GRAND FORKS – So let me tell you about the close call I had the other day.

It was a beautiful fall afternoon, and a friend and I had decided to launch my boat into the Red River for a few hours of fishing.

Odd as it may sound, I hadn’t had my boat in the water all year. I’ve done plenty of fishing – although admittedly, it’s never enough – but it was always in someone else’s boat. For any number of reasons, I hadn’t had a chance to get my boat in the water, and I wanted to use it at least once before freeze-up.

Launching went smoothly, and my Yamaha four-stroke did what Yamaha four-strokes do, from what I’ve seen.

It started as soon as I turned the key. Without any coaxing or colorful words.

Backing off the trailer, I’d barely gotten into the river when I noticed water pouring at a rapid rate into the rear compartment where the battery sits.

And yes, I had remembered to put in the plug.

I yelled at my friend, who by this time had parked at the top of the ramp and was walking down to meet me at the dock, to get the trailer so I could reload, and we could hopefully figure out why the boat was leaking.

Fortunately, the bilge pump worked and was able to keep up with the water that was flowing into the boat at an alarmingly rapid pace.

We soon had the boat back on the trailer.

Water poured out of the bilge when I pulled the plug at the top of the ramp. That’s when I noticed daylight in an area that wasn’t supposed to have daylight.

My friend diagnosed the dilemma within seconds.

Without getting technical – and I might have the terminology wrong here – the livewell pump has a threaded plastic doohickey that extends through a hole at the bottom of the stern and screws into place with a fitting on the outside of the boat.

The doohickey had broken off the pump, leaving a large hole where there should have been a sealed fitting. The hole also was larger than the spare drain plug I carry, so doing a “MacGyver” job by rigging something to plug the opening wasn’t an option.

Hoping to salvage at least part of the excursion, my friend suggested we trailer the boat to Orin's Motor Sports, a repair shop on Mill Road owned by Orin Schrank, to see if he might have livewell pumps in stock. He did, and was able to install a new pump and seal the connections in short order so we could get back on the water.

It’s a fairly common problem, Schrank said, adding he’d heard of more than one boat going “blub, blub, blub” after the threaded doohickey on the livewell pump broke.

Fortunately, my boat didn’t go “blub, blub, blub,” and we were back on the water and fishing within about an hour of our brush with disaster.

The close call got me thinking about the times I had used the boat in the summer of 2021. On one occasion – I’m thinking it was the last time I used the boat – more water than usual had flowed from the bilge when I pulled the plug.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but in hindsight, the plastic threaded piece that broke off the livewell pump was probably cracked, allowing water to sneak in around the fitting.

Sometime between then and now, the doohickey broke off completely.

All’s well that ends well, as the old saying goes, and the bilge was more or less dry when I pulled the plug at the top of the ramp at the end of our fishing excursion. Despite the misadventure, we still got about an hour and a half of fishing in that beautiful October afternoon.

We even caught a few fish, but as for specifics, I'm sworn to secrecy.

If you’re going to have the doohickey on a livewell pump break, being next to the boat ramp barely a mile from the repair shop is a pretty darn good place to have it happen, I guess.

Whether I get the boat in the water again this fall will depend on the weather. But if I do, I’ll feel a lot better knowing I won’t have to worry about going “blub, blub, blub.”

Not from a broken doohickey on the livewell pump, at least.