wolc123

Not sure, but on my 5.5 Evinrude there was a little plastic dog thing that broke off, which resulted in non-engagement (I had to use my separate pull rope around the flywheel for the rest of that long weekend up in the Adirondacks, but fortunately that one usually starts with the first pull). I pulled the whole recoil assembly off and took it to Lang's outboards in N.T. during the off-season, and he charged me around $ 10 to replace it.

15" (short shaft). It always was a good motor. That frayed recoil rope is the first thing to go wrong with it. One $ 13 part, after 30 years of service, was pretty good. I did put a new set of plugs in it this spring, and maybe one other time over that stretch. The rope held up ok to start it up again while the guy was here so that he could listen to it run. The center core was still intact, just the outer sheath was missing over a few inches of length. I always carry a spare pull rope that can be wrapped around the flywheel to start it if the recoil fails. For about (5) years, I used that 15 hp Johnson on a 12 foot rowboat, for two long weekends each fall at a cabin my in-laws used to rent on Red Lake (attached to the Indian river). Those little 12 footers were rated for 10 hp max and the 15 was a bit much for them, but it probably pushed them close to 30 mph. It was a bit unstable though, so the last few years up there, I used an early 1950's, 5 hp Mercury Super-5, that I bought at the auction at our family reunion, about 15 years ago. One of my cousins has a camp up in Canada and he always bring his "junk" to the reunion. I paid $ 20 for a pair, as "non-runners", and I gave one to my marina-owning buddy in exchange for him getting the other one running like new.

I just ordered a Garmin which included a GPS from Bass Pro. It was on sale for $ 99 and includes a transducer with trolling motor mount. I also picked up another fishing rod to replace one my daughter broke last Sunday. I should be all set for the regular bass opener on the third Saturday in June now.

I did 10 minutes ago. I noticed that the recoil was frayed and it needed a new rope ($ 13.25 on E-Bay). He offered me $ 500 and said that he did not need the fuel tank. I had no use for the tank because my 1956 kicker runs a two-hose setup with a pressurized tank and my 70 hp feeds from a built-in tank. I let him have it with the tank for $ 525. He seemed like a nice guy and he is an Army veteran who was stationed up at Ft Drum for a while. Now I can "splurge" on a new depthfinder for the bow of my boat (the old Humminbird flasher took a crap last Sunday). The 1981 Eagle "silent 60" on the dash is still going strong however. I originally bought that one for my rowboat when I was in high school. I like to run one from each brand because they run different frequencies and do not interfere with each other.

It move my 17-footer about 16 mph, loaded down with the "broke down" big motor and a couple medium-sized guys. I will probably have to settle for about 5 mph with the little 5.5 hp that I have for backup now.

The last few years, the pike numbers have been down up in the St Lawrence. I remember a time, maybe 15 years ago, when we would get about 6 pike per largemouth when fishing the shallow weedbeds. Now that ratio is just about reversed, which is real good as far as my wife is concerned. I do miss those hard-striking pike a bit however. My family's camp is on Goose bay (one bay down-river of A-bay), and that bay used to be infested with small pike (they call them "hammer handles" up there. Now they are few and far between. They used to get tons of them, and some big ones, thru the ice on that bay. 40" was my personal biggest pike, and that one came from Lake of the Isles (caught on a big spinnerbait while bass fishing). That mount now hangs in our billiard room next to a 30" St Lawrence walleye and a 50" Niagara rive musky.

Pickled y-bones are a delicacy up in the Thousands island area. A neighbor up there used to fillet all I would give him and all he asked was that he could keep the y-bones. He cut off all the meat in one big slab and then used a straight razor to cut out the part with the y-bones. It was amazing how much meat he could get off those fish, with almost no waste. He was super fast at it, probably having done thousands. I never remember finding a single bone in any of those that he cleaned for us. I used a method that involved cutting off the back meat above the spine and then trying to stay outside the y-bones to remove the side meat. Lots of meat went to waste that way and I sometimes missed a bone or two. One year my brother in law choked on one and they had to take him to the hospital in A-bay to try and remove it. The operation was not successful (y-bones don't show up on x-rays). The following day, he coughed up the y-bone while eating an oreo cookie for breakfast. My wife has not allowed us to fish for pike since that time which was at least 10 years ago. Now, I mostly just catch them by accident while bass fishing.

They are fun. My favorite part is the strike. There is no missing that, and sometimes it is so violent that they just about tear the rod out of your hand. I used to fish for them a lot more but my wife is troubled by the bones in the meat. I tried to get most of them out when filleting but it seems that she always manages to find a few.

