dickenscpa

My Dad told me a story once about being a young teenage jerk in the late 50's. He was in the back of a truck his Dad was driving and maybe a brother or two. He leaned out a bit to yell something derogatory at some young guys walking. Thank God he's changed since then. His hat blew off and landed right in front of those guys. His Dad stopped the truck and told him to go get his hat. He said he was very nervous walking up to those guys, but they picked up his hat, brushed it off and handed it to him. He said it changed his heart but he didn't apologize. He's almost 61 now and he said it still stings his heart that he didn't apologize and now he can't.

I agree with the above responses. I had stock 18" wheels on my truck and was pulling a open trailer with 8" tires. Great trailer, don't know why in the world they put 8" tires on it. I had two blow outs. Those trailer tires were making over twice the revolutions to keep up with my truck tires. Ate the tires up regularly and two actually shredded and blew at bad times. Gave the trailer to my Dad for light local stuff. That's not even addressing the heat issue for the internals that were originally designed for 12" tires. My Chevy has stock 17" wheels and my boat trailer has 12". I only have a 14' tri-hull FB boat, but wish I had 15" tires on the trailer. My trailer tires were brand new in March and you can tell they're not new anymore. They're not slick or anything, but noticeable tread wear and they're 3 months old.

One thing you need to consider is the total weight capacity of the kayak. I'd make sure that my weight plus all the weight of the stuff you're wanting to add doesn't go over that figure.

When I got my boat used it had a bow mounted Motor Guide on it and the red arrow was missing. I had no idea where I was going.LOL! I took blue masking tape and made a new arrow and it fixed mine.

I hope he never plays another down myself, but..... there's always the Raiders. : Dont be crackin' on the Raiders! Well, to be honest you're absolutely right. You could probably "insert team name here" with any NFL team out there. Won't be long 'til the NFL will have to coordinate Sunday games with local work release programs. They're all relative, case in point: Cincinatti has 11 players arrested. Tennessee has 1 player arrested 11 times. I don't know which is the lesser of two evils. I guess that's what they get for always working on Church day.

I want to agree with you. I live here in Mid-TN and like someone above mentioned, it's embarrassing. I hope he never plays another down myself, but..... there's always the Raiders. :

Not to hijack this thread, but I believe you live close to me. Clarksville, TN? I've been looking to upgrade my 14' fiberglass tri-hull to aluminum and I have a bead on a 16.5' Alumacraft, 2 depth/fish finders, TM, fr/rr casting decks and a 50HP Force motor. I believe it's a MV Angler? I was thinking about buying it for $4000, but thought that price was too high. It's a 1996. From the sound of your research, maybe I overreacted on that price. I'm starting to think that was a good deal. Is it? The boat is in great shape and clean, plus I kinda know the guy, but we have mutual friends that we are both closer to and everyone says he's a stand up guy.

Where is that in relation to Nashville? Lebanon is about 25 miles East of Nashville. Right now I don't have a big fancy boat, just an old 14' bass boat with only a front casting deck. However, I'm in the process of buying a bigger boat. It's been a weird process. I started looking hard at boats in Nov '06 when my son took up fishing. I bought an inexpensive one 3/31/07 in case it was a fad to him. We decided it wasn't and started looking at bigger boats. Two of the boats I saw back in Nov were still for sale. I called this past week on one and I swear the guy told me someone was lake testing it as we speak and they wound up buying it. I called about the other one Monday morning this week and it sold that morning. A guy came in the office last Wednesday and said his buddy was trying to sell a '00 20' Procraft for a year. I scheduled to look at it that Friday evening and he called and said a guy drove up and bought it Friday morning. I guess the moral is, if you're having trouble selling something, get me really interested in it and someone will ****** it out from under me! ;D

What part of TN do you live? I live in Lebanon.

