The Jetboat Fishing Mod and Rigging Guide

[itsdgm]

Great write up @utahrd We fish off the back too, but nothing as serious as what you guys are doing.

 

[Raphael]

Thanks for the write up! This is very informative

 

[utahrd]

A litte addition for those wondering about how a fishfinder looks with downriggers....

The picture below was taken at Lake Powell. It shows a small school of striped bass between 39 and 72 feet (the gentle arcs on the finder). You can see a dense bottom contour at around 85 feet. The Pink arrows are pointing at my port and starboard downrigger weights at depth. They show up as continuous lines on the 83 khz transducer on this unit. As you can see I am dragging one rigger at 45 feet and one at 55 feet right through the school.

 

[Andy S]

From what I can see in the photo, your boat is in desperate need of a new flag. Something like the one I have would look much better!!


From what I can see in the photos, it appears your boat is in desperate need of a new flag! Something like the one I have would look much better on your boat!!! View attachment 29788 View attachment 29789

Funny Funny, I think I'll stick with garnet flag thank you!!! I'm a proud Gamecock fan but not a Tiger hater, the only time I cheer against them is when they are play the Gamecocks. Hope the Tigers kick some Irish tail this weekend.

 

[TWENTY B]

Nice work, I'm looking to go down the same path but I will be fishing the salt waters of moreton bay, Brisbane Australia.
I posted a thread in the members section.

I'm not sure how much chop you get on the lakes but how well does she go in the ruff stuff? How stable is it fishing on the rear deck?
Can't wait to show you guys the fish I'm getting there

 

[utahrd]

I put the boat in both the Pacific Ocean and the monster lakes of Utah. I just mounted a bow mount trolling motor that is gps enabled and connected to my chart plotter /finder. I have fished pretty stably off the back in about 2 foot chop, but I usually pick my days where the forecast is for 1.5 or less. The boat is stable in more chop than that, but fishing becomes unpleasant. If you really wanted to go out in 3+ I would say look for a more dedicated boat. I am seldom more than a mile from shoreline, because I am usually salmon fishing along the coast of Vancouver Island in the summer... Lots of Marinas and cover I could jet to if things turned ugly. I don't venture into far out blue water. I am actually more concerned about fog... That stuff can creep up on you and white you out lickety split... That's why I have chart plotter, backup gps unit, 25 watt vhf and 6 watt handheld vhf. Make a ditch bag. It's easy to get complacent. I have had many excellent ocean days, but as everyone says, conditions can change fast. Best wind forecast app I know of is noaa weather on Android. A good tide table app is useful too. Despite calm seas I have been caught up in 4 foot standing waves out of nowhere with tidal shifts and uneven bottom.. Don't go for broke first time out. Invest deeply in learning the nuances of a particular ocean zone and master it.

 

[Scuba_ref]

Very interesting. I would love to see your rig in action. I keep toying with the idea of salmon fishing in sound.

 

[utahrd]

Okay Gents (and Ladies),

Let me start off by saying that I apologize form dropping in and out of the forum for many months on end. I was especially disappointed to read that Mel @txav8r had to abandon his Lake Powell dream last year due to a series of unfortunate mechanical events with his at the time new to him motorhome. Don't give up!!! It sounds like you were getting the bugs all shaken out and I know it will bring you many years of joy.

Now, onto the matter at hand...fishing.

I have been busy since the OP further tweaking and upgrading, and will share the newer pics.

first: I realized I needed a more substantial fishfinder in a more suitable mount location than the pictures above. I also needed chartplotting capability since I was navigating on major waterways (straits of Juan D Fuca) and honestly massive reservoirs like Lake Powell and Flaming Gorge. There was a raging good deal on a now legacy humminbird finder, the 788 ci xd with a 50khz and 200 khz transducer. this gives pretty extreme depths. More importantly, I knew this unit had ethernet and gps on board with two sd card slots, and was prepared to accept the minn-kota i-pilot link system which allowed me to expand to a fully GPS autopilot enabled electrical trolling motor. I bought a navionics card for it so that I could get whatever downloadable charts I wanted. I bought a RAM mount made for the unit and mounted it in the usual location. not the best pic...but here you go...

