Quinte Fishing

As I am quite the novice when it comes to fishng in a boat in temperatures approaching freezing, is there anything I'll need to do when I pull the boat out of the water, as the temps will be below freezing Saturday night? As long as I tilt the motor back down all the way to let the water drain out, will it be ok? Just worried about the water pump impeller getting fried. Sorry about the silly question.

thanks
Ken

Ken, there are couple of things that you need to do. First, when pulling the boat out at the end of the day lower the motor right down like you said. Then, if you have an electric start hit the key for a second or two, pull the kill switch so as not to start the motor up but even if it fires up there is no harm as long as you don't let it run for more than a few seconds. This procedure clears any water droplets sticking to the impeller blades and the housing which would freeze and possible break off one of the vanes when you strat it up the next day. Second, if you are running an oil injection system you should premix a bit of oil with your fuel, the reasoning here is that the oil pump will not flow enough oil to the motor in extreme cold weather and if you run at WOT you could end up with engine damage. Thirdly, because you may not be using the motor for the remainder of the winter after that particular trip you should make it a practice of using a fuel stabilizer with every fill up. If you follow these easy steps you should not have any problems. Oh, and one more thing, when the temps drop to below freezing the water in the peehole could freeze. Make sure that when you start up the motor in the morning that you check for a water stream. Hope this helps.

Excellent. Thanks very much for the reply.

Ken

Firetiger, thanks alot for the advice. This is all news we can use now that we're getting late in the season.

Hi Ken, another thing we do at the end of the year is to put antifreeze in. Cut a small piece of garden hose about 4 feet with the male attachment on it and screw it to the ear muffs. Put the other end of the hose into the gallon of antifreeze, put the ear muffs over the water intake holes and start your engine. The antifreeze should get sucked up into the motor and come out the pee hole, shut engine off. Keep an eye on this, don't run the motor for over 10 seconds or you could damage it. Now the antifreeze will replace any water and stay in the motor over the winter and not damage your impellar. Good luck out there and we'll se y'all in 2 weeks. Patio.

The anifreeze thing is totally unecessary in my opinion because after performing my procedure there is no water left ... been doing this for several years. One more thing that I neglected to mention is to not use your livewells. The problem is even if you pull the drain plugs for the livewells there may still be some water trapped in a hose or in a control valve. This kind of problem is hard to find and difficult to fix.