MrGiggles

These are my favorite, quite a bit cheaper than Muck too. Neoprene isn't near as tough as rubber, it's pretty easy to snag on a sharp stick and tear, but it's a lot warmer and more comfortable to wear. I have a pair from last year that's been holding up well, aside from the aforementioned sharp stick incidents, they're only water tight up to the ankles. I wear them just about every day from November-April. https://www.tidewe.com/collections/hunting-boots/products/tidewe-hunting-boot-for-men-16 The ultimate cold weather boot is a Sorel Glacier. I think those are what Terrierman was getting at.

Search the part number on ebay.. Probably a used or NOS one out there somewhere.

I feel the same way about bass fishing. Throw a dog turd into the lily pads and catch yourself a bass every time. Big whoop.

Bobby Garland got bought out recently. Might have canned their bass stuff.

We definitely have a missing year class. 2020 and 2021 have been pretty underwhelming as far as crappie goes, a lot of short fish. That is changing now, all of those short fish from last spring are surpassing the minimum. The next couple years are looking promising. I think the pressure from peak Covid shutdowns in the 2020 spawn may have had something to do with it as well. Average size was really good up until then. We also may have had a killer spawn in 2019 from the floods. I'm no biologist so that is just conjecture though. I have also noticed that the big ones and little ones don't seem to hang together all that much. In my experience it's usually one or other for the most part. Might be in the same house, but not in the same bedroom, the shorts may be suspended near the top of the pile, while the bigger fish may be deeper along the fringes or only on one side, as an example. The short/keeper ratio on my last trip was probably close to 3:1, not many short fish on brush piles either.

I would've liked to have known that about 6 months ago. Had a lot of the same trouble with the Suzuki too, some days it was fine, on others it would take forever to pick up fuel on its own. I always heard that a fuel restriction would suck the primer flat. Is that true? A lot of primers are pretty stiff, I'm not sure that little pump has enough gusto to collapse it.

Found part of my fuel supply issues. That is the pickup straw in the tank, kinked almost shut. Looks like the top of the tank has warped a little bit with age, so the pickup was touching the bottom. I didn't have any submersible line that size, so I just shoved a piece of copper tubing inside of it so it can't kink and put it back together. I also did away with the quick coupler on the tank. I had it out again yesterday, had the same troubles. When it quit on me the primer bulb was totally empty. I did some more reading, since the ECM controls both fuel pumps, if it sees that the lift pump has ran for too long and hasn't tripped the float switch, it will set a code and alarm, same goes if the lift pump circuit is open or shorted. I suspect that is where my alarms are coming from, we'll find out pretty soon once my Vessel view dongle shows up.

Brush. Weedless jigs and a really sensitive setup will keep you from losing so much tackle. Braid and my 7' 2" Outlaw are the best I've found, and JR (the owner) is a super nice guy. If the fish are suspended above the pile, I can watch the jig fall on the graph and stop it at the top, can even watch the fish come it to it, you'll never lose a jig that way. But yesterday they were down in the pile and around the fringe, had to get in there with them and I lost a couple.

I was out too, good day. First spot I hit gave up 10 keepers in less than an hour and about that many shorts. One of those days you never forget, pretty much every dip was a fish. Biggest went 13.5, but most were barely legal, between 10 and 11".

Another astigmatism sufferer here. Was told ~15 years ago that contacts were not an option, that may have changed. I've been ordering glass from Zenni for several years now, and generally like them. Biggest problem is buying them without being able to try them on. My job is hard on lenses. Doesn't take long for a spark or welding BB to get behind the lenses somehow and leave a mark. I prefer poly lenses because of the safety aspect. I was told that lasik is best done later in life, my vision is still getting worse at 28, I've had two prescription changes and am due for another. I am near sighted and have a lot of trouble reading road signs and stuff. I'm totally on board with it though, since I hate wearing glasses.

It does have a cooling coil and water running through the FSM. It would be easy enough to loop them and bypass the cooler for testing purposes.

What you listed are the only things that should trip a solid alarm. The other puzzler is that none of the above should shut it down completely, but limit power to varying degrees, by Mercs "engine guardian" or whatever they call it. Voltage crossed my mind first, I checked the cables on the battery end on the water and they were fine. It's full of oil and the water pressure was fine. It hasn't spit a rod out of the block, so it must have oil pressure. I'll get a gauge for that eventually to fill the hole in my dash that used to hold the Suzuki monitor. I think those fuel pumps can cause an alarm too, being that they were just messed with leaves them as a suspect as well.

Second trip was much more productive, but not without issues. Performance wise I got 37mph at 6200. That's with a 17P 4 blade. I think a 19P 3 blade would be about perfect. It sounded a solid alarm shortly after take off twice, at which point it would stall shortly after, just like you turned the key off, and wouldn't restart. Let it sit for a couple minutes and it would crank right up like nothing ever happened. I'll need to get their vessel view deal to do any kind of troubleshooting there, since there are several things that can trigger the solid alarm.

