Good and the Bad.

The Good,
Went out today with my son Charles looking to score another limit on tog, last weekend got us all fired up lol.

We launched the boat around 9am and headed out to middle ground, on the way out all you could see was bunker, I haven't seen bunker like this ever.

We made a straight line for Middle ground and upon arrival we found about 40 boats all around the area we fished the last time so we looked for another spot.

Found a spot east of where we normally fish and dropped the hook, with no wind and the tide at slack, the boat just sat there the anchor was straight up and down.

Over went the 1 oz tog jigs and our spirits were high hoping for a repeat, well we sat there for 20 minutes without so much as a tug, decided we would go east a little more and headed

to can 7 off of L.I. and arrived just in time to find a school of bunker getting harassed by small blues, fooled with them for 30 minutes and then I pulled the chart out and started looking for

potential tog grounds, so after a 10 minute pow wow, we decided to head over to fishers Island.

Took us about an hour to get there and when we arrived there boats all along the reef, so I started looking for a good spot and found a nice lump and positioned the boat the best I could.

We came tight on the hook and to our surprise, the current was ripping, no 1 oz jigs here, we setup some heavier conventional rigs and dropped down with 8 0z of lead, well it scoped out too far from the boat, so we kept upping the weight till 16 oz was able to hold bottom, 10 minutes later I had my first keeper in the boat, nice 18" fish, we were fishing in 55 feet of water.

My son Charles hooks up next and his fish was 19.5 inches, nice Charles, in between we were getting very fat 15 to 15.5 in shorts, at least 12 ea. before I tied into a fish that got caught in the rocks.
I let the line go slack hoping he would come out, I could feel him running with the line but not to be, broke off ,this fish was big, we were using 50lb braid and had the drags set pretty tight, re rig and back in the water, My son hooks up with another 19 inch fish, so over to the gps I mark this spot, it was getting late in the afternoon and because we had an hour 20 minute ride back we decided to call it a day.

The Bad

The sun was right in my eyes making it hard to see anybody in front of , even with shades on, On the way in the bunker were everywhere, Branford light I saw a big bass jumping out of the water, I was like Holy sh!t!

We stopped for a brief moment to see if more bass were around but I think I may have spooked them.

So off we went, I set the rpms to 4400 and headed to Milford, everything was going great until we got to New haven when the motor started to sputter and I lost full throttle, no alarms but the motor just seem to lose horse power, the best I could get was 3900 rpms, so now I'm thinking what is going on, did I get some bad gas this morning when I filled up? not sure, I changed all the filters this year except the VST which I did 2 years ago, hmm , could be the problem, with the sun going down we made it to Milford Harbor, there was another boat behind us and when I slowed down the guys in the other boat were yelling at us, I turned around and it looked like the motor was on fire, I shut the motor off and smoke was pouring out of the engine cowl and the exhaust ports, the guys in the other boat just looked at us and passed us by, thanks for help guys, after the smoke cleared I started the engine back up, but it was missing really bad, I gave it some throttle but it was really running bad so we putt our way back to the dock.

Just when I thought I had this HPDI thing under control I get hit with something else, we got the boat on the trailer and my son says the engine smells funny,
I'm not sure what is going on but this type of problem I can't find anywhere on line. I'm hoping I didn't burn a piston, because that's what someone told me it might be.

So next week end I will be tearing down the engine and trying to find someone who has had this type of problem.

Never a dull moment on the "Buffer Overload" My new name for my boat. lol

We made it back safe and in spite of the engine problem, we had a good time, I mean how many more days are we going to get like we had this weekend?

Stay safe, keep healthy.
Jay