Well,
As anyone who runs the susky on regular basis knows, the water is getting pretty skinny. I was in a tournament down towards berwick this past saturday. I am not very familiar with the river down that way, as I mostly fish from Wilkes Barre down to Wapwallopen. So to prepare for the tournament I took several full days on the water to prefish/investigate. All was well, but this was at a level of 3' on the Wilkes Barre gauge. Unfortunately the river dropped for a week and a half leading up to the tournament, and was reading 1.3' on the gauge Saturday morning. I knew I was going to have some trouble, but had already committed to the tournament.
All was fine for the first 2 hours of the tourney, with the exception of me loosing an entire box of spinnerbaits on the initial run down the river (the wind caught them and chucked em overboard. #-o )
Then It happened. There is some construction on the I80 bridge which channeled the water through one side of the bridge. Running up there at approx 3/4 throttle (35mph) I smacked a rock HARD on the bottom of the boat. We both felt it smack the hull of the boat. At that point I ran the additional 100yds or so to get to some deeper water, and shut it down. I pulled the door for the gas tank open to see if there was any water coming in the boat and it was dry. I knew there would be a battle wound on the hull, but figured we had survived.
Roughly a half hour later the trolling motor just stopped working. (this was turning out to be a really bad day on the water) I knew we were going to be floating over some skinny water, so I raised the Jet, and saw this:
I didn't notice any issues with performance coming out of the hole, or on plane at part throttle, but when I tried to go WOT the boat would start to porpoise badly. I knew we had to go back through the shallow riffles to get to the launch, and didn't want to risk any further damage of the impeller, or worse driveshaft if a large rock managed to get sucked into the window I had created in the jet foot. With no trolling motor, and an injured jet, I looked at my buddy and he nodded. It was the end of the road for us in this tourney. Not exactly what I had in mind, but all part of the risk in running in skinny water.
Soo fast forward to monday. My plan was to go with a Rockproof intake so I wouldn't have this problem again. Apparently they do not make an intake big enough for my application. S***. now what do I do?
I called Top Notch CNC to ask them about a new UHMW foot for the boat. John was awesome. Gave me all of the info I needed, and told me that he would CNC it, shave the fins, and get it out ASAP. He wasn't kidding. I paypal'd him $500.85, and 24hrs later the new foot was at my door. Installation was a breeze and, in a half hour with nothing more than a hammer, metal punch, and a 1/2" wrench I was back in action.
Also managed to get the troller fixed. Never realized there was a breaker on the battery terminal. #-o
So, now that I am operational again, I called Jim Starkey, and am looking into UHMWing the entire hull of the boat. His price quote was reasonable, and he just needed me to send pics to make sure he can do it to a stepped hull like mine. estimated 2 week turn around time. If all goes well I will be driving the boat to VA to get get made into a bulletproof led sled. :lol:
As anyone who runs the susky on regular basis knows, the water is getting pretty skinny. I was in a tournament down towards berwick this past saturday. I am not very familiar with the river down that way, as I mostly fish from Wilkes Barre down to Wapwallopen. So to prepare for the tournament I took several full days on the water to prefish/investigate. All was well, but this was at a level of 3' on the Wilkes Barre gauge. Unfortunately the river dropped for a week and a half leading up to the tournament, and was reading 1.3' on the gauge Saturday morning. I knew I was going to have some trouble, but had already committed to the tournament.
All was fine for the first 2 hours of the tourney, with the exception of me loosing an entire box of spinnerbaits on the initial run down the river (the wind caught them and chucked em overboard. #-o )
Then It happened. There is some construction on the I80 bridge which channeled the water through one side of the bridge. Running up there at approx 3/4 throttle (35mph) I smacked a rock HARD on the bottom of the boat. We both felt it smack the hull of the boat. At that point I ran the additional 100yds or so to get to some deeper water, and shut it down. I pulled the door for the gas tank open to see if there was any water coming in the boat and it was dry. I knew there would be a battle wound on the hull, but figured we had survived.
Roughly a half hour later the trolling motor just stopped working. (this was turning out to be a really bad day on the water) I knew we were going to be floating over some skinny water, so I raised the Jet, and saw this:
I didn't notice any issues with performance coming out of the hole, or on plane at part throttle, but when I tried to go WOT the boat would start to porpoise badly. I knew we had to go back through the shallow riffles to get to the launch, and didn't want to risk any further damage of the impeller, or worse driveshaft if a large rock managed to get sucked into the window I had created in the jet foot. With no trolling motor, and an injured jet, I looked at my buddy and he nodded. It was the end of the road for us in this tourney. Not exactly what I had in mind, but all part of the risk in running in skinny water.
Soo fast forward to monday. My plan was to go with a Rockproof intake so I wouldn't have this problem again. Apparently they do not make an intake big enough for my application. S***. now what do I do?
I called Top Notch CNC to ask them about a new UHMW foot for the boat. John was awesome. Gave me all of the info I needed, and told me that he would CNC it, shave the fins, and get it out ASAP. He wasn't kidding. I paypal'd him $500.85, and 24hrs later the new foot was at my door. Installation was a breeze and, in a half hour with nothing more than a hammer, metal punch, and a 1/2" wrench I was back in action.
Also managed to get the troller fixed. Never realized there was a breaker on the battery terminal. #-o
So, now that I am operational again, I called Jim Starkey, and am looking into UHMWing the entire hull of the boat. His price quote was reasonable, and he just needed me to send pics to make sure he can do it to a stepped hull like mine. estimated 2 week turn around time. If all goes well I will be driving the boat to VA to get get made into a bulletproof led sled. :lol:
