The Spoonpluggers Forum

Since I've described my boat a bit, I thought I would take a minute to introduce you to my boat and its layout.

Looking back from the front will give you an idea of the general layout of the boat. In the background, you will notice the old deck. I used cheap indoor/outdoor carpet when I originally installed the deck, and it wore pretty quickly. Once I got around to attempting to clean up the carpet glue, I got fed up and bought a new sheet of plywood. Obviously, I'm not as resilient as Paul in that regard. The latest renovation saw the addition of a little spot to mount an anchor pulley with a couple of cleats to hold enough line to anchor on my local waters. More rope can be found in the storage hatch. Because of the layout of the built-in bench seats, the area that I need to place a pedestal seat base happens to coincide with the location of my storage hatch. As risky as this may sound, it has worked out quite well. I rarely use the pedestal seat, but on rough days, it's nice to use a butt seat when standing on the deck. The face plate mounted underneath works well, and I added a spinnerbait rack underneath that may well soon become a spoonplug storage rack for quick access when trolling. This renovation added a place to store my tackle. I built in a couple bungee straps to keep the boxes from sliding out when running over rough water. Before I renovated the boat, it got to the point where I had multiple tackle bags, and if someone else was in the boat, everything was in the way. I cleaned out a bunch of lures that rarely saw use, considered what I needed to cover most situations, and came up with a few well stocked boxes. After eliminating the temptation to grab a different aid when I was fishing, I started catching more fish, though not near as many as an experienced spoonplugger. Now for the ugly part of the boat. This is the one thing that I don't care much for. I need to figure out a better way to manage my wiring, but it can wait until the next upgrade. I would like to upgrade the sonar from the old single beam model that I have to something with a GPS at minimum to be used as an aid as I get better with proper boat positioning offshore. For the budget, I'm looking at a Humminbird 381i HD DI. It would be great to have color and side finding, but I just can't justify the cost. I might have to wait a few years and make the change then. When I upgrade the sonar, I'm planning to add a sonar mount in the back for use when trolling, and add a second transducer at the trolling motor with a mount in its current location.

The thing I love about this little boat is that it is continuously evolving with me and my fishing style.

Joe