If you read my personal account of the James River Northern Open last month, James River Jinx, you know that an outboard problem foiled that tournament for me. I thought I had fixed the malady the first day, only to have it reoccur the second morning.
When I pushed the Hot Foot to the metal, the engine would shut down.
Back home in Ohio after the tournament, I had the fuel pickup in the gas tank replaced. I ran the boat at full throttle for several miles immediately afterward. It performed flawlessly.
I drove to Oneida Lake the week prior to the Northern Open #2 there, relieved to have the motor issue behind me. I set up my tent camp at Oneida Shores Park, a superb facility where the tournament was to take place.
I launched my boat, tied it off to one of the docks at the ramp and breathed deeply as I looked out over the water. The waning afternoon sun cast a warm hue over Oneida, a gorgeous body of water that teems with smallmouth and largemouth bass.
I had a week to ply Oneida and unlock its secrets before the tournament was to begin. Life was good.
I started the outboard, idled away from the launch area and stepped on the throttle. The boat leaped on plane, ran for 30 seconds and then shut down. It was exactly the same problem as before!
I spent most of the next four days in near panic, trying to get my vexing motor disorder fixed. All the area marinas were backed up with work and couldn’t squeeze me in.
I tried troubleshooting the problem with outboard motor mechanics over the phone. One suggested that a switchbox might be the problem. I spent $250 on a new switchbox and installed it. It proved a waste of time and money.
I did some practice fishing near the boat ramp during this time, mainly on my electric motor. I found some respectable largemouth and a few smallmouth, but not enough fish to do well in the tournament.
The outboard would idle and run at a low speed, but it wouldn’t start for at least an hour after I shut it off. I didn’t venture far because I feared the engine would quit completely.
I met fellow Ohioan Jonathan Shoemaker at the boat ramp. When he learned of my motor trouble, he generously invited me to fish with him and his friend Tyler Berthold one afternoon. I readily accepted.
Shoemaker competed in the Open on the pro side from a deep V-hull, a boat that he also uses to fish walleye tournaments. Tyler fished as a co-angler.
We spent a blustery afternoon sampling different areas around the lake. We caught three largemouth bass, walleye, perch, rock bass and scads of pike but no smallmouth. We found nothing promising.
At noon on the Monday prior to the tournament, the first official practice day, I drove to Schwarzel Marine in Hockingport, Ohio. This family owned and operated business has two outstanding bass boat mechanics, John Schwarzel and his son Blain.
I arrived at Schwarzel Marine at 8:30 p.m. that evening. Blain patiently worked on my outboard until 11 p.m. and solved my perplexing problem.
For you gear heads reading this, the culprit was a tiny speck of dirt under the needle valve that regulates the float in the lower two of the six carburetors. (My outboard is a carbureted 1999 Mercury XR6 150 hp.) The speck of dirt prevented the needle valve from shutting off the incoming flow of fuel.
When I pushed the Hot Foot down, fuel would gush into the lower carburetors and flood them, shutting down the bottom two pistons.
How the speck of dirt got in there is a mystery. The fuel filter should have caught it. I suspect that it was in the carburetor before I bought the boat.
Other than the speck of dirt, the carburetors were shiny clean inside. I use Star Tron Enzyme Fuel Treatment regularly. It not only combats the harmful effects of ethanol and moisture, it cleans the engine.
I drove back to Oneida the next day on three hours sleep and salvaged what little practice time I had left. I failed to find anything worthwhile.
I can blame exhaustion, but that is pretty much the normal condition for any serious tournament angler. I simply failed to make good decisions.
My first day partner was New York angler Wesley Coy. His primary bait was a wacky rigged drop shot. That day I hooked three bass on a Texas rigged drop shot worm. I landed a 3-pound largemouth, lost another that size and had a keeper smallmouth jump off.
Coy hooked three bass and landed two, one of which was a 4-2 largemouth. I was around quality bass, but not enough of them.
My partner the second day was Pennsylvania’s James Mignanelli. He was in 13th place after fishing for smallmouth bass the first day with Elite Series pro Mike Kernan.
Mignanelli had a good shot at making the final Top 12 cut. It would have taken a miracle for me to climb to 40th place, which earns the last check.
I pretty much abandoned my largemouth water and took Mignanelli to places where I thought he would have a chance to sack a three-bass limit of the brown ones.
By this time I had learned that the smallmouth were schooling. And, that anglers fishing for schooling bass had lugged many of the heavier limits to the scales the first day.
The smart thing to do was to run straight for one of the groups of fishermen that were clustered in areas about the lake where the smallmouth were schooling. However, I don’t feel right crowding in on other people when I did not fish there the first day.
Mignanelli and I bounced around and did our best to find our own fish. It was a grind. I hooked four smallmouth and landed three keepers. Mignanelli hung tough and landed the final two smallmouth he needed to fill his limit late in the day. He finished in 14th place as a co-angler and earned a nice payday.
The only tournaments I’ve fished the past two years are the Bassmaster Northern Opens. After suffering through back-to-back disasters this year, I’m left with a final chance for a decent outing at Lake Erie’s western basin.
Because I write this post-game article after every Open I compete in, I get a sense of the pressure that the Elite Series pros face. When I have a horrendous outing, I can’t sneak quietly into the night unnoticed. I have to tell you all about it.
This pales next to the pressure the pros cope with. When they have a bad tournament, they have to answer to their sponsors. It is an absolutely brutal gut wrench.
Of course, I don’t have to put myself through the sleepless nights, the exhausting days, the humbling tournaments and the expenses that fishing the Bassmaster Opens have thrown in my path.
I could conceded that, at age 67, I am far past my prime, that I don’t get enough time on the water to be truly competitive, that my Walter Mitty dream of winning a Bassmaster Open and qualifying for the Bassmaster Classic is an unattainable fantasy.
All I would have to do to bring peace to my life is to quit fishing the Bassmaster Opens.
I would sooner quit breathing.
See photos from Mark’s Oneida trip here.