# Finaly got my new Flounder rig.



## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

AND MAN IS IT SWEET...It is bigger than I imagined, all kinds of room for 2 men to stand up and share the lights. The engine, wow! Whisper quiet, in idle, I have to look back to see the pea stream comming out of the engine to see that it is in fact actualy running. With the engine tilted up I was drafting in about 7 inches of water, just barley bumping the bottom as the fan pushed us along...can't wait to get some good weather and days of to go hunting.

Hurricane Ike ripped us a new one.


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## Murphy's Law (Sep 27, 2007)

Have to wait until I get home to see the pic's, Can't view them at work but congrat's on getting the new rig. Can't wait to see a couple of reports out of it. :toast


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## Five Prongs Of Fury (Apr 15, 2008)

Thats a fine lookin' rig.:bowdown There is gonna be a lot of fish lose their life to that rig. Looking forward to hearing and seeing your first reports!!!:letsdrink


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## X-Shark (Oct 3, 2007)

That really is a fine looking ride. Where did you buy the hull?



Tell use about your light's.


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## FlounderAssassin (Sep 28, 2007)

Nice looking rig!!! looking forward to seeing some reports out of it!


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## Gnwdad (Oct 14, 2007)

I'm jealous! That is a fine set-up.


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## seacapt (Oct 1, 2007)

Very nice! Let us know what you think of the boat, I've talked to the guys over there that build them and they look like serious flounder killing machines.


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## Mike aka FishWerks (Oct 22, 2007)

Yep that is a sweet rig. Question, should the fan blade have a guard? Also, tell us more about the boat and lighting. Thanks in advance.


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## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

Let me answer a few questions.

I would like to have a cage over the fan but shrouds drasticaly reduce velocity of the pusher fan. Its actualy fairly safe. Only a complete moron could walk into it and then he would have to be a very tall moron. The biggest danger with my fan set up is to have a catastrophic failure of the blades and parts went flying and someone happened to be standing in the wrong place, off to the side of the turning fan.

I make sure to tell everyone for this reason to not stand dierectly on the side of the fan when its running.

The fan is awesome. It sounds cool and develops good pushing power. The days of push polling are a thing of the past for this old back and arms.

The boat came from Krestas Marine in Edna, Tx. The hull is a Alweld 1870 SSMB commercial model. It is a tunnel with sponsoons. Has a 20 gl tank. 

Motor is a 60 hp 4-stroke yammy hi-thrust. It is very quiet. At idle, it is hard to tell if it is running or not. It will smartly jump up on plane with a full load and 4 adults.

Fan is a 13hp 4-stroke Honda with a 3 blade composite propwith remote controls on the forward deck.

Electronics are a Garmin combination GPS/fish finder unit. It does a lot of cool extra stuff like telling the moon phase, overhead times and tide times and heights for the body of water I may be in. Stereo is a Poly Planer marine with a panisonic, marinepowered sub-woofer and 2 Bazooka marine speakers. It cranks out.

Lighting is what it looks like. Incadescent light bulbs but these are different than what one would find in their home. These bulbs are 12v, 100wts, ruff service.There are 6 of them pulling 50 amps. The fan has a GM alternator that pushes 100 charging amps into the selected battery. There is a back-up battery and a on-board 2-bank charger

I have been pleased with the lights, they work a little better than I anticipated. They have a huge spread and what looks to begood penetration.

I need some days off and some good weather to check it out good. Hurricane Ike really tore up the upper coast. Curfews every where, you have to show a ID that has you address to get into most coastal places, etc. It may be some time before I can give any gigging reports. The one night that I had a chance to take it out was blown out conditions but the boat seemed to be drafting in 7 inches of water with 4 adults and the lights spread was about a 15 foot radius so I am looking forward to a night when all the stars align and the Flounder Gods are smiling upon me.

Thanks for the cool comments.

More pix...


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## Death From Above (Sep 28, 2007)

Man.........that's a flounder barge! Can't get over how wide it looks. What are the steps on the stern for? Are they on both sides of the motor? I've never seen anything like that before.


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## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

Yeah man, it is wide. I have to really pay attention when towing it because the trailer wheels stick out so dang far.

I think its 70 inches wide, lots of elbow room for 2 men handling gigs.

The steps out back are sponsoons. They provide extra floatation to off-set the weight of the outboard...the thing gets very shallow with the outboard trimed up and running on the fan.


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## X-Shark (Oct 3, 2007)

> What are the steps on the stern for?






They actually do several things.





Act as trim tabs so you can take off in shallower water.



Keep the boat sitting level at rest.



Act as a steps for a bird dog to get back in the boat if you were duck hunting.


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## KPL (Sep 27, 2007)

Man that thing gets an A++ in my book. Good lookin machine there. By the looks of the neighbor hood most every one has cleaned up from Ike. At least on your street any way. Maybe you can get out soon and stick a fewthen post some reports. Good Luck !!!


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## Shiznik (Feb 24, 2008)

Man, that is a pretty sweet rig you got there. You'll have a ton of fun out on that one! It has all the components one might want on a flounder rig too! Hope to see some great pics soon!


