Well, the 2012-2013 tournament season is over for me.  The 2013-2014 season is right around the corner.  And what an end it was.  My Partner and I qualified for the Total Bass Addicts 2 day Championship at Roosevelt Lake.  Got up to the lake 2 days early for time to pre-fish and get ready.  My pre-fish didn't go as well as I had hoped but I have a lot of time on Roosevelt Lake so I was confident my partner and I would do well.

Knowing the bite was tough and having drawn boat 20 we knew we might have to go to Plan B for our first Stop.  Much to my surprise our first spot was open the taking.  Having a nice fish come unbuttoned on the way to the boat started our day off.......  But, soon we had two fish in the livewell.  Maybe things were looking better.... 

Well we fished the area and trolled around through a few neighboring coves and beat a lot of water.  About 9:15 a.m. we decided to make a move to another location.  That's when things got interesting.  I fired up the main motor and let it warm for a minute and took off!  I just love fast hold shots...and my Legend Boat is very fast out of the hole.  Having come to plain, several seconds later I heard a loud noise and came to a stop...then a very bad noise of a main motor running rough.  Bad thoughts!!! What the heck just happened.....wondering what just broke.....first I trimmed the motor up to see if the lower was broke...it all seemed to be there, no holes or cracks.. then we pulled the cowling off and I laid over the motor to see if I could find some sign of trouble.  OMG!  The motor shot one of the plugs clean out of the plug hole and there it was dangling from the plug wire.  WOW! what the * just happened!

While my partner kept fishing I attempted to reinstall the plug in the head.  Being Mr. organized, and having cleaned up my gear I forgot to put my tools back in the boat.  What now?  I did not want to run the motor with a loose plug and either blow it out again or run the cylinder to lean so I figured I had only one choice and that was to troll back to the dock and try to find someone who had a plug wrench. 

You can't make this stuff up....  Off we went with the trolling motor on high and my partner says. 'well at least we have a really good trolling battery!'  I responded.... and not a minute later the trolling motor shut down.  Now what?  Well we finally got some power back after finding a circuit breaker blown.....but we only bad 12 volts of power going to the 36 volt trolling motor.  So as you can imagine with the dial on high we were moving at turtle speed and we were still a mile away from the dock.  And!! its 105 degrees, humid and very sunny with almost no breeze.... brutal!

Well a long story short...we made it back.  We found a plug wrench and installed the plug...but my main battery was quite low and the trolling motor battery had been drained....cause unknown.  Not knowing if there was any internal damage to the big motor and in need of battery recharging...we weighed our 3 fish...oh and yes, as we were trolling back, my partner caught another fish as I was on the phone getting help...yep I netted it with my phone in one hand and the net in the other!  We were done... 4 hours into day one of a two day championship..... 

So far, no known damage other than pride.  So far all is well...trolling motor, battery and main motor all survived and boat will see the water this week for a test run.  And hey...we got a prize for the least amount of fish weighed on day one!  Who would have thunk!

Thanks to my Bride and all of my sponsors for your support and the opportunity to use and promote the best products available in the water!

Thanks Kevin for your hours of unconditional support over the phone!  You are a great guy, sponsor and friend!

Thanks Chris...was a great season bud!