Livewell/baitwell

bAcKpAiN · Jan 7, 2009

I am trying to decide what to do about a livewell in my boat. I have started fishing a few small local tourneys on electric only lakes and I am in need of a livewell system. I threw together a cooler + a super fish saver that is totally portable. The tourneys I fish are team tourneys with a shared bag of 3 to 5 bass. And all of them thus far have been 4 hour tournaments. Is it enough to just have the cooler (I think mine is a 54 qt ) resirculating the water around for 3 to 5 bass?

I am wondering if I should install something more permanently with flow through capability as well. Where would I put it if I install it semi-permanent? Right now I am content in the rear bilge area because I have no gas motor. But if I ever get one again that will be a lot of weight back there. Where do you have yours? I am especially concerned that I have the overflow high enough to be above the waterline, and get good passthrough flow. Any ideas and pics would be appreciated!

I have on hand. The super saver kit, (2) 4ft lenghts of hose, (2) through hull fittings, and a regular old bilge pump.

redbug · Jan 7, 2009

Yes you need something better than a cooler with stale water for 4plus hours. but you don't need to put a hole in your boat.
You should change the water or at least part of it every hour or so 2 hours at the most. add ice in hot weather to keep the water cool.

I would rig a spray bar along the top of the cooler and leave the hose long enough to reach over the side of the boat after filling place the pump in the cooler in a tank that size 5 12" bass can use the oxygen in less than an hour so you will want to run the pump to oxygenate the water.
You can put a 3way valve and a short length of tubing to drain the well or just a hand pump.

just to give you an idea my triton has a 20 gallon livewell that has 2 pumps 1 to fill 1 to recirculate on hot days they run all day.I also add ice to keep the temps down

BlueWaterLED · Jan 7, 2009

It is pretty easy to rig pumpouts and pump ins. The fittings are inexpensive, the pumps draw some power but they don't need to be used constantly. My concern about a boat that did not come with a livewell that has one added would be the weight when full. We had a problem with that one, we put too big a livewell in a small runabout and when it was full at 8 pounds per gallon of water, we had 240 extra pounds in the boat. Just some things to think about.

Macgyver · Jan 7, 2009

what I did is in the center of the boat put a full width that holds 35-40 gallons. I use a bilge pump to pump it out totally and a live well pump to fill it with a 3' spray bar. I run the live well pump every 15 mins for 5 mins or so. I have a 1 1/2" overflow, so it is very efficient at circulating the water and keeping it fresh . I've had 5 or 6 large white bass and 3 or 4 crappie in it at once and they've been fine..

rcgreat · Jan 7, 2009

macgyver can you show you pickup to get water into the livewell? I am wanting to some thing similar to what you got but Im not certain how I want to do the pickup, thanks.

Gary

russ010 · Jan 7, 2009

You can look to see what I did on the boat modifications page... look for the post called - Alumacraft 1236 Makeover... then go to page 11. I think that's the page it's on. I would post the link, but I'm back in South Carolina for military and I'm on dial up...

Total cost for what I'm building is around $50.. but that's only because I bought a bilge pump and a livewell pump. One in the livewell recirculates and pumps water out, then the livewell pump I'm using to hang over the edge of the boat to bring water into the livewell during water changes.