How to set up a small boat

Brendo

2010-04-11 16:11:27

I have a 22 ft AquaSort with Outboards that are on a offshore bracket. I have made a power pack with a 6.5hp Honda Engine and a 10gal gear oil resivour. I am in the process of rebuilding gurdies. My only experience commercial salmon trolling is with hand crankers. I live in Humboldt County California and our seasons are limited to Kings and they only allow us 30 fish a day. I use this boat for longlineing and charter fishing and want to desighn my salmon trolling set up to be easily removeable. What is the best way to run two lines per side with out having to build a A frame and poles. Can I use a long davit style set up. How long dose it need to be. Am i better off just trying to run one line per side. Would floats work for my second line. I would appreciate any advice on how to set this up.

Brendo

SilverT

2010-04-17 17:11:53

Brendo,

We have not set up a boat that small, but one that's close. We went ahead with the a-frame & poles built out of standard sized aluminum tubing. 2" dia. comes in 20 foot lengths, which are perfect for poles for a boat that size. We used galvanized fence brackets for everything we attached to the poles, just coat the inside with liquid rubber to prevent slippage. We made permanent brackets for the boat with bolt patterns that largely fit in the existing cleat holes. We measured and cut the tubing ourselves and took it to a welder which saved a lot of fabrication money. The whole thing comes on and off with six bolts (a-frame & poles), allowing us to convert the boat for another use in about 20 minutes, with the power gurdies remaining for use as downriggers. If 20 foot long poles are too long to pack, you could break them in half and sleeve them. Weld the sleeve to one piece and bolt the other, making it easy to transport.

Perhaps where you're fishing, there is little trouble with hang ups, but there is a safety difference between the larger trollers and the smaller boats that we weren't aware of. When the larger boats hang up on the bottom, they keep going and the leads snap off. The smaller boats often just stop like you threw out an anchor, regardless of what strength of chord you use for the breakaways. This isn't a problem in calm seas, but add some weather and it's extremely dangerous.

Long davits might be a concern in case you do snag something. The longer you make that davit arm, the shorter time you have to react when you hang up. It can flip the boat very quickly. A couple of unforgettable moments rammed this home for me personally. So if you do use some kind of a sliding davit, which I suspect could work, perhaps try to run tag lines with light breakaways off the ends and keep your pullies tight to the boat. If things were too tight in the float area, you could always just run one float line or run really short leaders. Also, you can modify your floats to pull slightly in opposite directions like planing boards. It doesn't make a huge difference, but every little bit helps on a small boat. If you do modify them like this, and you decide to pull them inside your mains, you have to pull them in slowly because at the higher speed they pull outside a lot harder and get close to the mains.

Also, something you may not have considered is that on a small boat, when you get all that gear in the water, often times the gear has you instead of the other way around and it becomes very hard to turn. This is particularly true when you have more gear out on one side than on the other. That is where you will notice the biggest difference between poles and davits. When you have the poles, you can suck a side close or let it way out to give you the ability to turn. The further you let it out on a side, the easier it is to turn that direction. There were times that it would simply not have been possible to turn without the large spread those poles gave us. The last thing to consider is that you probably won't be pulling your floats inside your mains with the davit setup. That means less time with your gear in the water. It would be tight even with the poles, but it can be done.

We wish you the very best of success.

Salty

2010-04-17 18:30:08

Just one tip here. Don't put galvanized bolts in aluminum, use stainless.

Brendo

2010-04-19 16:37:45

Thank you very much for the advice. I work on a crab boat and I have been running questions by my boss who fished salmon for 30 yrs until our government put us on fishermans well fare. He made almost all the same comments that you have given me. He suggested not using a davit system and building an A frame. I will get started with that and when i come up with a desighn i will scan a picture of the blue print and post it . I also realized that after i posted my subject it was in the form of a statement and not a question so thanks for bearing with me.

brendo