Everglades Fishing – Captain Ned Small

We worked on the Gut Pile all day yesterday. You had to be there to hear the ranting and raving. Wayne is all upset because none of the rebuilt springs fit,  the giant tires have nudged forward or backward  against the  (carefully placed,)  blocks since we took it apart and  it seems if the alignment is off by a degree or two, or if  the ground has settled  or a tire looses pressure,  the whole freakin’ thing won’t fit.

We bashed her into shape though, it’s really eerie what a Bigger Hammer can do sometimes, and a cheater pipe, and a breaker bar, in skilled hands like ours. At the end of the day we were anxious to wash the dirt and grease off our mitts so we could compare our wounds and blood blisters.

 Did you know that you can just bash a hardened steel hinge pin through a three inch bronze bushing with just a few hundred whacks of a ten pound hammer?  You just have to take a few breaks to back the thing out,  …now known as “reverse bashing,”   remove it and file the “eggs,” out of  the tube with a chain saw file. You can bolt them, (them’ springs,) into the buggy several times, the first is a nightmare, but by the fourth time you’ve tried it, you can do it in about a half hour,  bolt ‘em in,  try ‘em out,  take ‘em out,  reverse bash ‘em,  file eggs for thirty minutes and try it again.  …And just keep repeating that until it fits, …or it breaks.

And there’s elk meat in the freezer,  thanks to Wayne’s New Mexico ranch access, and there’s still a few snipe in there from the Everglades too, but they’ve been thinning out. If we get the Gut Pile rolling, we might do a couple’ of buggy hunts for ‘em. A cold front is supposed to arrive in the morning with rain and wind, that will help things along.