Saturday, September 18, 2010

Pimp my ride

We're heading to Bemm River next week, and snapper season is just around the corner, so rather than spend the day fishing today, Dad and I set out to deck out our yaks for the upcoming season.
We started our "bloke shopping" by heading to Anaconda and found some Berkley MF40 soft vibes 2 packs which were $1.99 down from $12.99. It was a bargain so we got 8 packs with 7 different varieties and also picked up a great plano tackle box each.


Our next stop was BCF where we found the same vibes we just bought, but here they were $12.95. A good buy indeed! We bought some rod holders and Dad got a nice SPF 40+ long sleeved shirt for our barra safari next year.
Bunnings was next on the agenda and we looked around for a while before getting some 32mm PVC, a pine timber offcut, some screws, lunch boxes and some silicon.
When we arrived home it took a while, but we spent the next few hours constructing our masterpieces. We cut the pine to about 15cm long and drilled a 32mm hole through it. We then screwed the sounder mount on top and put a 30cm length of PVC into it. This created a nice setup with the sounder mounted on top. Dad had borrowed a hole drill and drilled a hole through my yak and we attached a vertical rod holder with the screws and silicon.
Inside the front hatch I siliconed in the lunchbox with its lid cut off and some tie downs on it to house the battery. It also was set in place with some polystyrene so the battery won't get jerked around. Then I attached the cables to the battery and put it in simulation mode for a test, and it worked! When sitting in it the sounder was within reach for adjustment but far enough away so that it doesn't get in the way of my paddling stroke.


We did the same to Dad's yak, although he already had a vertical rod holder in front of him and used that to put the sounder in to. He also got some angled rod holders and we used the hole driller and put one on each side of him.
We then returned to Bunnings where we got some crates and they now sit behind us in our yaks. They're very solid and far more waterproof than just sitting your tackle box behind you next to the scupper holes!
We should be able to sound up some great bream and the schools of EPs at Bemm now....