Spring cleaning

Normally September  heralds a bit of a lull; game birds are over, trout season is a month away... so far the snapper fishing seems patchy; however we are in the grips of a (dreaded) north easterly which has brought warmth, and rain, and no doubt will help the warmer water reach our shores which in turn will trigger snapper into spawning. Right now, schools of bait fish are still offshore accompanied by hunting dolphins and gannets and some reports of good fishing on plastics and slow jigs are beginning to come in.

Being weather-bound, I had a bunch of maintenance tasks to get through.

First, my old Tibor Gulfstream had been drag-slipping somewhat. No matter how tight I had screwed in the drag knob last time out the drag eased and slipped. Not great with a kingi rampaging on the other end.... luckily (?) I hadn't hooked anything large enough to do the rampaging, but still. These things are a cruise to service, simple draw-bar design makes it a cinch, the only gotcha is to watch out for the A/R springs but I give them a good grease coating so they don't wander off easily (I once spent a couple of hours searching around for an Abel A/R spring that lept across the room... not fun). Actually the Tibors come with spare springs tucked away in a wee orifice, which is good thinking. Once apart I checked the drag plate, cleaned it, gave it a once over quick touch up with fine sand paper and cleaned again. Once re-assembled it was restored to it's full drag powers, so I set it up on the #12 and tested the drag over a pulley and lifted 7kg easily enough on a pretty flat rod angle. The drag was smooth as a baby's bum.

Then I noticed that the loop-to-loop on the reel end of the #12 floater was looking worse for wear (not sure why as it has only been through the guides once that I can remember) so I replaced that.

Made sure all the fly rods had survived their winter neglect ok and they had.

Onto the other gear. Re-spooled the 6kg spin reel with new braid. Actually used some 4.5kg Gortex stuff and got 220m on the spool, pretty impressive on a 4000 sized reel. Checked guides for cracking and then checked the reels. The old SL30sh Daiwa needed a new bearing so dropped that into Hunts. And, as you do, had a good chin-wag with Ian and Roger. Good guys and supporting your local is important.

Back home it was time to shake down the boat. First thing I noticed was that some dick-wad had nicked my Warrant of Fitness sticker. Secondly, the number plate light was out of action. Took the motor cover off and checked for corrosion, but all was good. On with the ear-muffs and she started pretty much straight away, very encouraging. Out with the drills etc to install some Railblaza stuff that Tim had got for me. I like the low profile star port system, anything to avoid line catching when fly fishing. JBFC sat in the boat offering encouragement as I installed 4 new rod holders. Then vacuumed up the ali filings. Boat almost done, still need to replace the plate lamp and get a warrant replacement.

What I didn't anticipate though, with thoughts of fish and tackle maintenance dominating, was the enormity of the rain that arrived this morning. If my spring cleaning/maintenance had extended to the house I may have noticed the broken roof tiles that caused a pretty epic leak......