Fishing today

rogerbum

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C Dory Year
2008
C Dory Model
255 Tomcat
Vessel Name
Meant to be
Interesting fishing day. Went with a friend (who will remain unnamed). Got up around 2:30 AM, made sandwiches and got my gear together and met him at 3:30AM. Drove down to Chinook WA and launched his boat around 6:45AM. Pounded out against wind and waves for 10-15 minutes and realized it was too nasty to fish where we were at that point in time - 20-25kt winds from the SSE. Came back in, loaded the boat and went for breakfast. Looked at a detailed forecast and the winds were supposed to lessen around 11AM.

Decided to go upstream a bit (where the winds were a tad calmer) and cross over to the Oregon side (the wind was from the south so it would be calmer over there). Drove over the Astoria bridge and just as we crested the high portion on the South side, one of the wheels came off his trailer! Fortunately he had a twin axle trailer and the other wheel on that side did the job until we could get safely off the bridge. Got off in the first available parking lot and some nice guys pulled in behind us asking "Did you lose something?". They had the wheel that came off in their truck and nicely returned it to us.

Tire on that wheel was fine but the wheel was so-so (some of the holes for the lug bolts were now elongated). Worse yet the wheel hub was toast. The oil bearing cap had sheared off and the fill port for the oil bearings was AFU'd. So it's Sunday AM in Astoria and we need a new wheel hub for an EZ Loader trailer. Dropped the trailer and drove to the NAPA auto parts store in Warrington OR fully expecting to be disappointed but low and behold, they had a wheel hub that would fit and it was only $69.95. My buddy bought that, some grease, some paper towels, a hammer (so we could pound on the seal later) and some hand cleaner - about $100 total. Back to trailer and changed out the hub and put on the spare tire. Back in business and only lost around 1.5-2 hours due to this mishap. Buddy admitted it was his fault as he changed that tire a couple of weeks ago and didn't tighten the lug bolts after lowering the jack (DOH!). He was pissed at himself, I was amazed he admitted to that stupidity. Most guys (and probably me) would have been mad internally but would have pretended they had "NO IDEA why the wheel came off" externally.

So we decided to fish anyway and got the boat in the water around 11:30/noon. Fished until 3PM and had only one hit. Fortunately it was on my rod and it stuck. We landed a nice 14# or so hatchery male coho. So another day, another salmon. That's what I remember. Not the "epic fail" as my friend characterized the day.
 
does this friend of yours host a website??
 
Nope - doesn't host a web site that I know of. Works for Amazon.
 
Another tandem saves the day. That could have been ugly with a single axle trailer. Most all of us pulling trailers has had one of those "days from hell" we would like to forget. Really ugly when you have no one to blame but yourself. :cry

H :wink:
 
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