Broke down and hanging it up for the season

 Well, my luck gave out this week forcing me into an early fishing retirement. 

Myself and a buddy made to Erie at sunrise, we were the only truck in the parking lot (that should've been a clue). This was only my 3rd trip to Erie this year so I was going to be fishing memories. I gave 0 consideration to the fact that Erie has had a NE blow for the past 3 days. Long story short, we fished for 11 hours boated a couple nice walleye (21") and a couple not so good but box fillers non the less. We ended up with 5 walleye (terrible) and a decent perch that we kept. 

Here's were it took a downturn, as if the fishing wasn't bad enough. To add insult to injury one of my reels wouldn't retrieve line, the handle would turn but the spool wouldn't turn. The bad part was I didn't realize it until I had the lure out 157' and had to thumb over thumb the line back in on the spool to get my lure back.

 Oddly enough this is the second reel that has broke like that this year, the other was my frogging reel that I've had for so long I can't remember when I got it.

The second breakage and most catastrophic was the trim stopped working on my big motor. This meant the skeg was only inches from the pavement and there is no way I would get out of the parking lot without breaking off the lower unit let alone driving home. So after breaking the boat down and getting everything put away we started to figure out the best way to get the motor to raise. The only way we could do it was to take off the trim motor and manually turn the trim up. It really was easier than it sounds however it will cost me a new trim motor because we destroyed the old one, which we thought was no good anyway. We weren't sure if it was a bad solenoid or the trim motor so more than likely I'll be buying both of them.

Anyway with so little left of my season and with not wanting to spend money 'til after my next vacation. It looks like I'll be winterizing and getting the boat ready for storage. 

I am kinda happy I'm stopping early because I really do have alot to get ready for vacation and hunting this year so this should give me the time I need to do all that.... stupid fishing.

Yeah sorry no pics we didn't get home 'til 11:30 the I still had to clean the fish... long day.