How can my 30hp run so well all day but be so hard to start in the morning?

I'm a bit stumped by this.

It's a 1988 2cyl 2 stroke 30hp.

Motor ran like a champ all day Saturday. Sunday morning, I pulled and pulled and pulled and it finally sputtered briefly, a few pulls later it FINALLY started. Then once again, ran beautifully all day. And I mean flawlessly, trolled with it for over 2hrs, ran it at WOT (my son only knows that one speed). Restarted it on multiple occasions even after a good 30min sitting and all it took was a very loose pull every single time.

Got up this morning and tried to start it again to find out if it was just having a bad day yesterday and had the same thing happen. Took about 20 pulls until it finally reacted.

• it's got good spark - jumped a health-sized gap (3/8" )
• It's got good pressure - 135psi in each cylinder
• It's got nice fresh gas - 93 octane
• New carb kit, thoroughly cleaned carb
• New fuel lines
• Fuel pressure seems good
• Fuel bulb gets nice and hard
• Primer seems to squirt gas into back of carb as designed

...how many pulls of the primer do you guys use on a 70-ish degree morning? I've been giving her two full pulls.

Give it some more prime until the motor pops.

Turn throttle grip to neutral stop for cold start.----Ignore marking on throttle grip.-----Find electric start kit.

Thanks fellas. @raceroni, I actually DO have the electric start but my wife and son like the silent trolling motor so much that they routinely run the battery down such that manual starting is in order.

It turns out that I was totally ignorant of the dual purpose of that choke lever. I was not leaving it pulled out (colour visible) after squirting the gas in. I'm thinking that had something to do with it.