Because I had been caught in more squalls than I could count, and wanted to occassionally overnight in the boat, I had a camping enclosure made that still allowed access to the back deck and downriggers without interfering with the riggers when mounted. I had it done at Sugarhouse Awning in Salt Lake City which has done it for numerous other members. here are some views of the boat in the Marina with the enclosure, rigged to fish and crab...

I am now much warmer and not windblown. A bow cover is nice in the ocean because if there is some chop, it helps prevent water from getting onboard .. note my crab pots stacked on the dock near the stern

speaking of crab... A little dunngeness....

In that last picture with the crab, you can barely make out the ends of the booms of my downriggers rotated back 90 degrees so I can dock. The reddish string you see on my booms are a homemade ball retreiver system so I didn't have to lean out over the gunwales every time I wanted to reset the rigger clip. Anyway, back to some more interesting pics..

It will be hard to see this, but I grew a little weary of my former downrigger mounts. As mentioned in the original post, I used to have the riggers attached to a gimbal mount that I then inserted into the rod holders on the back. Although this worked okay, it bugged me that I could never get the angles of my boom perfectly level with the water and also exactly perpendicul;ar to the boat when desired. SO...I found this cool product called APOXIE SCULPT which is normally sold to artists as a sculpting clay. Here is the rub... it is actually just bulk 2 part epoxy so it is strong as all get out when cured, waterproof, sandable, drillable, etc. I bought 4 lbs of the stuff to mold a downrigger bracket pedestal around the weird curvy lines of the back gunnels. I promise to post a better pic when I can, but look at the picture below, squint, and maybe you can see how I molded a super-strong mount that adapted to the curves of the boat so I could flush mount the downrigger bracket. Its bulletproof! This is much more stable and puts a lot less stress on the fiberglass. I am using 15 lb balls on the end of 4 foot downrigger booms....you can imagine the leverage and stress the gimbal mount used to impart to the glass, now completely relieved by this more custom solution
The epoxy is the gray looking stuff just under the downrigger, hand molded...

For those interested, I drilled holes through the epoxy when cured, and used burly 316 stainless steel bolts with aggressive threads and screwed it into the boat. 3 weeks of fishing on it and it is solid!

okay... here is why all this is worth it...

This is what I am looking at when fishing British Columbia...I took this from the boat....

A nice pod of Orcas to my port side...

And the reason for all the trouble and expense...King Salmon anyone?

Here is a pic of "stacked" rods on my starboard rigger...you can get 4 rods fishing on two riggers....but honestly, I have abandoned stacking the rods....too much trouble when you get hit. By the way, these are pretty small standing waves....caused by big tidal flows on rocky tructure under me...

The usual fishing position...

And now the fun part....a few pics of my trolling motor install.

There are several threads on various forums where people have mounted trolling motors. Others have validated that an 80lb thrust 24 volt system is sufficient for the sx230, although I struggled with upsizing to 112 lb thrust. I purchased a Minn-Kota Terrova Riptide 80- lb with 60 inch shaft and ipilot link. this ethernet connects right to my chartplotter so you can use it as a virtual anchor to hold in place, you can troll back and forth along a track, set a cruise control speed, or automatically follow a depth contour. pretty snazzy and pretty pricey. I was all set to put a puck-style removable mount adjacent to the anchor locker when my dear wife informed me that I had to come up with a system that was totally removable and invisible when not mounted. Sheesh! that made it really hard, but since she didn't balk at me spending a boat load of money on this new toy and was a good sport, I wanted to honor her request. It took awhile to come up with the solution but here it is:

