Mystery question - what is this thing? And why do it?

[Chaps]

All right, things are pretty slow in here lately . . . and no stupid comments from the SE where they have even crazier boat accessories like hydraulic spuds

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[goatram]

On a trim tab?
only one?
that angle sitting on it pointed down?
how much room on the transom?
Volvo Penta Hybrid trim tab???????

[Chaps]

John you disappoint me . . . I figured if you posted the answer all the speculation would be done because you of all people would nail it . . .

You're just funnin' with it, you know what it is but you don't want to ruin it for everyone else . . .

[speedboats]

Is it not an outboard jack plate to raise the outboard and reduce drag at high speed?

[Chaps]

Well yes, there is one of those in the photo but the mystery is the device attached to it.

[Chaps]

Ok, I must have made this too tough . . . does this help?

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[welder]

Plate to slow you down on the troll?

What he said ^^^^^^^ above.

[Sculpin]

X3 on the trolling plate.

You see that (not like that) on boats with just a main engine and no kicker. I have seen angles welded vertically on the transom like a track and you slide an aluminum plate or piece of heavy plywood up and down in the track to slow you down to the right speed.

I have never seen a fancy one like that before.

[goatram]

I have never seen one either. That is some Redneck stuff there. I have used a bucket thou

[Chaps]

Ah yes, a trolling plate! My boat isn't slow enough at idle to effectively fish Chinook salmon but no way did I want a kicker motor and dragging buckets is a PITA so something else needed to be done. So no big deal and the big plate on the engine bracket seemed like the place to do it but the issue was how to make it go up and down easily.

Voila' as they say in france, a little shade tree engineering along with an electric trim tab actuator and the plate can be controlled with a toggle switch

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[Sculpin]

You better deploy that sucker in neutral or your going to rip it right off of there. Just sayin

Very ingenious by the way.

[Chaps]

No kidding, I'll likely bend it good at some point. These vids might work, still don't quite get how to do these, someone post up if they don't play

[Chaps]

So I got a message asking why not just raise and lower the troll plate with a rope? True, that was my original plan and if my motor transom bracket was fixed and unmovable that's what I would have done. Problem was if the plate was tied off in the raised position and I lowered the porta motor bracket for some reason the rope would have gotten tight enough to break or bend the hell out of the plate. Similar problem, if the engine was deep and I decided to raise it the troll plate rope would loosen and the plate would drop causing unwanted braking of forward motion. So I really wanted to come up with a way to isolate the operation of the trolling plate so it would be unaffected by the potential change in position of my engine bracket. Then I got to thinking that it would be nice to have the ability to raise and lower the troll plate while I'm standing at the helm so that pretty much meant I needed some kind of electrical actuation . . . and the rest, as they say, is history

[Illgotoo]

Nice design. I'd like to try something similar.

Something else I'd like to try if I had time to play around is devise a trolling plate that could be electronically modulated. Some fish bite better when trolling isn't steady. I have trolled for hours at times without a hit, but then caught fish upon jerking the line loose from the downrigger.

In New England some fish for landlocked salmon with a device that modulates a rod holder. They use fly rods with streamers with a constant jerking motion. Seems to work.

So if you had a trolling plate that continually raised and lowered you might get results. You could do it manually with Chap's setup, but that could get tiring...

[JETTYWOLF]

I was about to say (1st photo) "jack porta-bracket so low with motor tilted that those blade looking parts stab the bottom and hold ya in a spot in shallow water. But after reading your comment on the southern boats with Hydraulic spuds. I guess not."

But seeing "figure 2", gave it away.

AWESOME idea. You must be really bored and or have the machinery and parts/pieces to come up with that.

Hope you showed Porta-bracket that.....after you did your provisional patent. You might make a few bucks.

[Chaps]

Thanks Dave, no not bored, just tired of pulling salmon gear too fast. Big Chinook are lazy feeders, they light up pretty good when hooked but they aren't about chasing down something that's going to make them break a sweat. The plate knocks off 1 knot of speed from my normal idle of about 2.8 knots so I'm where I want to be. Now to just get those fish down here from Alaska so I can test it out.

[dawgaholic]

Nice conjuring job chaps. John Deere got rich off just like that....how do you like the Porta bracket? Even though they are made in Dave's State, they haven't gotten the love from the market like several others I read about as they are more expensive than them.

And a general question: Is redneck now a mainstream word? Thanks to Jeff Foxworthy I guess it has more widespread acceptance now than it did back when it could be a slur OR a compliment, all depending on how it was pronounced and used in the sentence. We have many colorful metaphors in use around the Nation but redneck is one more associated with our region. McGuyvering is one I like that is new and different.

[Chaps]

Dawg, I love the Porta bracket, do a search on this site to catch some of my other posts on the thing. I'm not sure about using the term redneck anymore, like you said it might be the Foxworthy effect, seems to have transformed the public perception of the word's meaning.