It was bound to happen...

[bobbygib]

The wife and I hit the Potomac Sunday and had the best fishing day of the year! I got ten in the boat that day and the wife caught a 12 pound catfish. (she hasn't graduated to big boy baits yet, so she fishes live baits while I'm bass fishing)

Anyways, though the bite was still on, it was getting late and I had something else i had to get done that day so we headed back home. I was fishing an area littered with old wrecks, tide was going out so i knew i had to be careful before I used the big motor. Went well beyond where I thought I needed to be safe, fired up the big motor, hammered down, soon as i got on plane, I hit something. Sounded like it ripped the motor off the transom!

After a few minutes, to gather my sanity and realizing I wasn't dead and the boat was still floating, I relunctantly raised the motor expecting to find I had ...ruined something. To my surprize, everything looked ...okay. Could see a new ding in my prop, but...nothing that seemed too serious. Fired the motor back up, idled WAY out into the channel before attempting plane, when I did, the boat responded great, jumped right up on plane, and we had one a nice smooth ride back to the marina. Once I got the boat on the trailer, I could see two pretty substantial dings in my prop. Bad enough to where I won't use it again until it's repaired but, surprisingly...not that bad. A little paint knocked off the skeg, but luckily, no damage to the hull.

I know, very lucky. Amazed at how resilliant bass boats can be too. I'm serious, it sounded like i had ripped the boat apart when I hit...what ever it was i hit.

Couple hundred to fix my prop and i should be good to go.
My question is to you ..."pros"...is, think I may have hurt anything by running the boat with a dented, probably out of balance prop for 20 minutes or so? I noticed no vibration , or anything different on the ride back to the marina.

And ...a word of caution to all you Potmac river fisherman. As you know, that river is littered with old wrecks, BE CAREFULL ! Use the trolling motor around all that....junk. I don't have a GPS, but I will this weekend, so i can mark all that stuff so i wont hit it again.

God I love to fish....