2nd Camping Trip of the year

[c4charlie]

A bit of a longer report here if you are interested...

Another camping trip with the boys this past weekend, game mom a rest. It was an interesting trip for sure. We get to the site, setup and there is a ton of already cut wood waiting for us. That was a pleasant surprise. Went fishing for the usual evening bite and had the usual sunfish, rock bass, and occasional smallie. Grilled up some dinner and we got ready for our night fishing trip to get some rainbows. We setup on a good spot and within minutes, we get a nice 18" rainbow that would become a very nice dinner the next day! It was slow and we caught a couple more so we waited until my younger son hooked up and then we called it a night.

Next day, did some fishing, snorkeling, swimming and crayfish hunting. We managed to find a bunch of crayfish that we had planned to feed to the smallmouth during dusk. We were heading back to the campsite from a quick midday fishing trip and all of a sudden motor goes from drive to out of gear and revs up like it was in neutral. Turn it off and then back on but propeller won't spin whether in drive or reverse. Luckily we have a trolling motor but unsure if it will get us back to the boat ramp the next day with a fully loaded boat especially because we used it a lot the previous day and ran an underwater light.

We did use the trolling motor briefly to get out to where the smallies are and began to feed them our crayfish. They loved them! We caught only smallmouth on them and 10-12 fish in a short period of time. They could not resist. The fish weren't that big but put up an incredible fight for the kids. We did get a nicer one to the boat but bolted out of the water and missed the my son's net and escaped. It was probably 2lbs or so. Kids had a blast. My buddy was jigging monster sunfish in the 9-11" range on an ice fishing rod.

So, that night as we were getting ready to sleep, a major storm comes through with absolutely no notice and lighting, thunder and major winds. I had to run like a chicken with my head off to make sure the stuff that should not get wet was sheltered.

The next morning, we decided to pack up early because we did not know what would happen and if we would make the 1-1.5 mile journey back with 4 people and a boat full of camping gear. The motor started out well although we had a 5mph head wind. By midway, I checked the voltage from the fish finder and we were down to 8 volts. 3/4 of the way, I tried to check again and the fish finder would not even go on. On the last leg, the motor was barely moving us a long and luckily the wind was now blocked by the land. We just made it to dock to end a very eventful camping trip.

Not sure what broke on the motor which has given me first pull start performance and not even a hiccup for the past 3-4 years and over 100 trips. I looked it over and the schematics to see if it was something simple. Seems like the gear linkage is all in the shaft and I did not want to take it apart so I dropped it off at the marine place yesterday.

Here are some pics!