Funny you mention that. I'm closing on a 30x60 building here in town next Friday that would make an excellent shop space. One of those word of mouth deals that I wasn't really expecting or ready for, but I will likely never find a deal like it again, with real estate doing what it is. I would like to start working out of it on my own, doing automotive but perhaps marine as well. What I'm lacking there is experience. Cars kind of suck to work on, I prefer outboards and boats. Wish you were closer, it's an hour and a half up there. This is our slow time of year and it wouldn't be a big deal to take a couple days off every week. I'll have to do a little thinking about it, the extra money and experience may be well worth it, if you were serious.

Got the pumps replaced, prop changed, and new cables routed. Fuel pressure improved and it seems to be picking it up from the tank better. Hoping to have it back out on Sunday.

For every one of those, there are many, many, others that lost their posterior.

I think the well established coins (ETH, BTC) are solid long term investments. All of the same rules from the stock market apply, diversify, DCAing, etc.. You could read about crypto for weeks and still not really understand it. Pretty complicated stuff that I haven't even began to understand. Approach it with your brain (like anything else), don't dump your life savings into DOGE or SHIB or whatever happens to be coin of the week. Those are fine if you're into high risk, high reward plays, not the way to go for steady growth.

Brush piles hold crappie year round. Which ones depend on the time of year. Mouths of coves and main lake for winter/summer, and in coves near spawning grounds in the spring and fall. If brush piles aren't producing in the winter, you can also follow the river channel and look for schools of shad with your side imaging. Get right on top of them and drop a spoon, jig and plastic, or jigging rap into it. Don't be surprised if you hook a white or walleye. Slow is the name of the game in the winter. While fishing brush, I'll get right over the top of the pile, drop a jig down in it, and pull it up half a crank at a time, pausing in between. They'll usually thump it on the pause. You'll want weedless jigs, and a rod that's sensitive enough for you to be able to tell the difference between a limb and a crappie. If you're getting caught on a limb on the way up, don't jerk, let the jig fall a little bit and try again, it'll come through. If you sink the hook in, you'll never get it back. Brush piles are a lot of trial and error, if you aren't getting anything on one pile, hit the next one and keep moving. If you haven't, load the MDC waypoints onto your graph. Many don't have signs, and it makes them way easier to find even if they do. Standing timber along the river channel can be dynamite in the winter too. Don't forget bridge pilings either.

You'll crap your pants when you see the prices on some of the stuff in there. It's cheaper to buy a whole module assembly for 1000 bucks than it is to piece meal it with new pumps, float, seals, etc. if you're buying it all from Merc.

So it has a water cooled mini fuel tank deal that Merc calls a fuel sending module, with both a low and high pressure pump inside, all electric. No mechanical pump, and it's all contained inside the FSM. All of the screens are clear, the lift pump will pull fuel without a problem out of the tank, through all of the hoses and plumbing that it normally would. I guess it's possible that the float switch was sticking, I'll need to inspect it closer when I out the new pumps in. I did check the fuel pressure the other day, which was acceptable, but that doesn't mean much at idle.

I pulled the FSM apart, did not really find much, the low pressure pump seems to work just fine and the float is doing what it's supposed to. I did find that the high pressure pump seal is not in great shape. I'm going to replace the pumps anyway, 10 years is a pretty good run for EFI pumps, especially in this environment. I'm also going to do away with the Mercury quick connector on the tank. I had some of the same trouble with the Suzuki, makes me wonder if it's on the boat side.

Maiden voyage went pretty well but wasn't without trouble. The low pressure fuel pump doesn't seem to be working right, if at all. Prime it up and it'll go for a while, start losing power, prime it up, rinse and repeat. I'll need to pull the FSM and see if the float switch is working correctly. The boat sits probably 2 inches lower in the water, not the best but even if I stand on the transom, the splashwell drain is still above water. I got 29mph briefly bouncing off the rev limiter, running the 12P pontoon prop, still waiting for the hub kit that'll fit the 17P 4 blade that I have laying around. Should be about right for this setup. Pomme gave up a few crappie too, so not a bad trip.

I've had a few but don't usually keep anything for the long haul. Like Wrench says Merc's parts availability is annoying. I suspect that stems from their outsourcing of powerheads. They had a partnership with Yamaha going way back that dissolved in 2006, and their recent small motors are made by Tohatsu. You see the same thing with other companies that outsource.

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There are only a few battery manufacturers that supply each brand. Interstate, Everstart, Pro series and Duralast are all made by Johnson Controls. Super Start is made by Deka. By that logic I figure you might as well get the one that's cheapest. They all suck and 4-5 years is about all you'll get if you're lucky. With all of the equipment here on the farm, I've never seen one brand hold up better than any other. I really don't see the appeal of AGMs either, with prices approaching that of lithiums. Check out used Valence batteries on Ebay. They're pulled from medical equipment and a lot of people use them for solar, RVs, big boats, etc. Pretty reasonable for what they are.