The Armchair Outfitter

Regular visitors to this site (both of you) will no doubt remember a story about me shirking my responsibilities at a work function and slipping away for some redfish action after dark. That might have been just an isolated incident, but now a pattern seems to be emerging. I’ve been working on the Rover bull bar project in my free time the past couple of weeks, and by all rights, I should have been doing that this past Saturday. As you can see from the above photo, I was not.

My buddy Marty called me on Friday and left a couple of messages asking if I wanted to go fishing Saturday with his friend Charles. I’ve been out with Charles before on his gorgeous 25′ Grady White, and I know that Charles is a super-nice cat, so the offer was tempting. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive Marty’s messages until 23:00, and a marathon push to close cases had me scheduled to work until midnight. I told the Sporting Wife that I was going to have to blow it off and work on the truck as I had planned. Ever the responsible one, I am, but she insisted that I might not get the opportunity to go again for a while. She also observed that I had been grumbling and generally down in the mouth of late, and she thought it might do me some good to get away from the house. Translation: “You are working on my nerves, and you should get away from me for a while.”

I am not the world’s most intelligent man, but I know that when you have made enough of a nuisance of yourself that a woman urges you to go fishing, you go. Gathering my stuff and packing a cooler while watching the second half of the Lakers game on Tivo, I grudgingly set my alarm for 4:30 and hit the sack at about 2:30. I’ll admit that if not for the elbow in my ribs at 5:00 as Frank Zappa poured from the alarm clock speakers, I’d never have made it.

Marty and I met Charles and his son C.J. at the boat ramp a little after 6:00, and we were under way. C.J. tried for some hardtail just off the end of a rock jetty, as they are like candy to amberjack, but he only managed one. We had live pinfish from Marty’s backyard trap and some frozen squid, so we set out over calm water for the nearest of the rigs. Charles nailed the twin 150 Yamma-hammers, and we were seven miles out in no time.

Unfortunately, someone had beat us to this particular spot. Using a rig hook to hold position, they were pulling up one “endangered” red snapper after another. If you don’t live on the Alabama Gulf Coast, just take my word for it that we have a huge controversy down here over the very restrictive snapper season and limits. We watched these folks catch and release ten good-sized snapper in as many minutes because it would have been illegal to keep them. The season opens today, and even then, they could only have kept two.

Marty caught a big remora that he managed to release without bringing it over the side. If you’ve never made the mistake of getting a shark-sucker in your boat, don’t. They are relatively calm until they hit the deck, and then they go into berserker mode. Slime is not an adequate word to describe their skin secretions, and they bleed like stuck hogs as well. C.J. handily caught what today would be a limit of two nice snapper, and we decided that throwing a red snapper dinner repeatedly back over the side was for the birds. We hauled in the lines and pointed the boat toward Cuba. A pair of porpoises joined us, playing in our bow wake for a while. We were making pretty good time, and they were just loafing. I could hear their sighing exhalations over the engine noise as they exchanged stale air for fresh.

Starting about twenty miles out, there are a number of old Army tanks sunk to provide artificial reef habitat, and we decided to see if they were holding any fish. We set out trolling rigs to make a pass or two before settling down to bottom fish, and our efforts were rewarded almost immediately. I hooked into the king mackerel in the photo. Foul-hooked in the back with the rear treble of a diving plug, she pulled straight away like a nuclear sub, burning line off a medium-heavy rod and reel in short runs. It took me at least a half-dozen tries to get her into position for C.J. to gaff her. She was definitely legal, as we measured 28 inches to the fork of the tail, but I regretted keeping her later. Although outwardly there was no sign, when C.J. was filleting her, we saw that she was full of eggs. With the gash in her back from the hook, she probably would have been an easy meal for a shark if we had released her, but I still hate the loss of all those future generations.

The bottom fishing never materialized, as the fish couldn’t leave the trolling lures alone for the rest of the day. We even caught one of the “rare” red snapper on a trolling jig. When a fish normally caught on bottom rigs with live bait takes a jig trolled at eight miles per hour, you are having a good day. We got two more kings, and we caught seven little tunny, locally known as bonita. These are the false albacore of the eastern seaboard, and they are reputedly not fit to eat. We kept six as an experiment. I am letting the fillets bleed out in an ice water brine in preparation for the smoker, and I shall report my findings. We went back to the bottom rigs at the end of the day just to see what we could get, but an undersized gag grouper for me was the only result. That potential entree went back over the side, and we headed for home.

I don’t know when I’ll ever get that truck finished.

The bull bar install begins with removal of the old brush guard. There are retainer clips under the hood that help to stabilize the upper part of the bar. Phillips-head screws hold the clips in place.

