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Olddawg.
Welp, got the new Puma FTD on Rayburn yesterday and today. The breakin got finished out in good form just like the dealership told me. Varying the speed around from 3000 – 4500 rpm for what was left of the first hour, then same to 5000 rpm w/occasional blips to WOT. All I can say is….WWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!Hole shot is much better today after motor was broke in and I had bled the gas tanks down to about 15 in both wells. Plane time from just mkaing headway to on plane is about 7-8 seconds. Thats with me, my dad, all my baits and whatnot fishin poles. my dads poles, temps running about 99-101 F, and a strong wind blowing about 10-15 mph late this afternoon. The breeze felt good, but DANG! I was hopin for smoother water today so I could forget Conroe. Glad I had decent water yesterday to do my WOT blips. That went great then, but today was a day to use restraint going out to fish. At least most of the swells this afternoon had a pattern that you could surf or steer through; Conroe was just fricking big waves at random.I have found out I need lots of practice learning how to drive through the chine walk because I start hitting that at around 63-65 mph with the trim at about 3.0 and the jackplate up about 1 inch. Dang thats some hairy futz! I will need to practice driving through light chine walk first, before I see what the boats top speed is. I am thinking my boats top speed is the fastest I can go and still maintain solid control of the hull depending on how bad the water is.Regardless, the boat handled the 2-3 ft. swells late today with no troubles at all. Got to use the SI feature on the Hummingbird. That is cool! Marked a bunch of waypoints where I saw fish + stumps & logs in 15-18 ft. of water yesterday. Today, one of those spots I had navigated to just to see how the Nav system worked wound up having a bunch of schooling bass jumping around at about 12 noon today. I threw some baits at them, but I started getting a little warm cuz the temp was spiking above 100F. Kinda warm to fish like that when nothing is getting on your hook.That chine walkin stuff is a pucker maker, and not of the facial type! Dangit! At least I can say that the 26Fury on the Merc 250 romps! Tomorrow AM will be last chance to fish this weekend, then its back home. I had one wave that was really big going from Indian Creek to my parents place that we slammed into hard and finally managed to splash some water in the boat, but it was just a couple of drops!Fish are starting to bite about 30 min after sundown and likely quit right at sunup. Daytime around here right now is too damn hot to fish unless you need to break in your boat.Any advice on chine walking would be greatly appreciated. Tackle and rods are balanced, and both gas tanks are pretty much equally full.BCB, this is an awesome boat! My dad and I both say so! Thank you for building this dream rig!!Your Signature …
Awesome post on your first Flight out in your Cat. A BCB powered with a 250 is a Awesome experience. My advice on learning the “Curve” is to be slow with the trim. When Marty Stone gave me some Lessons at last years meeting He simply said to learn the charcteristics of the hull slowly, so learn how she flys at 1/2 throttle, 3/4 throttle, then grow in to the full throttle 80mph running….its amazing what 65 to 70 feels like, then 70 to 75, then you lock her in at 75+ and its a whole new animal. Guys like Flyswatter, Phil Addison, of course Rick and of course my HO Top Speed Captain Doug McGee, strap that 250 XS on a 2011 Eyra Doug, thats what needs to be done,,,,,sorry, off topic. Have fun with that bad boy and keep us up to date with pics and posts…..Brannon
Those Cats with a 250 are awesome arent they? Im still trying to learn how to drive my Cat and Ive had it for 6 months. 70-72mph is very easy. After that, its a real handful, I did get mine up to 74.9 somehow a few months ago, but have been no where near that since. I hope to meet up with Doug McGee sometime in the near future so he can give me some lessons. Maybe, Im just a slow learner (which could be the case ), but having someone tell me seat time, seat time doesnt get it. I need someone to show me how to handle my Cougar. Good luck with your new rig.
Drive your boat with the trim and dont try to use the wheel. Most everyone we know of overdrives the hull and uses too much trim. To make you all feel better, a good majority of the images from the dealer meeting are being over trimmed and over driven. Just take your time and use small bumps on the trim to increase your performance, and soft touches on the steering. You do not drive through chine walk, you learn to drive. BCB
Ive had my Puma FTD for a little over a year. Went from a Classic w/200. That was a rock solid platform up to 6k and 72 mph. Minewill usually run up to about 75 before the Chime walk gets going. Last year I had it to 77mph with a full load and two people. The additionalload seem to help the chime walk. I know it has more in it just havent got there yet. Been a full year with other issues. I hoping to start working on my jack plate adjustment next month. All around great platform – Fishing, performance and rough water ride. This morning had itto 76 but with extreme chime walk. Small lake with not a lot of room to slowly get to WOT. Big Al
Chine walk is tricky for me but Im learning it. Everyone said you need to bump the steering to the left in small jerks to keep it from chine walking, which is true, but not like I had imagined. So when I first started practicing I would immediately start doing left turn jerks trying to keep it from getting into the chine walking. I think I was actually making it chine worse by doing so. I need to learn the boats characteristics well enough to know when it is about to start chine walking. At that time I do a left turn jerk – but only a couple times. The boat straightens out, goes a while, then wants to chine again, so I do the left turn jerk again. It is slowly coming to me. I wrote about what I am seeing in your other post.I have also learned that weight distribution in the boat makes a big difference. I played some with two old mush room anchors that weighed 10 lbs each. Put one in each of the very front compartments. It chined worse and that was with just 20 extra pounds in the front. The more you can put heavier stuff in the back the better. Now I just use the front compartments for life jackets, rain suit, clothes type stuff. Ive also noticed a different feel to the boat with low fuel or no water in the live wells. The back end seemed to ride a little higher, or at least felt that way. I got a lot to figure out.
