Looking for some advice. I can’t afford a kicker motor right now, so I was thinking about a trolling plate. I have no experience with them and was wondering if they are worth it or not. Does anyone have any advice? Do they work? If so what styles to you recommend?
Thanks in advance.
The plate slow you down but you also loose a lot of control. I’d go with trolling bags or one large drift sock off the bow instead.
Here’s a link to an older video that shows how the trolling bags work. They’ll slow you down AND allow for very good boat control.
Jeff Jerry put one on his boat last year, hopefully he will chime in on how well it works. I know you do lose some control but if you have a bow mount use that to steer, especially if you have an I-pilot or co-pilot. I do a lot of trolling, I keep my kicker pointed straight and use the trolling motor to steer, it’s nice being able to control the direction from anywhere in the boat especially when fishing alone.
I use a trolling plate on my older 2 stroke 40hp Yammie. I does the job but what I do notice is when in chop you really loose the ability to dial in the speed you want. Throw in wind, same thing. I would prefer to have a kicker but that will be on the next rig.
Boat control has not been a problem for me on calm days. and I drag lines for salmon on lake Michigan and in land lakes for walleye and northerns along the weed edges. Windy and choppy days you will notice less control.
Another option would be to use buckets to slow your boat down. Before I got a kicker I used 2-gallon plastic feed buckets off each side of the boat. The ropes to the buckets are just long enough to keep the buckets from getting hit by the propeller. I got this idea from DaveG here on the site, after several years of trial and error Dave found that holes in the bucket, snaps, or swivels are not necessary, just replace the metal bucket handle with a longer rope.
As Onestout mentioned I used a trolling plate last year along with a couple of other methods as well. I have a 115 Merc on a 17 1/2 ft Lund Explorer. It has Smart Craft guages that I was told that would allow the motor to slow down to a crawl. Don’t believe it if they try to sell that to anyone. I could get down to about 2 – 2.5 mph. Not slow enough so I put the trolling plate on and that could stop all forward progress, but as James mentioned with a lot of control loss. The control was fine for gently changing breaklines, but just didn’t cut it for turning on sharp points. I used a large drift sock tethered off the back and the front of the boat. Off the back worked fine except you run into the possiblity of getting your equipment hung up in it. Off the front worked better in that respect, but the control wasn’t as good. Again I could literally stop the boat from moving if I chose to. I tried a smaller drift sock off the front (I think it was a 20 inch sock) and that was an almost perfect balance of control and speed. Still not the same as a kicker, but acceptable. I do have to admit that I have recently purchased a Terrova with an iPilot and plan on using it instead of the above. The previous troling motor was a cable steer so it had a short cable. I could not steer from the back of the boat. With the Terrova I will be able to steer from anywhere if I choose to. And as Onestout mentioned you could use your trolling motor to steer the boat if you have a long enough cable. You could use your big motor and a drift sock. It sounds complicated, but it will save some $$$$ for now and may get you what you need.
Over a year ago I happen to read some very good endorsements for the EasyTroller Trolling Plate on another website’s forum. Then after reading the exceptional reviews at Cabela’s website I decided to get one. Although I actually bought it through Amazon as they had a better price.
My boat is a 16.5′ (90” beam) Lund Explorer tiller with a 70hp Suzuki 4 stroke. When I wanted to slow down for various presentations I used to toss out a couple buckets, but that has it’s own set of problems. For this last year, the Easy Troller has performed just great. It goes down with a pull on a rope while in neutral, and up when you give the big motor some gas while in forward gear. It has a spring loaded bottom half plate so if you accidentally give the motor full power, no harm is done. I also have good steering control going both forward and backward as the plate does not cover the big engine’s lower quarter of the prop.
It was recommended to add an extra notch so it would also deploy at a 45 degree angle. That setting works great for pulling crank baits at 1.5 – 2.5 mph. With the plate in it’s full down position the boat slows to less than 1 mph at idle. That is just right for pulling 3-way floaters/stick baits when going upstream on the river. If backtrolling with the plate fully down it slows the boat to about .3 mph which is perfect for dragging jigs upstream.
I am VERY pleased with this setup as I don’t have to struggle with buckets, socks, or a kicker. But most important, I am able to sit in the comfort of my main boat seat and just enjoy a day of fishing.
Dave Gulczinski
PS: The reason I have not posted on IDO for many months is because of previous political BS injected into too many posts, but I do not see those kinds of injections anymore. Thank you!
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