Dryland fishing 3 .. The Fish

So how to get ahold  of  the mess we have down bore ?  I remembered from my oil patch days a tool called a " wall hook "  that they would run into the hole to pull broken drill stem to the center of the bore so they could get ahold of it .  This basic tool idea is what i modified  to not only pull my string to the center but * hopefully* to grab it at the same time .  I wanted the tool to be fairly rugged so I designed it to go onto 2" steel pipe for both rigidity and strength.

 I also beveled the inside of the bottom nearly to an axe edge level of sharp  so that the tool wouldn't " hang " on the shoulder of the T .


From running the cam down the bore we knew that the top of the T was right at 42' below the top of the casing . Steel pipe is supposed to be ( but this can vary ) 21' per joint  and we were working about 5' above the top of the well case ( it sets in a well pit ) .   So we started down the bore  and assembled 3 joints of pipe .  right where we should we made contact with the top of the dropped string , and a bit of slack in the wench line  coupled with a turn of the 2" via pipe wrench  locked us on .  I gotta say it worked like a charm .

We started putting pull on the pipe .. and it just sat there .. a bit more pull .. same result , by this time the 1/2 inch steel cable was starting to sing , and putting your hand on the 2" pipe you could feel it vibrate or quiver  under the strain . A bit more pull and slowly the pipe began to rise , it was apparent from the weight that we had most if not all of the dropped string attached .
All went well until the last joint , it started looking like spaghetti  as it came up

Not hard to spot the " problem "  joint is it ?

A bit closer look at the tears we made as we pulled it through the " die "  of the bottom of the casing straighting it out enough to come up

The other problem is shown here ..  That end is what is left of the check valve ( that keeps water from just draining back into the well )  that is on the top of the pump .. notice there is no pump in evidence .

Here is a pic of what * should * have been attached there , about 4' and 40 lbs  of  pump . Ahh well when we ran back in with new pvc pipe and a new pump everything is working fine so  that damned thing can just lay where we pulled it off the string i guess .


Anyway , thats dryland fishing  and I count it as a successful catch because a bit of time and thinking  got a " bad drop "  out  that likely would not have came with conventional fishing techniques  and that saved about $30,000 for a new well .