Maintaining trolling speed

[surfer00]

What a great, informative site!

I have a question for all you boating fans.

I fish from a 17' Searay with a 115 merc o/b. At idle it goes a little too fast for trolling and I hate to pop it in and out of gear. My buddy told me to just raise the engine a bit to reduce speed on the troll. I am uncomfortable doing so unless I hear otherwise from you more experienced boaters.

Do you think this is ok and/or do you know of better ways to slow her done for fishing?

Thanks in advance!

 

[surfer00]

Re: Maintaining trolling speed

Scrolling down the page, I see that this topic has been hashed over many times. Sorry about the redundancy.

I will try the good old bucket behind the boat this weekend.

 

[PAkev]

Re: Maintaining trolling speed

What a great, informative site!

I have a question for all you boating fans.

I fish from a 17' Searay with a 115 merc o/b. At idle it goes a little too fast for trolling and I hate to pop it in and out of gear. My buddy told me to just raise the engine a bit to reduce speed on the troll. I am uncomfortable doing so unless I hear otherwise from you more experienced boaters.

Do you think this is ok and/or do you know of better ways to slow her done for fishing?

Thanks in advance!

I have a similar issue with my F150 on a 20ft Bay Boat which enables me to get to around 2.3 mph without kicking out of gear. However if I put my trolling motor down, I can hit the reverse every once in a while to slow down. It has also been a good trolling strategy as I have also found that fish will often hit when speed is picking up.

 

[bogggar1]

Re: Maintaining trolling speed

Buy a "Happy Troller" trolling plate... 20 min. later u'll be trolling HAPPY!!! Got my boat down to 1.2-1.4!!! Good Luck!!!!

 

[rndn]

Re: Maintaining trolling speed

I've had bad luck with the trolling plates. It may be just the group of people I hang out with, but every one of my buddies has forgot to put the plate back up prior to taking off which ruined the plate. I personally use the drift sock that are available to troll behind the boat. Sometimes I use two to really get me to slower speeds for walleye. Best of luck.

 

[bogggar1]

Re: Maintaining trolling speed

I've never forgot to put the plate up but I imagine if u did forget u'd realize real quick when u didn't excelerate!!! There has been a time or 2 when I forgot the stringer though!!! OPPPS!!!

 

[rndn]

Re: Maintaining trolling speed

Oh my boat accelerated okay, it bent the plate right out straight. I also have left a couple of stringers overboard as well, but I always got them back into the boat.

 

[bogggar1]

Re: Maintaining trolling speed

Trolling plates are easy to forget about because u really don't see them... during the Trout Derby we watched a couple guys take off w thier downrigger ball in the water!!! They caught it in time though... 3 years ago 2 guys [drunk as hell] told us they couldn't get the motor started asked if we could tow them... we pulled up to the boat to see they had somehow unhooked thier gas supply line to thier outboard... LOL!!! Those guys were embarresed as hell but a great laugh we all had!!!