fred | simonet

I decided to install wood floors in the pink room in time for the Christmas party we host every year. I planned to do this over the Thanksgiving holiday. The room also has a small closet. As things go with older homes, a simple job turned into a 4-week project. After emptying the rooms, I noticed the drywall in the closet was in treble shape. It looked as if the previous owner enlarged the closet. Unfortunately, they took a short cut on the drywall finishing. They tried to blend the smooth finish of the addition to the existing rough finish. It didn’t look good. I had to fix it.
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Mark, David, Melody (David’s wife), and I went to Breton Sounds on the hunt for Speckled Trout on July 3^rd. We took my boat since I was eager to try out my new trolling motor. I hit the road at 2:30am to try to get ahead of all the other fisherman giving it was a holiday weekend. We got to the boat launch right at dawn. There were only a few boats in line, to our surprise. We quickly got into the water, loaded the boat with 150 live shrimp, and were on our way. The wind was light and the tide was out.
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Since the first fishing trip with my boat, I noticed the Motor Guide trolling motor that came with the boat was not powerful enough for my 21ft Fish Master boat. It worked well in charm waters, but didn’t have enough power to control the boat in strong winds or tides. This caused me to use my anchor more than I would like. Also, the shaft was too short for my boat. In rough waters, the prop would often come completely out the water. After 5 years struggling with it, I decided to replace it with a Minn Kota Riptide SF 80lbs trust with a 62″ shaft trolling motor.
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On Friday June 17^th, I returned home at 8:30 pm from a business trip. Before I could get home, Jason called enticing me with a fishing trip with Mark to Lake Pontchartrain. I was not keen on fishing in Lake Pontchartrain because I figured the water would be muddy due to the spillway being open for weeks dumping all that fresh water into the Lake. However, the lure of a trip where I didn’t have to drive or captain the boat was too hard to pass up. So, I agreed to go.
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Now that the water pump was repaired, it was time to put it to the true test. It was time to get back on the water and test out our mechanical skills. We decided to make a run on Saturday, June11^th to Breton Sound in pursuit of Speckled Trout. On this trip, we had Jason, Mark, Mark’s son Blake and Mark’s nephew Justin. As usual of late, we had a bad start. Jason showed up at my house 30 minutes late. I took this as a sign, but was hoping it didn’t mean we would have any more water pump issues. After picking up Mark and the rest of the crew, we headed out on the 2 hour ride to the boat launch. When we arrived at the landing, it was still dark. We launched the boat. Mark purchased some live shrimp and croakers. The shrimp went into the front live well and the croakers when into the rear one. Then, we set off into the dark to find some 10ft water.
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