As a couple of you know, I've been remodeling my skiff as of late. Due to the lameness of a certain sasquatch, I've been forced to take matters into my own hands so that I can fish Casitas and Coyote and stuff. So, I decided to see if I could put a casting deck on my skiff and rig a trolling motor to the bow. If you've ever seen my skiff, it's hardly designed for bass fishing. As a matter of fact it's hardly designed for recreational ocean fishing. The original design was for commercial ocean fishing, so making a bass fishing platform out of it is kind of a challenge. I'll post a couple pics now, and tomorrow I should have a little more progress on it and I'll post some more dramatic pics then.

I started out by cutting a piece of 3/4" plywood to shape with a skill saw. Then I marked the deck with a pencil where I wanted the livewell and tackle storage and then marked the doors on the deck. Deciding the size of the doors was a very complicted process which involved lining up Plano 3700's to see how many I could fit, and imagining what size of a bass' belly would fit through the livewell door. Next step was cutting the doors out with the skill saw. I wouldn't reccommend this unless you've had some practice with a skill saw, but I managed without killing myself.

Now, I put the deck aside and went into the boat. I epoxied (with Liquid Nails) and screwed pieces of 2x4s and 4x4s around the bow compartment, side boxes and sides of the boat for the deck to rest on. When I was sure that they were in the right position and the deck layed flat on them, I layed the deck on top of them and measured the distance from the bottom of the new deck to the existing deck and made a support running down the middle of the deck made out of 4x4s with a piece of plywood on the bottom as a pressure plate. I screwed/epoxied that in place and screwed/epoxied some 2x4s around the edges of the compartment holes so the lids have something to rest on.

Next I primered the whole deck with a quart of primer/sealant. Hopefully this will keep the deck from rotting and warping too badly, but it is solid wood, so I imagine I'll eventually have to replace it, but it should last a few years before then.

The next step was trying to find something to make the livewell out of. I ended up at K Mart paying $3.99 for a 31 gallon storage tub. Originally I bought a much smaller one, and after setting it in place, looking it over, and consulting pictures of rob's 15-12 as well as the photo gallery of the trophy bass only website, I decided I needed a bigger livewell ;-). So that lead to the 31 gallon livewell which I cut 5" of off so that it would fit under the deck. I used a utility knife to do that and it was fairly easy.

After that I went and bought some outdoor carpet from Home Depot. They had a fairly limited supply of outdoor carpet, but this stuff will work out. It's not as thick as regular boat carpet, but I figure it won't snag hooks as easily. It'll probably take more abuse too. So I cut that to size and cut out pieces for the lids. I bought some hinges for the doors and put those on, and that's pretty much where I am now.

Oh yeah, I bought some through hull fittings from Boater's World and put a couple on the livewell for the freshwater intake and overflow drain. I'm still trying to decide the best way to completely drain it. I'm leaning toward just putting a submersible bilge pump in there. It'll end up being the easiest and fastest way and cheap bilge pumps are pretty darn cheap. Originally I tried bonding the top of the livewell to the underside of the deck with silicone but it didn't stick to the plastic tub. I made a trip to OSH today and just tore off the old silicone and replaced it with expanding foam. We'll see how that works out tomorrow when it dries.

Here's a couple pics:

This is the underside of the deck. Note the holes cut out for the tackle storage (left) and livewell (right) along with the support pillars running down the middle.
http://www.calfishing.com/dcforum/User_files/3c71b2c45575d1c7.jpg

This is the front of the boat where the deck is going to go. I epoxied and screwed those 2x4s and 4x4s in place around the edges and then primered/sealed them.
http://www.calfishing.com/dcforum/User_files/3c71b2d855c583cb.jpg

Here's the most recent picture. This is the livewell being bonded to the underside of the deck with expanding foam. You can also see the through hull fittings where I'm going to run some tubing to the pump for the intake, and overboard for the drain.
http://www.calfishing.com/dcforum/User_files/3c71b4ea5f8ca238.jpg

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