There are also retainer clips on the sides bolted upward into the bar. Thanks to the accident, I only had to remove one.

To get to the mounting bolts, you must remove the bumper pads. A flathead screwdriver works fine to get the necessary purchase.

A stout breaker bar helps to get the bolts moving. They are 14mm metric fasteners, by the way, and don’t think you can just run them all the way out and pull the guard off the bumper. That would be way too easy.

No, there is a nylon lock nut on the back of each bolt, and once you get the bolt moving, you have to lie underneath the vehicle, reach up into a blind area behind the plastic bumper cover and air dam, cut your hands several times, say some choice swear words, and hold the nut whilst turning the bolt. Gentle reader, I shall spare you any photographs of that ordeal.

Let me add, be ready if you jerk that bolt out while you are underneath the bar. The thing is heavier than it looks. A well-placed knee will prevent a concussion when you free the bar, or you can do what I did and use a stubby 14mm box wrench to hold the nut in place. There is not room enough for the wrench to make a complete turn, so if you hold your mouth right and continue to swear softly, the whole works will fall out the bottom of the bumper when you work the nut all the way off the bolt.

Here’s where you should end up, and you’re now ready to follow the instructions ARB provides with the bull bar. More to come as the project continues . . .

The name Land Rover may not spring immediately to mind when folks in the U.S. think of an off-road vehicle. After all, you are far more likely to see Rovers in a mall parking lot or outside a fancy restaurant. Be that as it may, a 2003 Land Rover Discovery has served me well as my primary hunting and fishing vehicle for the last few years. The following photo from a trail ride will attest that it has been used for its originally intended purpose.

The Sporting Wife and I attempted that particular mudhole three times before being winched out. Were we not on street tires, I feel certain we would have made it. A tractor sunk to the axles in the same hole was not so lucky. In our defense, we put the headlights underwater before we gave up on it.

The Sporting Wife will have to take credit for the Land Rover purchase. I had a 1995 Jeep Wrangler with B.F. Goodrich Radial Mud Terrains on it that carried us many happy miles when we lived further north, but when we made our permanent migration to the sea, I had to take a job that came with an hour commute each way. The tires were brutal at highway speed, my factory soft-top was starting to disintegrate, and the last straw for the missus, the air conditioning went out completely. After watching me struggle under the dash trying to replace the fan motor, she asked, “Is there not any vehicle that would induce you to trade in that Jeep?” I jokingly said, “Sure, a Land Rover,” and by golly she found one and made the deal. After about an hour of negotiation and paperwork at the dealership, I purchased my first British motorcar.

Here she is enjoying our purchase:

Even on the street tires, we drove out of that muck. The Landy, as our British friends call them, is a shockingly capable off-road vehicle. Do the words “full-time four wheel drive” give you any idea what I’m saying? I don’t mean an “all-wheel drive” system where the fronts or rears will engage when the other wheels start to slip, I mean all four tires are engaged and turning all the time. This is the case even on pavement, so gas mileage suffers and tire wear is accelerated accordingly. With a curb weight of 4,853 pounds, it is not exactly sprightly. That said, it walks across obstacles I used to blast through in my Jeep. Sure, I’ve heard jokes like this one: A group of Land Rover owners and a group of Jeep owners met at the trailhead. One of the Landy drivers said to a Jeep owner, “You shall follow us on the trail.” The Jeepster quickly replied, “Then we will follow a trail of the finest British motorcar parts and fluids.”

We didn’t get out of this hole without help, but after all, we were sitting on the frame. Even the mighty Wrangler couldn’t have overcome that one. My personal experience with the “Disco,” as Rover types call the Discovery models, has been overwhelmingly positive. Sure, repairs are horrendously expensive, but this is a vehicle I can see myself keeping for a long time. Those leather seats are comfy after a long day on the deer stand, and the wood dash inlay provides a great smooth surface for spreading out a topo map. Seriously, I don’t guess I need a lot of the features of my Disco, but they sure are nice to have in a vehicle that is also rock solid off the pavement.

A parking lot accident has me needing to repair the brush guard and front bumper. The S.W. drove the Rover to work one day, as she is wont to do, and someone backed into her at a pretty good clip. Incidentally, the damage to the Rover is barely noticeable, and the other vehicle looks like it centered a telephone pole. Rather than use the exorbitantly expensive factory replacement parts and pay the stealership for labor, I’ve opted to go with an integrated ARB bull bar and winch bumper. I would also install a Warn winch, but the insurance money would not have covered it, and I didn’t try to gouge them. Take that, lawyer-haters! I’ll post pics of the install as I go.