bfishn

Good on you Daryk. Having had to buy somebody else's junk and overhaul it to machine level was the only way I ever had a vehicle or outboard, just the way I was brought up. My life took a detour and for the last 15 years I haven't had enough spare time to change my oil. I can't really say that I miss that though... I like your pictures too. No posing, just whacha got. Get a good scald on that motor and grab a couple extra carb & FP kits and impellers while you can, and that one could outlast you,

Brutha' Ray with AI colorization below. ...not that the brutha needed (or wanted) color added mind you. Cheers! I

Attaboy! It's definitely that time.

Congratulations Ham!

Wrench has a lot more recent experience than I. Listen to him.

I know little about Livescope, but the "water ground" instruction is valid for trolling motors and associated electronics. It simply means connecting to your starting battery ground, as your outboard case is "ground" just like a car. When the big motor is in the water, that's a water ground. If you plan to 'scope with the motor up, you might need to go further if the 'scope requires it. The main reason that I know of for this is electrolysis. If there's even a slight potential difference between the big motor ground and the TM ground, current will flow thru the water between the two, and whichever is relatively positive will sacrifice surface material... not good. I always ran a jumper from my 24V TM ground to my starting battery ground and never had any issues.

Another year gone by. Hoping everyone here has something to be Thankful for. My traditions include the following (again). The real "Alice" just passed away this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxD_gNROIhM And the heart-rending “The Last Waltz”. (2 hours).

курица десять долларов (Chicken, ten dollars)

That's a lunker sculpin! I've never seen one that big. (unless you have really tiny hands...) 🙂

Cool. If conditions downstream allowed for escapees to collect, they might get 1/3 of them back. At best.

Cool! Hearing that drag sing is some pretty music for sure!

To answer the rest of your question, (hardly as thoroughly as the post I lost), by the 4th year I was hatching 20K at a time. About 65% went thru the fishout, where I was unforgettably blessed with the privilege of personally helping around 10K kids catch their first fish. Cane poles and bobbers. What a hoot! My wife and I (with rare occasional help) cleaned, bagged and iced every single fish. The other 35% went to restaurants, other trout farms, live stocking, and even striper guides. The last few years I hosted and catered many large events for local clubs and companies, primarily hog roasts and smoked trout.. For starting with nothing, I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished, but the 24/7 routine killed our marriage, and the Cooper CEO decided he wanted to build a house and live there, so the place has been closed to the public since. A real shame since that's the absolute coolest place in this area. There's hope now however, the Walton boys purchased the place in one of their recent package deals, and I've been approached by a "friend of a friend" regarding my knowledge of it. Fingers crossed (and bleeding).

Wow, I just lost a lengthy reply somehow, and don't have it in me again at the moment. This old Vista article gives a decent summary; https://bvwv.nwaonline.com/news/2020/jul/01/opinion-trout-farm-part-of-bella-vista-history/

Cool! They wouldn't have been my fish until '90, but I'm sure others lost some too. Heck, there was a pool just across the street in the discharge just above the dump to Little Sugar where I was able to throw-net hundreds of pounds over the years and bring them home. Never considered the legality of that, they were my fish, and they wouldn't last long in much warmer waters below. Yeah, the cave flooded too, and puked gravel on the big ones. No one had removed any of that forever, so when I got there everything on the upper end was buried in feet of it, and the 4 - 6" lines from the cave box were chock full, and the covered fingerling raceway the pipes fed were abandoned. I made it all work again, only to have a giant oak destroy the roof. The really bad floodwater didn't enter the picture until you were downstream of the hatchery/fingerling bldgs, right at the head of the feedout raceways. A large hollow draining much of trailer hill rolled in there, and it became way more than a gullywasher at times, bringing all the leaves and debris in the holler with it. The debris instantly plugs the raceway screens and they overflow if you can't keep up with cleaning them. Same thing at the fishout pond. I spent many nights in waders cleaning screens and constantly reassessing the conditions. I largely kept my crop as a result, but then you get one that you have to walk away from.

As a former trout farmer this hits home so hard it hurts. There are so many things that can go wrong, but if you're on your game you can predictably win. Except for floods. When your contained body of water joins with a surface flow it's all over. I was on my game, but floods wiped me out 2 years out of 10. It should have been some consolation to know that some of my fish were caught on their way to Oklahoma, but it wasn't. Then there's the gravel. If any part of the inlet was piped instead of diverted, the pipes are now full of it. A little water gets thru, but you can't run on it. I was able to cleanout ~100' each of 2 - 6" pipes by feeding a length of mono down thru the gravel. Took 4 months at inches a day. It finally came out the other end and I pulled a 16GA SS cable thru with it, ended up with a rope and a log chain, and I got them opened again. I have to feel even sorrier for any hatchery manager working on public funding. Rarely are they allowed to do what they choose, based on their experience at the facility.