Frustrating Day at the Camp
 

We finally had a free weekend to make it out to the camp to get some work done and boy were we suprised! If it weren't for Coors Light, the day would have been a waste...... We get to the launch and are greeted by a field of hyacinth.

View from the launch.
Attachment 54718

We launch the mud boat and start making passes in there to try and break it up some. Not realizing how bad it would be, we also brought along my father in laws tunnel hull to help carry stuff to the camp which is about a 10-15 minute boat ride from the launch. We go through all the hyacinth around the launch and the main channel is fairly clear. About half way through the cut to our camp, it gets packed up again.

The mud boat running point was working pretty decent until I had to stop to clear the outboard. By that time my brother had already left us in the mudboat. We finally make it to them and the mud boat is broken down and they flooded it trying to get it started. :shaking: Now we are stuck with a boat that won't start and another boat that couldn't make it through the salad!!!! After a few curse words we all just pop a top and wait. The mudboat finally gets started and we make it to the camp.

View from the camp.
Attachment 54717

The camp is overran with wasp but a few bug bombs knocked that out quick. We start doing a little cleaning up and weedeating when the weedeater head explodes and parts fly everywhere! So we start cutting grass with machetes. :eek: We made the decision not to run to the blinds because the cuts were choked up as well and the issues we already had with the mud boat. We tie the boats off together so I didn't have to put that outboard through that again and head back to the launch without a quarter of the work done that we wanted to get accomplished.

To top off such an amazing day, I noticed some smoke coming from the muffler on the mudboat coming back in and I could smell burnt plastic. After getting my brothers attention and poining it out, he holds up my Benelli :pissed:. Our work detail turned into a recon into an expensive f**king day! I still can't wait to get out and blast some ducks though!!!

Attachment 54719

Does anybody have any suggestions for getting rid of the hyacinth? Can I just spray some 2-4-D or is that a big no no? My brother said he has seen an attachment for a mud boat that chopped it and threw it off to the side. Said the guy called it a salad shooter. Any of you heard of this or have one I can look at to build one?

We always had a airboat come in and spray. That is the the best way. Better do it soon. It takes a couple weeks for the stuff to die the. You will have to have a second spray done. Lilly booms help to keep it out but honestly it's a never ending battle. That is the reason I got out of my old club. We couldn't beat the Lilly's. we would spray 4 or 5 times a season and still had Lilly's.

ERASER!!!! It's a little high dollar but man does that stuff work. X2 on getting a mudboat to spray the bayou or runs. Do it NOW!!

Hyacinth isn't hard to kill, but you have to stay on top of it. You may also benefit by putting some floating boom to keep the channels clear or else the stuff will just blow back into it. Oil containment boom works as well as PVC. There is a company in SW La (Big Woods?) that has a barge that chops it up, no idea the cost, but probably not as cheap as herbicide

Bad situation man

That's what we did in our marsh in intracoastal. We got rid of what we could then at entrances we put steaks in the mud then floated 3-4" PVC across the mouth to hold it out and at pond entrances. You can go over it with any motor that can be lifted but beings that a mudboat can't you are limited with it. We drug a flat out with us incase we needed to go in the ponds for any reqson

It will die back a little in the winter, but it comes right back

used to think a drawdown will help it, and it will as long as it is completely dry ground but any moisture and it keeps on ticking, salvinia as well

this is just my personal observation and I have no 'sound science' behind this for MG, but my observation with common salvinia is that duckweed will outcompete salvinia and keep salvinia out

We are tuning up the mudboat this week and hopefully it will be running right for next weekend. Also, my cousin said he'll come out with his longtail go-devil. I guess we will just spray it now and hope for the best. Will running up and down through it help break it up any? It looked like when we ran through it, it would eventually move back but it seemed to be less dense than before we ran through it.

Go buy bags of salt and spray it with saltwater!!! They say saltwater kills everything!!!

Just call them and tell them to open the weirs! ;)

If your area is tidal make the booms out of large PVC and attach one end to a pipe stuck in the mud the set two others on the ends as stops. When the tide goes out the boom swings open when it come in it swings closed. Ride around in the Lilly's to break them up to help them move out with the tide. It helps but you have to keep broken up. This along with spraying helps. The best thing is to constantly spray all summer along with booms.

This will work actually W, and I am serious
The saltwater is hell on the sprayers though gotta clean it out quick or else it will corrode and rain will wash the salt off the plants and salt doesn't really work with a surfactant but you better believe it will kill those plants:)

Don't believe it

Drill a few holes in a tree, mix up a slurry of saltwater, then pour that in those holes = bye bye tree

It will break it up but then it just gets blown back together, plus these plants are clonal so they just multiply and fill in the gaps.

What style boat do you think works best at braking it up: mud boat, longtail, or surface drive?

Your weekend sounds like a page in my book... If I was so busy with projects I got I'd offer to go help yall..

guy my wife works with uses pool salt with water as round up. I always thought he was just cheap but I guess it might work.

Some of the herbicide out there is a brine solution, which is a concentrated salt.

round up 2-4-d an eraser will kill it dead

Roundup and eraser is the same exact thing

BTW......I think the Benelli has character now.......I wouldn't change a thing

Hell, I have the wife thinking that its ruined and I need a new shotgun! :D