Even strong angling opinions can change over the years
At a recent lunch gathering with some friends, Mike Seeling asked me if I drained the lower unit on my new motor before I put it into storage.
I told him Bombardier, maker of the Evinrude E-Tec, said in its manual that this once-standard practice was not needed. Seeling looked at me with disbelief.
Now to the real story.
I am an opinionated so-and-so, especially when it comes to good food, restaurants, saltwater fly fishing on the flats for bonefish and permit, fishing tackle in general, and, of late, outboard motors.
One additional note. Far too many of my brethren have a tendency to call their Minn Kota and other similarly branded motors, “trolling motors,” when in reality they are not trolling devices, but rather strictly electric, positioning devices.
And yes, some of the product catalogs will even misname their wonderful products with the moniker of “trolling motor.”
Now back to outboards. I had been (notice I said “had been”) a Mercury user since I was 13 years old. My father gave me a choice of his old, well-used white or green Mercs and told me if I could fix them, I could own both. I struggled with the repair job for a while but eventually got them running. I had four more after those initial rigs, and I took them all over the upper-Midwest on my fishing jaunts.
And then, while living in Minnesota, working in broadcasting, and guiding, I had a couple OMC motors. The first was a new 25-horse Evinrude powering a 17-foot aluminum fishing boat, and the second motor was a new 70-horse Evinrude, perched on the stern of a bass boat.
I had more grief and aggravation with those motors from the first days I put them in the water. Perhaps I just happened to have a couple of “lemons,” since some angling friends in Minnesota swore by the reliability of their Evinrudes. Of course, some guys in northern Minnesota would never take their engines to a mechanic if the outboards started to belch and quit running.
And then I came back here and wound up once again using one of my dad’s 9.8 Mercs. When he passed away in the mid-80s, I subsequently owned two of his “black beauties.”
So now I forward my calendar to the summer of 2012. After hours of discussions with Babe Winkelman and others, I purchased a new E-Tec by Evinrude.
Some years back Bombardier, the Canadian company known for its products in the aerospace, transportation, and recreational fields, took over the Evinrude line and brand from Outboard Marine Corporation in Waukegan. I may be totally out of whack, but it’s my humble opinion OMC had sunken into oblivion so badly it had little chance of seeing daylight.
So here I sat, thinking “what’s a person to do?”
I ultimately chose a 50-h.p. E-Tec on the back of a 16½-foot Alumacraft fishing boat. I’ve never regretted the purchase, and here’s why.
Fifty some years ago it was rumored that Mercury outboards were underrated in the horsepower department, and that meant to those who used those engines, that a comparable competitor’s engine was no match for Mercury’s speed and endurance.
The 50-h.p. E-Tec I now have seems to outpace a 60-horse engine, and it’s only a two-stroke model. And I am able to leave Merc-powered fishing boats in my wake, even though I’m not one of those goofy speed demons. I speed tested the E-Tech just to see how it stacked up against my old favorite.
But this means nothing to a fisherman who has a loyalty to a brand and has experienced reliability over the years.
Winkelman showed me how he winterizes his big E-Tec. He explained the computerized control panel allows me to get the rig ready for winter in about three minutes. When it came time for me to run the winter routines last November, my watch indicated just under three minutes for the entire process.
And when I started it this year, all I did was check the oil and gas levels before squeezing the priming ball, and then I turned it on. The motor instantly came to life without spewing any smoke into the air or my lungs.
What more could I ask?
ŸContact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, and catch his radio show 6-7 a.m. Sundays on WSBC 1240-AM and live-streamed at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.com.