I thought about doing that. I saw a hood from a 9.9 on craigslist a while ago, that would have done the trick, but I got to be able to sleep at night. What I like about that 15 hp 2-stroke, is that it has a good power/weight ratio. My father in law has a newer, electric-start Honda 10 hp four-stroke on his big party boat on that lake, and it weighs about double what my 15 hp weighs. I get stuck hauling it up the steep stairs, to put it away for the winter, which is no easy task. My "updated" 1956, 5-1/2 hp Evinrude, 16:1 gas/oil mix 2-stroke is just a little lighter than the 1990 15 hp Johnson, but it still runs as smooth as a Swiss watch. I can't pull the girls around on water-skis with it on a 14 ft rowboat, like I could with that 15 hp however.

This motor has very low hours and is in good condition. I have mostly used it for backup for my boat's 70 hp Johnson, and only needed to use it one time for that purpose. It had enough power to get my 17 footer on plane with two guys in it. The little 5-1/2 Evinrude that I use for that purpose now will never do that. I am selling it because there is a 10 hp maximum hp limit on the lake where I now spend most of my "free" time. The photos were taken today. I put some fresh gas and it fired right up and still runs like it did when new. 6 gallon tank and fuel hose is included as well as owners manual and original bill of sale. Asking price: $ 550 cash, WNY local pickup.

I am enjoying the same beverage (my favorite "lunch" beer), along with an "unexpected" lunch. The freezer package was labeled "liver", but it turned out to be beef heart. Oh well, beggers can't be choosers, so I'll take what I can get from my beef farmer friends and family. I already had the cayene spiced flour and chopped onions ready to go so I went ahead and sliced it up and fried it as if it was liver. A little chewier, but tastes great and goes real good with the cream ale. All in all a pretty good "feast" to celebrate the completion of my spring plowing, which I just finished up this morning:

The water was bad in the Black Rock canal today also. It looked to be full of mud, flowing in from the Buffalo River, probably due to lots of rain over the last week. Lake Erie was generally clear however, with about 20 feet of visibility. We only spent about 10 minutes in the muddy water of the canal before heading back out on the the lake.

Silver lake was slow last week. The water was still very cold and we did not see any signs of any fish in the shallows. With the warm weather we have been getting the last few days, I think the action there should be picking up. Usually the pike bite along the edge of the weeds in the north and south ends is pretty good. My favorite bait there for those toothy critters is a jig and minnow. The water is usually very clear and I always have more luck "doubling" up my last foot or so of mono or flourocarbon line rather than using steel leaders. The lack of fees for launching is nice, at the state parks.

White, which is a perennial, so it will last several years, with nothing more than mowing a few times a year for maintenance. Red is taller and an annual.

It seemed slow. We got a very late start (the girls are not "early risers). There were quite a few bass boats out there but it did not look like anyone was hooking up. The one in the picture is the only one that we landed - looked to be about 17-1/2 inches, and we lost a couple more in the same general area. We tried a few drifts earlier by the outer wall, between the round-house and the "comorant lighthouse", then off Smokes creek with no action whatsoever. My favorite part was that they were not charging to put boats in at small boat harbor. Same deal at Silver last week. I guess there is some good in the Corona deal after all. Thank you governor Cumo.

A little bit of smallmouth bass action outside the South gap at Buffalo harbor on Lake Erie:

My wife is always ecstatic when I bring home a button buck. They are just so tender. Unfortunately, I only manage to come up with one every other year on average (this ought to be an "on" year, especially if that turnip patch produces like I hope it will).. Anything with antlers worries her a little, especially if it leads to a taxidermy bill and the loss of some wall space. I agree that it would be nice if the Southern zone deer season remained open until January 3rd or so. That would give me a few additional non-work days to hunt, without having to use vacation time, and I could deer hunt on my birthday.

I have hunted that area for the last 16 years. If you really want some venison, your best bet is to get yourself a ML and hunt that early week if you can. I see about (6) antlerless deer per every antlered one up there, and antlerless are "fair game" on that week only, with a ML (No DMP's are available). Turkey numbers fluctuate a bit and seem to be down a bit right now from the peak that I saw about 4 years ago. That might be due to an increase in coyote numbers. The fishing really is spectacular but there are consumption advisories that you should check out for women and children especially (probably because of mercury contamination / acid rain concerns), if you want to keep any for eating.