Okay... let me explain. i had previously installed some 30 degree rod-holders at the front of the boat. Since I had recreated downrigger mounts on the stern, I had my heavy guage aluminum gimbal mount downrigger holders lying around. I reinforced the rod holder mount by replacing the previous mounting screws for the rod holders with some heavy SS bolts backed up with some custom machined SS washers under the fiberglass to try to distribute the lever forces and torque when mounted. I drilled custom holes in the face of the gimbal mount to accomodate the quick release puck style downrigger bracket and bolted the puck to the gimbal mount. seen here:

here is the minn-kota rta-17 puck mount:

a reminder of what the gimbal mount that fits into the rodholder looks like:

I then mounted some SS eye bolts through the foreward end of the aluminum baseplate on the trolling motor and ran a stainless steel bolt through those eyebolts to serve as a receiver for the eyebbolts on the SS turnbuckles you see there.

the pic above is an earlier adaptation where I put some heavy duty SS shackles around the cleat pins, which I ran through into the opposite end of the turnbuckle eye bolts. I have since abandoned the shackles and replaced the lower eyebolts" on the turnbuckle with a "jaw end" style fitting so I can attach directly to the cleat without using shackles. virtually all the weight and torque forces are transferred to the cleat, and the gimbal mount basically serves to stabilize the system and level it.

this is what I purchased to get two "JAW ends"...but you need a 3 or 4 inch turnbuckle....6 inches is too big. this is for illustrative purposes what a JAW end is... i broke apart this unit, cut the bolts shorter to fit into my 4 inch turnbuckles, and used eyebolts on the other sides of the buckles. all stainless steel.

It is VERY STRONG AND VERY STABLE. the majority of the force on the unit is directed down the turnbuckles onto the cleat, so you can imagine that if a cleat can hold a 4000lb boat loaded, it can hold my trolling motor. You can remove the motor from the gimbal, and remove the gimbal from the rod-holder. you simple open the jaw end of the turnbuckle, and everything comes off the boat and stores in the floor locker.

I bought 2, 110Amp Hour AGM batteries to power the thing and a three bank charger.

a rundown of most of the parts:

more to come...



JT

 

[txav8r]

@utahrd ! What an incredible and challenging design and install! You know me, I always err on the side of caution. Your design and work to get the boat to be exactly what you wanted is amazing and honestly, a tribute...to what you can do with a Yamaha Jet Boat! The detail and order to your install info here too is impeccable. We will get this into the FAQ thread for sure on trolling motor and down rigger modifications. Glad to have you back from winter here too! Maybe we will see you in the fall for Lake Powell II!

Ok, I have to ask, one King will feed the family with leftovers! What do you guys do with all the fish and crab? It looks like you take in enough to be competing with the commercial fishing vessels! I also wondered where you stay when your up there. I know your still using the boat on the big lakes in Utah, and you did the one trip to the PNW. Do you intend to go back to the PNW on a regular basis? You guys get more fishing time in than anyone I know, and considering the distance between you and the PNW, I don't know how. Really amazing upgrades and your trips are just fantastic! @Julian can we get this in the FAQ?

 

[Nicholas Lang]

Anyway to update the pictures on this thread? They are all gone!

just got a new 255 scarab and looking for options to hold a couple downriggers...

 

[txav8r]

It looks like most of the pictures are gone? [USERGROUP=3]@Administrative[/USERGROUP]

 

[Julian]

It looks like most of the pictures are gone? [USERGROUP=3]@Administrative[/USERGROUP]

This is because the original images were posted on smugmug and linked here by the OP @utahrd . Nothing Adminstration can. And the OP hasn't been here since 12/2016.

We encourage members to upload images here (you can drag and drop them into the posts!) so we can avoid this in the future.

 

[txav8r]

That’s what I was afraid of Julian.

 

[Julian]

Probably need a "fishing Mods" FAQ to link to all the other posts on installing rod holders. We used the rod holders I installed in my boat to hold my brother's downriggers when we were in bimini. The links to my installs are in my 242X link in my signature.

 

[spaceman2]

Nice right up for the fishing times that come around.