I'm getting ready to travel to look at a boat as an entry level power troller. On the whole it seems like a decent deal as far as hull and power. However it has three spool Kolstrands where the spools are nylon and not brass. I see that they list these on their webpage but don't really have any information about them. I was wondering if anyone had used these types of gurdies before and what the differences are between them and the regular all metal kolstrands?
JYDPDX
2013-01-13 04:47:44
I don't have a set of those plastic spools but my friend does. They isolate well, obviously. The only drawback as I understand is that its takes some ingenuity to alter the natural voltage if you want to do that because the wire itself is insulated from the gurdies. Other than that they will suit you fine. Certainly not a dealbreaker on a boat purchase. Kolstrands work just fine except for the fact that they suck compared to other brands. I had the worst set of kolstrands you will ever see and they got the job done fine for several years.
Which boat are you looking at?
Salty
2013-01-13 05:52:13
I had both Pacific King and Kolstrand gurdies with plastic drums early in my power troll history. I would recommend isolating them just as you would brass spool gurdies. Pushing or pulling voltage was a problem, part of the region I moved to Easthopes.
kjwelder
2013-01-19 02:17:49
Nylon spools aren't a problem. Use brass blocks as a connection point for the black box wires.
Salty
2013-01-19 06:35:53
Then isolate the blocks? I do that already with my plastic blocks because the aluminum hayrack is bonded into my engine etc. and I don't want any bleeding of voltage when it is wet. I use plastic bolts.
MJP - I wouldn't be too concerned about the boat having nylon spools. I found a set of used 2-spool nylon Kolstrands when I first converted my last boat back to trolling in the early 90s. I went through all of the regular accepted isolation steps for mounting on UHMW and plumbing the hydraulics, and from the beginning had the right voltage in the lines for Kings and "close enough" for Coho. I tried a bit of Chum fishing the 3rd season but couldn't seem to get a voltage high enough that was reliable. I had some ideas for system modifications, but by the end of the 3rd season they were long past the point of needing a rebuild and I found a set of 3-spool Hasbras that took the nylon Kolstrand's place on the stern.
I am back in the same starting situation again now after buying a troller with 2-spool nylon Kolstrands. I plan to remount and re-plumb them and get a couple of seasons out of them before I move up to a set of 3-spool Easthopes. Up to this point this particular boat has been "fishy" with these gurdies and I will be curious if I can adjust the voltage enough w/o a black box to keep myself busy with Chum. TIme will tell. Good luck with your boat search.