Fortunately, I have never needed to purchase field corn seed or soybeans, because much of my own and my wife's family's are in the Ag business, and there is always available "leftover". I have plenty of corn for this year and hopefully my nephew will come thru with some leftover soybeans in time for me to mix in with my early fall wheat/clover plantings. I used to use rye in the fall, but wheat is always easier for me to find, cheaper, and the deer seem to like it better, so that is what I have been using lately. It might also be the soybean "candy" that I have been adding to that fall mix that has been attracting them better the last few years. If you are able to, you might want to save a bit of soybeans for that usage. With the late frosts we have been getting (climate change ?), those late soybean plantings have been effective at drawing deer to the plots, early in archery season. It looks like I have a good spot for turnips this year (on that plowed strip just to the front of the willows). About (6) years ago, when that ground was at the same corn/clover rotation, I had a little turnip patch there. It is hard to beat a combination of standing corn and frozen turnip greens. I was able to take a fine button-buck, right from my bedroom window, with my ML in mid December that year. I had just got home from work and was glassing the standing corn. I watched him stand up and walk out to feed on turnips, about 5 minutes before sunset. Up goes the window, on goes the cap, and down goes the BB. That made for one fine Christmas feast.

We got a little rain last night. I just got back from a little turkey hunting near the back field that I hope to get plowed in the next few weeks. The warm weather is sure is making the grass grow fast, so I will probably need to bush-hog it before plowing. It is not easy taking that 6 ft bush hog on and off my tractor. It is on it now, so I will use it to cut that field in addition to the lane on the way back there (my pants are soaked right now from walking back thru the wet high grass). I need to take the bush-hog off for disking anyhow, but it looks like I have some more cutting to do first. No signs of any turkeys, but I did see the first few mosquitoes of the season, so it looks like that is the end of my turkey hunting. I have a couple of disks, both of which are sized just right for that old Ford (a 6.5 ft 3-point and an 8 ft pull-type), but a bit undersized for my John Deere 4wd. A nice thing about using the undersized implements, is that I can still use them if the soil conditions are less than ideal, which is usually the case. I usually use the 4wd JD on the disk, rather than the old 2wd Ford 8n, or my Allis Chalmers model C, since it is so much more fuel efficient thanks to the tier-3 diesel engine and the "live" front axle. I like the old Ford on the 2-row corn planter though, because it is so nice and quiet and the low operator platform makes it easy to get on or off from either side. I hop on and off of it a lot while planting, to check that the planter's seed and fertilizer hoppers are not empty and that they are delivering properly. The tricycle front, on the old Allis Chalmers C is great on the pull-type disk, but only after the ground is good and dry. The 8-footer is a bit too much for it otherwise, especially at the steeper angle settings.

It is real easy to grow stuff with minimal fertilizer on the dark bottomland soil at our place on the NW corner of WMU 9F. I can get well over 100 bu/acre corn with just 50 lbs/acre of starter fertilizer, and no later urea application, simply by planting it on a 3-4 year clover / 1 year corn rotation. The only trouble I have here is that some years (like last), it takes a long time for the ground to dry out enough in the spring to get my plantings in. My folks place, on the SE corner of the same WMU, is above the Onondaga escarpment, a bit rocky, but much better drained and takes more nitrogen to get good corn yields. There is enough cover over there, and surrounding cornfields that I no longer bother with that, or any spring plowing. That was always easy over there (except for the occasional rocks). The only thing I plant there is an occasional early fall "refresh" of wheat/soybean/white clover mix. White clover does about 90 % of the "deer-attraction" work for me over there. I had to do considerable work on that old tractor over the winter (new distributor and battery) but it really does a good job on the plow when the soil conditions are just right like they were yesterday. Some years, it is too wet to use it, and I need to go with my newer 4wd John Deere. That one will pull that little 2 x 12" plow thru standing water in the wet spots (it is kind of cool watching the wakes roll off of the plow shares). The 4wd lacks "draft-control" however, so it is tougher to maintain uniform plow depth with it, than with that old Ford. The Ford still has the original (1951) calcium-filled rear rims on it, but one is starting to look like it is getting ready to blow out from corrosion. When and if I need to replace those, I probably will not re-load them, or do any more plowing with it. It will still be good on my 2-row corn planter and cultivator, and better for hauling firewood around on the 3-point carryall, without loaded rear tires.

Could very well be. I don't recall that truck burning much oil though. I used to change it myself back then, every 3000 miles. These day, I go with Mobil 1 synthetic every 6000 miles, and let my buddy do it at his Mobil station.

1979 GMC, first antlered buck, Ithaca 37 in rack: I wonder where the truck is now. And the gun still works (for non-antlered deer last season):