Brian picked up the boat last week and 1500 miles later it was at my house yesterday. I owe you one dude :) After the maiden voyage yesterday, Summer and I got to work on it today to do the decks and carpeting. She needs her napping area in the back afterall :)

I found a pretty good article by Cal Tatum about small boat rigging online at:

http://www.bassresource.com/features/bass_boat.html

So with that info, we went to home depot and picked up the supplies. I went with 15/32" plywood for the deck. For carpet I got the Fish-n-Ski carpet they have at Home Depot because that's what I used last time and it was holding up well after about a year. It has a fairly heavy rubber backing to it so it won't disentegrate like the stuff that is $3.99 a foot. There's probably better carpet than this out there, but this stuff was reasonable so I got it. It helped that the lady at home depot threw in a few extra feet free of charge. The article recommended 3M adhesive spray to put the carpet on, so I bought that. Kind of pricey at $12. I also bought a can of spray on Thompsons Water Seal to treat the deck so it didn't warp or get water damaged.

So we sprayed the decks, then cut the carpet. Cutting the carpet takes forever. When it was done, we sprayed the adhesive spray on the front deck and did the carpeting up there. It came out pretty good, although the spray just melts into the paint of the boat and strips it if you lift up to check your work. So basically once the carpet is on there, it's on there for good unless you use acetone or whatever to remove and recarpet it later. Then we did the deck carpeting, using a staple gun to secure it on the bottom side of the deck.

The other thing I did was take a metal yardstick, drill a couple holes in it, and then screw it into the deck. The one time I tried to measure a big bass was at night at Rancho Seco and it was a nightmare trying to hold the tape and photograph the fish at the same time. This should be a lot easier for me and for momma bass.

I am still trying to think of the best way to do a livewell. The front deck and the rear seat have foam in them, but if I can find the right sort of tub or cooler, I may be able to turn the rear seat into a removable livewell of sorts. Since the BBRC no longer has the $25,000 prize category, I pretty much would never bring a fish to the marina anyway unless it was the lake record or big enough to be on the Bassmaster top 25 list.

After 4 hours of working on it, it turned out pretty nice. Here are some pics.

http://www.calfishing.com/images/newboat/front.jpg

http://www.calfishing.com/images/newboat/back.jpg

http://www.calfishing.com/images/newboat/side.jpg

The new boat looks awesome!!! That's a trophy hunting rig all right.
I've been looking at some similar boats and will probably be getting one in the next month or so. Can't wait!

Yeah! Bill Murphy Syle. Nice and clean lookin too.. good job!

That's a perfect set-up,nice job!

Rob, nice looking rig. Where are you going to put your sonar?

Phil - Did you pick one out yet? I am really happy with my setup, but it is pretty slow with a 5hp. Doesn't exactly get on pad :)

Cody - The graph is going to go up front by the trolling motor. That's how I had it on my old boat. I drilled holes for the trolling motor, so I'm just going to drill holes for the fish finder too. There are some reinforcements under the bow that make mounting stuff up there kind of annoying, but I don't see how else to get it up there without drilling. The transducer is on the trolling motor.

Rob, I haven't made a final descision yet. They all seem to be almost identical. I've been talking with a guy that has a Lowe 1448 in stock, but the dealer's a couple hours away and I just need to find some time to go look at it. I've also seen some Sylvan boats that I like, but haven't been able to contact anyone to talk about 'em.

I think what i'm going to do is get the boat and trailer from one place and the motor from another. I've done some research and I just can't find anything negative about Nissan outboards. If I decide to get one it'll probably be 15hp 4 stroke.

Here's the boat i've been looking at
http://www.loweboats.com/FishBoats/Utility/JonBoat/L1448MMT.cfm

That's cool. It is hard to find anyone who has anything in stock. The boat you are looking at was my 2nd choice and I looked at it a long time. It's definitely a good setup, nice and wide in the beam too. The only reason I wound up picking the Triton was because it didn't have a center seat. That gives me a little more room for gear, and Summer liked it because it's better for sleeping. Har. It does mean I don't have a livewell, but that was not too bad of a tradeoff, since when I do set up my livewell it's going to be a big one which woulnd't have fit in the smaller seat anyway.

I got my boat through AIM marine in San Diego. It was a good experience overall. There were some problems with the trailer wiring, but they fixed all that after Brian found the problem. SD is a long way to go though from SLO.

I can deliver to SLO, haha.

Carpet looks good. I've got plans for the old boat, will start work tomorrow before I tow to san diego. Filled some rivets and put the trolling motor on when I got it to SB.

Siiiiiiiiick!!! thats the ultimate trophy setup. Like Dakine says, for sure Bill Murphy style. You can creep up and get scandalous in that thing. Good choice Rob and good fishing in your new hooptie.

Tsunami