dont overdrive and use the trim. overdriving is jerking and not the soft touch that BCB is trying to point out.
A soft touch and not a jerk motion – Ill try that next time out.
I will just try to get close to chine walk speed at very low trim angles, get a feel for the hull, then bump the trim a little, and see what happens. Then bump a little more, see what happens, and repeat as long as I have room. On Rayburn, I had a lot of room, but the wind made some wave action that did not make for friendly chine walking driving learning. Had to throttle way back, trim down some, and steer the waves and not even think about steering the chine. If anything, got to play with the motor a little and with Humminbirds some, too. I tried fishing some at 100 – 101 F on Saturday, but after two hours of that and no fish in the boat, I called it quits and went in, Too dang hot! I will say I saw some nice bass schoolig just about where I had marked an underwater sunk log in about 15 foot of water when I was slow-going and trying out the SI depth finder.I did notice that putting the trim anywhere above 1.8-2.2 didnt really make any difference in positive speed vs. rpm, just more noise and less water psi. The hull seemed to like the jackplate running at about 3/16 of the dial gauge above dead zero elevation. At least in the somewhat choppy water. When I was fighting the bigger swells on Saturday afternoon late, when for some stupid reaso the wind picked up hard from the South (even with no weather on radar), I left the jackplate close to zero and kept the trim about 1.0. The hull handled the bigger waves (1-1/2 – 3 ft) a lot better with that configuration around 28-30 mph. At least my dad wasnt panicking at that speed! I had no pucker factor either, so we were good. Just o stinking fish in the boat. if the wind didnt have em deep in the grass, the heat had the way deep in the open water off points where we were NOT going to fish with 10 mph wind and 15 mph gusts and all those dang small rollers hamering up from the South shore. We went to my parents cover afterwards, where I had noticed a whole mess of fish schooling AFTER it got dark on Friday and I had ran the boat around the lake a little. Plenty of gloops, splorsh, and schmlip noises in the water with visible swirls, but the fart-knockers wouldnt take any topwaters or spinners we threw at them. Since it was still about 93F about an hour after sunset, we both called it a day and poked the boat the last 100 yards back to shore by my parents house.The lake is down about 4 low blow usual average right now, with lots of stups uncovered (watch yourself!). So my parents cove shore, instead of sloping off quick to 1-1/2 to 2 feet of water where you could beach your Cat, or other lesser boat, and not have to walk through knee-deep schmucky hydrilla guk and some duckweed, was sloped really shallow so I had to take off my shoes and socks and muck through about 20 feet of smuckity-yuck to get to land going either way. We had a water hose set up for fish cleaning, though, and that worked great for feet cleaning, too.It was all good, though. I got to go fish with my dad on his birthday in the new boat. He really thought the lit-up grab-rails were cool! My lighted livewells and rod lockers made him go check his r^ng&r boats rod lockers. His do not light up automatically and we had to switch on his batteries, turn on the main switch, then turn on a switch by the SINGLE light in the rod locker to get them lit up. I like the light string in the rod lockers and the other storage bays. Hey BCB, heres a good idea to chew on! Use some white LED clusters instead of those other lights to light up those compartments if it makes sense both electrically and economically. I am not sure, but I think LEDs are more efficient at giving the same amount of lumens in lighting than normal lights in the boxes when theyre lit up, but then those lights dont stay on very long anyway….Your Signature …
When I bought my Jag I ordered several 3″ white LEDs and wired them into my rod box, port storage box and large center box, it makes a huge difference. The light is more even and has a lot less glare and due to that is much easier on your eyes. Im sure that a blue or red LED could be used with even better results although I am not sure of the cost difference between the LEDs and the incandescent bulbs and sockets. Personally I feel that by going to LED that the problem with corrosion in the sockets would be eliminated which would make for a much more trouble free installation.
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