I am probably the last person to preach to anybody else about keeping his or her boat in good shape or make a special effort to get it ready for the beginning of the bass-fishing season.But I’ve wasted so much fishing time when I’ve had stuff break or not work that I could have fixed with just a little bit of effort. I could probably write a book about everything you can do wrong when it comes to really keeping your boat in top working condition.
Now that I am a boat dealer, I really see it when people come through the door to our service department and spend a lot of money on something that could have been avoided.
So take the month of February and do a little preventive maintenance so that pretty Ranger will be running as smooth as silk when it gets time to start fishing.
I think you need to give your boat a thorough going-over before you take it to the lake. I start with stuff I can see easily. I check the rub rails to make sure they’re still in place. I look at all the exterior bolts to see if any of them have been jarred loose. You can loosen your outboard motor boats if you hit something. I know; I had a motor fall off last year.
The things that can give you the most trouble that’s easiest to avoid are your batteries. You haven’t charged them at all during deer season, and you need to check the water levels to make sure they’re full, put them on the charger to get them charged up or on the tester to make sure they’re still working perfectly. If you drive two hours to fish somewhere, you can waste a good half-day if you haven’t taken care of your batteries during the winter.
Besides the batteries, I’ll check my lower unit, make sure the oil hasn’t become dirty, make sure it’s full — that kind of thing.
You’re supposed to change the lower-unit oil every 100 hours. You change it after 40 hours when it’s new, then every 100 to 150 hours after that. You wouldn’t take your new Chevy pickup and drive it 100,000 miles without changing the oil, would you? You should treat your lower unit the same way, because it’s under a lot of pressure. The gears take all that torque, you’re hitting things occasionally, your prop may be damaged.
February is the time to take care of all of those things, because if you don’t, you may wind up paying anywhere from $1,000 to $4,000 to get something fixed.
And when I find that I need to change the oil, I make sure I use a premium-grade oil — not cheap stuff.
While you’re looking at the lower unit, check your prop; make sure there aren’t any dings that will hurt its performance. If there are, have them fixed.
Check the prop on your trolling motor because if it’s dinged up, it will keep your motor from performing as well as it can, and you won’t get as much power out of your battery. A trolling-motor prop is not expensive, but if it’s beat up, you won’t get all the thrust you can out of it. It will use more juice. If it’s just dinged up a little, you might be able to take a file out and shape it up.
I check the bearings on my trailer.
Ranger has see-through hubs, and you can look at them and tell — if the grease has gone from green to dirty brown or black, it needs to be changed.
I don’t take care of my bearings nearly as much as I should. The other thing I do is grease my jack and make sure the connections to my electronics look okay. If they’re a little corroded, some WD-40 will do wonders.
If your motor has been sitting a long time, you might have a little trouble with it. I’ll open the carburetor and spray a little engine cleaner in there, let it sit, then crank the motor, and that should flush out all the build-up, the carbon stuff that gets in there.
If some of this stuff seems a little overwhelming — if you feel like you can’t do everything — thing you can take it and get it serviced at a dealership like David Fritts Outdoors.
We do this kind of service all the time, and since we’re fishermen, we understand what fishermen need. I think that’s what sets us apart.
Editor’s note: David Fritts is a 50-year-old professional bass fisherman from Lexington. He was the 1993 BASS Masters Classic champion, the 1993-94 BASS Angler of the Year and the 1997 FLW Tour Champion. His sponsors include: Bass Pro Shops, Evinrude Motors, Ranger Boats, Chevy Trucks, Minn-Kota trolling motors, American Rodsmith, Rapala crankbaits and fishing line, Zoom plastics, Solar Bat sun glasses, Mountain Dew, Gripper (ECS Anchor Supply), VMC hooks, Pro Pocket and Blue Fox.
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