful this year will be better but so far work/boat/weather have conspired to keep me sidelined. I think starting next weekend though I should be out on the water, my boat is now in service and the weather and my personal schedule is opening up. So, what keeps me going and interested is the fact that I don't have to catch large numbers of fish to have a great day on the water. I just like being out there. For years I could not find the time and now I have the time and a boat so all is good.

Here in NE PA the weather hasn't been too good either. A lot of rain and a bit chilly. I finally got my boat put back together and took it out for a ride today and I think I have all the bugs worked out so tomorrow we are probably going to attempt to catch a few or one maybe. It should clear up by noon and be a bit warmer than it has been.

I had a tip break off one of mine after having it a year, called the seller (the big online place), they told me to send it back and a week or so later got a new one. Mine is the Denali Jadewood J2 Series Casting Rod 7' MH Cranking rod. This is a nice rod BTW.

BCB, in time you will learn how to get the trailer situated correctly in some difficult approaches.

Nice boat, I wish you the best of luck!

If you are buying a boat with a 40+ HP outboard then get a power tilt. It would be almost impossible to do on the fly adjustments without power.

I grew up on salt water and I personally would not put my present boat or trailer in salt water as much as I would like to. Back in the day a steel trailer was considered old if it was 10 years old. I would never buy an outboard that was tied up at a dock in salt water without first taking it apart. Big inboards that do not have fresh water cooling but rely on sea water for cooling do not last many years.