safety

On my last trip to Liberty and temps around 20 degrees I put my cellphone on the deck of my boat as I usually do,so it is always close at hand. On this day we decided to make the run to the canyon area which for my boat takes a little over an hour at 3/4 speed. When we reached our destination I got a text from my wife, and when I went to reply my phone shut down due to low battery. I always make sure my phone is fully charged before I go fishing. So it had to be the below freezing temps that took their toll on my phone! After that I put the phone back in my coat pocket with my handwarmers next to it. About an hour later I checked my phone and guess what? It was fully charged !!! So the lesson I learned is keep your phone out of the cold temperatures. Also if this should happen to you, don't panic, as long as your phone had a decent charge it should be ok. I hope this helps! See you on the water.

Note to self: “when you are planning to spend more time on the water, don’t rebuild your boat starting in late March”. One big mistake I made when building my reservoir rig 6 years ago, was to use wood for the deck. Since I needed to replace my batteries this season, I decided to replace the wood decks with aluminum, including extending the elevated front deck, and adding storage. Being high and dry in April notwithstanding, the decision is one that I am still happy with. The wood deck and supporting members were too heavy and became much heavier in wet weather. The change to aluminum decks will substantially reduce weight, improve safety, and the redesign will provide a much better fishing platform. Unfortunately, weather and work commitments forced me to start the process late in March. As a result, neither my boat nor I have touched the water in 2014. With a little luck, it should be ready in the next 10 days. This has to be the only year since I was 10 years old that I have made it to mid-April without wetting a line. The rest of the 2014 campaign plan is still in effect. More to come…

Interesting to read....

http://www.mde.state.md.us/programs/Water/TMDL/DraftTMDLforPublicComment...

I've spent a fair amount of tie on the reservoirs and my fishing partner has spent a whole bunch more but we were totally unprepared for what happened today.

Following last Sunday's tournament we carefully planned our first trip to Loch Raven since April of this year. We watched the weather forecasts and determined that today would be the best day of the week to get out and begin to prepare for our next tournament. Now we all know that weathermen are the most unreliable, unapologetic pieces of cow dung to walk the face of the earth. And today was no different.

Instead of partly sunny skies and no rain, Ron and I enjoyed ourselves being doused by approximately two inches of liquid sunshine (that must have been what the weathermen were talking about) through the course of the day. I can't remember the last time the bilge pump got this kind of a workout.

While the rain was quite a story unto itself, what happened about 2:00 was something we have heard stories about but have never witnessed, nor do we ever hope to see or experience again.

We were working down a shoreline and Ron turned to retie his lure when I heard a strange "pulling" noise and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I began to call "look out" and just that quick a 50ft+ tall tree uprooted, hitting Ron in the leg and landing square across my boat. Fortunately Ron was hit with a relatively glancing blow to the thigh and he was at the portion of my boat where the deck drops down about 16 inches below the gunwales so the tree did not pin him underneath. But it sure did knock him to the deck fast enough!

The tree was not huge, maybe 10" in diameter, but it was all that the two of us could do to lift the tree up as we scooted the boat from underneath. I don't want to think what could have happened had it hit Ron on the shoulder or in the head.

Anyway, with all this rain that we have had, it's just one more thing to think about. Have fun!