Making a Bass Boat

[James Hall]

Got a fiberglass Jon boat. Looking for ideas, tips on making me a bass boat. 

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[GreenPig]

Do a bit of searching and you'll find alot of crawdad boat mods. Congrats.

[Fishes in trees]

You understand that that Coleman Crawdad  Ram-X is plastic and not fiberglass, don't you?  Over the years, I've met a few guys who had that boat and fished with them a few times.  I never felt comfortable standing up in that boat, and for the most part I wouldn't.  The whole boat had just a little too much flex for me.  The whole overall feeling was I didn't exactly feel safe.   If you are the only boat on the lake, I think it is ok.

 

There isn't a good place to put oar locks, so any secondary propulsion is going to be paddles.  I didn't think that three was enough flotation in the boat, should you catch someone's boat wake and get swamped.   That bothered me.

 

I forget how much weight that thing is rated for, but as I recall, it isn't alot.   So that limits the additions you can make to it.    I haven't searched the crawdad boat mods, so I haven't a clue what can be done.

 

What I would do would be to buy the biggest 12 volt transom mounted trolling motor I could find.  I'd buy 3 of the biggest deep cycle batteries I could find and wire them parallel, using 6 gauge wire.  I'd wire them together using wing nuts, so that I could take the wiring apart easily and connect the batteries to a 3 bank charger when I got home.   Using that system, batteries should last 3 years, maybe more, and you'd have LOTS of battery power.

 

Pay attention to placing the batteries, probably 1 underneath the back seat and the other two underneath the center seat, getting them on the centerline of the boat as much as possible.

 

Some rod holders and beer can holders and you're set, go fishing.  If any of the flotation in the covered compartments has come loose, rotted away, whatever, replace that asap.