I just bought my old boat 3/31/07 so I haven't had it very long, but 4-5 weeks ago I went one Sunday during Church, we had a guest speaker I wasn't crazy about, so I was asking for trouble. First thing to go wrong was the 30amp fuse blew for my TM. I redid it with a 40amp circuit breaker. I get in an area where the bass aren't big but I'm landing 10"ers pretty good. I have no TM so I decide to anchor since the wind is hard and the traffic wakes are hittin' pretty regular. I noticed over the course of an hour or so that I drifted almost 20'. Got to thinking, my rope's not that long. The wind and traffic kept moving me and my mushroom anchor was dragging and accumulated a ton of mud and hung up on something. I decided to keep fishing for a while and I drifted around in a radius the length of my rope. Came time to leave and I was going to untie it from my rear cleat so I could start my motor and decided to try to pull it in. It was heavy with mud but unhooked from whatever it hung on.

I used deck screws from Lowes and dabbed a bit of clear fingernail polish over them and haven't had any problems as of yet. Then I mixed some resin and went over the whole thing. The deck screws (like the deck on the back of a house) I used are those beige ones they sell at Lowes. I built my son one of those jungle gym like playsets in the back yard and had a ton of them left over. Those screws have been out in the rain and weather for 13 months and look brand new. My boat stays in the garage and the deck rarely gets water on it. I figured if they lasted that well on his playset, the boat should have no problems.

I've noticed a few people in this thread have made note of the fact that it doesn't matter how great of a swimmer you are. That is the absolute truth. I was a life guard the last part of high school and into college and even though I live in Tennessee I even got my ocean patch. When I bought my boat 3/31/07 it was non-debatable that my wife, who is not a really strong swimmer, was to keep her PFD on at ALL times. My son, who is 4, no brainer there the PFD is to never come off. I went to a specialty shop, as opposed to a department store, and got the appropriate vest for THEIR size and weight. They could pick the colors, but a professional was picking the safest. On the flip side, I was a moron. A ratty old vest came with my boat and I'd throw it on when the motor was fired up just to not get a ticket. I read a thread on this site and someone arbitrarily brought up falling and hitting your head and THEN going into the water. Whoa, makes ya think. I'm an awesome swimmer, but I've never tested that swimming prowess while being unconcious. I went and got fitted for my size and weight and got a good vest that I keep on. It was a tad bulky while sitting on the casting deck fishing, but within 30 minutes I forgot it was there. I've fished about 6 times since and it's automatic now and it's like another piece of clothing. I'm at the office now and haven't got a pic of my vest but my son's has a Spiderman theme on it, my wife's is like an aqua color with some kind of gray design in it and mine is straight up navy blue. My son's vest has the three buckles across the chest and it goes thru his legs and the "seat" of it is the same flotation material as the vest which also kinda doubles as padding.

I've got an old 34 yr old boat, it's a FB tri-hull. It's only 14' but definitely on the heavy side. It came with a bow mounted foot control Motor Guide. It's only 25#, but it's 5 speed and 3 on up gets me moving pretty good. On 5 you can almost feel a breeze. It really does me good by myself. I weigh 235#'s. Wife, son and me = 235+120+48 or 403#'s plus boat. Brother and me = 235+240 or 475#'s plus boat. I'll be upgrading soon simply because the TM is getting old and when I do, I will obviously get the biggest one I can finacially support. Last Saturday me, wife and son went out for about 4 hours, came home and dropped the boat off at about 1PM to run an errand with my brother, didn't even hook up to my $17 Wal-Mart tender and he and I were on the water at about 6:30pm 'til 8:45pm and I had plenty of juice left.

I bought a starter boat that I could pay cash for since my 4 yr old got into it so big and so I have a 34 yr old 14 ft bass boat with the original 34 yr old Mercury 40HP. It appears this is not a fad to my son so someone is actually coming by the office today to look at my '05 Harley Ultra. I LOVE my bike, but love my son more and spending time with him is THE most fun thing. Selling the bike so I can sell my boat and use the two to pay cash for a bigger boat and not be in debt to anyone. Say all that to say, I actually got locked out of a little local tournament my brother was going to fish with me. It was divided into two sections, big boys/little boys basically. The big boys had a minimum 50HP motor to compete. The little boys were in a different section of water and had a 35HP max. I had a 40HP motor and they would NOT make an exception for me in either class no matter how I tried to conform. I offered to fish the little side using only TM. No dice. I also offered to concede my disadvantage and go with the big side, no dice. I guess the moral is don't go with a 40HP motor or you'll be the stepchild.LOL!

