Why I hate the IL River...

carpsniper · 08-02-2009, 07:48 PM

Well for some reason the pics of Christines fish weren't on this card. (I'll get them up as soon as I can find the other card.)
She actually hit fish her first three shots.

Here's a silver just a split second from being on my arrow.

Since I don't know the river very well, We got into a lot of this...
By the end of the day the prop was pretty beat up, even with the Rock Hopper prop guard.

Ken finally connected after we showed him how several times.

Ken was a little too happy but the fish was having none of it.

Shortly after Ken got his fish, we were headed back and I got a little closer to shore than I should have while trying to make the silvers jump. We came to an imediate halt from about 6 mph. C went flying and added more bruises to her body after hitting the deck hard. The boat was stuck fast and it took a bunch of push pole-ing and outboard reving to get us loose. Once we were we headed for the ramp ASAP. Today we took the pontoon off to see where the damage was and how bad. But I never would have believed what we found. Yeah that looks like a 2 1/2" hole.

Gas, $75... Prop, $130... Pontoon section, $170... Not being at work, priceless.

carptracker · 08-03-2009, 08:54 AM

Holy cow - good thing that thing is a tri-toon! Did you get the center one or one of the sides?

You can get that aluminum prop rebuilt for about half the price of a new one and you will not be able to tell the difference. The rebuild might even be better than the new. They'll even repitch it for you, if you want a different pitch, no extra charge. If you need a good place to send it to, PM me. As you might imagine, we get a lot of props rebuilt around here. Most of ours are stainless, but they rebuild the aluminum, too.

carptracker · 08-03-2009, 08:59 AM

By the way, I just had my aluminum toons welded. They were beginning to crack all the way down across the top, both sides. No actual holes where water was getting in, but just a matter of time. They let me off easy because I am a regular customer - only about $300.00. It bet that was a lot of work, laying on your back between the trailer and boat, and welding overhead (ouch!) They had to add quite a bit of aluminum, there were substantial pieces of the flange that connects the toons to the bottom of the boat missing.

HNI_Christine · 08-03-2009, 11:04 AM

Duane, the boat actually has 14 individual pontoon sections. 12 four foot sections and 2 two foot sections.

It must have been a 2.5" dia. pipe that we hit. It punched out a near perfect slug in the pontoon. It did break through the back wall of the pontoon too but it didn't do any damage to the next pontoon.

I think we would have sunk right there if we were in a regular boat.