I'll throw my hat in the ring. I C&R 100% of the time myself because I'm purely into the sport side of fishing. I also take the barbs off almost all my hooks. For two reasons 1) I had a boss I used to go fishing with while in high school and it was easy on the fish and easy to unhook and 2) I'm casting in a boat with a 4 yr old casting too and if either of us get hooked it's easier on my son. I may lose a few fish but 80% of the fun to me is just being out there on the water and spending time with my son. I love eating fish, but prefer farm raised fish's taste as opposed to local lakes and rivers. Plus I'm too lazy to clean them when Kroger is 4 miles down the road. I'm not too crazy about the taste of bass anyway, especially big bass. I don't however have a problem with someone who keeps fish to actually eat as long as it's done legally. I don't know anyone personally though that actually catch bass to eat. Now I do crave the taste of deer and it's not something you can go down the road and buy at the supermarket. In Tennessee it's illegal to sell deer meat. I love to bow hunt. I'm not real successful (LOL!) but the president of my company will throw me some scraps every now and then. LOL!

That is the absolute truth! Everybody's gotta learn. Even if my wife and 4 yr old are with me I launch and load my boat completely by myself. The day after I bought my bass boat on 3/31/07, unfortunately it was April fool's day, I forgot the plug on my maiden voyage. I learned and rigged me a little deal that would make it hard to forget the plug in the future. There was a crowd and I pulled my boat completely out of the way to let it drain. Wound up not launching because we wasted too much time and had to get to Church. My next time I went to a different ramp. Me, wife and son along with another couple were the only two boats at the dock. I knew I'd be slow so I told him go ahead even though I was there first. He must have noticed the fear and knew I was a newbie. He tied his boat to the courtesy dock let me back my truck in. He told me to get in the boat and he did my truck in forward and reverse to let me get a feel for how far back the trailer needed to be in for the boat to come off. He told me to make a mental picture of how submerged my bunks were. Unfortunately he wasn't there when it came time to load up and I backed my trailer in and ran my boat into one of my turn signals and broke it at the weld!LOL! But, I learned from that mistake too. That was 4-5 weeks ago and my wife commented this past weekend that I can get the boat off and on the trailer so fast that her and my son can't hardly get on dry land and remove their life vests before I'm tied down and ready to go. Practice and confidence both require time.

I've lurked here for a while, but this post made me join so I could post about my son's first fish. I thought I'd never fish again after my best friend died at 32. My 4 yr old asked me to take him fishing back in November. Well, if anyone got me back into it, it would be my son. Between Nov and March, we fished every chance we could. Didn't get a nibble, didn't even get robbed. He never got bored, never said Daddy take me home. We'd stay 4-5 hours. My wife would pack us a lunch and sometimes we'd walk back to the truck and eat and take a nap in the back. I started getting those quotes too: You're the bestest Daddy You're my hero (My favorite) I'm glad I picked you for my Daddy when I was little (Funniest) After not getting anything close to a bite, I bought a used bass boat that I could pay cash for. We've had a ball. If it's just me and him, he fishes mostly. If Mamma comes too, then I fish also. It wasn't long that I pulled out a 13" bass. He went crazy! I think he thought fish were a figment of my imagination!LOL! I hired a new person to help at the office and I leave an hour earlier, but because of better traffic conditions, I get home about 1:45 earlier. Last Wednesday I come home from work and grab him and we take the boat out. He's using a little jig on his Scooby-Doo rig and I'm periodically tossin' a 6" blue lizzard on a baitcaster. He asked to cast mine once. He birdnested it, but hauled in a 9" bass (barely bigger than the lizzard.LOL!) in the process. I was so proud. We got home and he ran in screaming to my wife, "I caught the best fish in the world with a blue lizzer!" My wife told me later that night to be extra good to him because she lost her baby boy, he's a full fledged Daddy's boy now. She told me about how he talks about me all the time while I'm at the office. Made me feel like I was doing my job with the little blessing God gave me. I bought one of those outdoor fire pit things Saturday and I built a fire in it last night and we ate dinner outside and roated marshmallows. Out of the blue he says, "I eat Johnsonville brots, that's what Hank Parker eats." I laughed so hard.