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## jeff456 (Sep 28, 2007)

We took our Boy Scouts over to the USS Alabama and right there along the sea walls there was a boat launch and there was 5 or 6 similar boats to that. I was drooling over them. I have never seen one running over this way (Fort Walton) so I was surprised to see so many.

Thats a real nice boat for sure, good luck with the gigging!!!

Jeff


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## Death From Above (Sep 28, 2007)

Don't get mad at me, but I got to be honest.IMO a flounder rig that is that SUPER NICE deserves better than six 12 volt camper light bulbs for a light set-up. Why did you go with that set-up over Halogens or HPS and a generator? You got plenty of room on the deck for a generator. Is it too much noise with the fan motor and a generator?

Do you live in Galveston or just flounder there? Didn't even look like ya'll lost any leaves off the trees?


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## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

> *Death From Above (9/20/2008)*Don't get mad at me, but I got to be honest.IMO a flounder rig that is that SUPER NICE deserves better than six 12 volt camper light bulbs for a light set-up. Why did you go with that set-up over Halogens or HPS and a generator? You got plenty of room on the deck for a generator. Is it too much noise with the fan motor and a generator?
> 
> Do you live in Galveston or just flounder there? Didn't even look like ya'll lost any leaves off the trees?


Noise is not a issue. I have a quality little yammy 2400is generator and tried to get the builder to mount me up some 150wt HPS fixtures but he would not consider it for libility reasons.

My choice was either Halos or the bulbs and he strongly urged me to consider the bulbs and here is why.

Our Galveston waters are rarely gin clear, they are usualy a little of color and in these conditions bulbs penetrate better because halos reflect a lot of light off the suspended particles to the back of your retinas, you do this a lot, say three nights in a row and you can effectively burn the backs of your retinas like someone who watched a welding stick to long. Bulbs don't do that.

He actualy even said in poor condition to replace the 100wt bulbs with 50wt bulbs for even better penetration, go figure. I was very skepticle at first and had a hard time believing bulbs could be better than halos but since Krestas Marine has been building boats for giggers for 30 years and are giggers themselves I reluctantly took his advice.

All I can do now is give this lighting system a try and report back.

I'll tell you about the storm in my next post, all is not well in Galveston.


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## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

> Do you live in Galveston or just flounder there? Didn't even look like ya'll lost any leaves off the trees?


I live in Galveston County, take the time to google up this address to see my proximity to the coast... Bacliff, Tx. 77518

I live in a newer subdivion, it has buried electricle cables and a raised elevation of almost 20 feet and good drainage. My sorrunding communitys average 5-10 feet abouve sea level with old growth trees and raised power lines, not good for a 15 foot storm surge and 110 mph winds in a slow moving huge storm. All coastal communitys are wiped out along the shore. Every shore town has dusk to dawn curfews, there are official vehicles every where...fire trucks, ambulances, military, out of state troopers and power company repair trucks from as far away as Canada. I work for Dupont and we are still down, Dupont doesn't stay down for any reason so you its bad.

Here are a few pictures I took. The first picture is of a house that I use to live in, the bungalow.In the picture you are looking at what is left, nothing but the pads/foundation for the garage and house that got washed away. This shot is taken from my best mans backyard.










I used to live in this house to, this is my old bedroom.










This following picture is surreal. The roof to the garage of the bungalow in the driveway of the other house I lived in in the last picture. How ironic is that?










This is my best man, Eddies house. His place faired ok considering the absolute looses around him. His house is up on stilts, the surge washed out the bottom of the house which was a garage and a hang-out place. The bottom contents are down the block and across the street.










All these pictures are from the community of San Leon, Tx.


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## Death From Above (Sep 28, 2007)

That's unreal!! Nobody even lost a shingle in your neighborhood. You are lucky.


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## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

> *Death From Above (9/20/2008)*That's unreal!! Nobody even lost a shingle in your neighborhood. You are lucky.


I'm sorry the pictures, they are misleading. I forgot to mention I took the pictures of the boat about a week before the storm. My computer had a virous and I just got it back up and running. About 1/5 of our sub division has blue tarps and rolled-up wet carpet on the curbs. The roof damage is concentratred in mostly one section in the back of the neighborhood, I'm thinking a small tornado came thru or some kind of serious down burst. As for me, the winds knocked down a 12 foot Live Oak and a 20 foot Rain Tree. It also took down the double gates on my wood fence but I was able to re-hang the gates and stand and brace the trees back up.

Not looking for any kind of smpathy, disasters happen all over the world all the time and we sit back and watch them on the news like some kind of reality show...its just different when it happens in your area and everyone his effected. I watch the news like anyone elseand am amazed at how the keys get racked over and over and people keep on rebuilding.

Mother nature seems to have away to humble anyone.


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## X-Shark (Oct 3, 2007)

2112 I'm trying to look out for you here.



Delete your address you posted above. You have a nice new boat and I sure wouldn't want unscrupulous people coming around your house to take advantage of you.


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## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

OK but I'm not too worried about it as ya'll are in Fl. and I'm in Tx.

Besides, its kept in a storage unit in a undisclosed loacation with a good security system.


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## X-Shark (Oct 3, 2007)

> OK but I'm not too worried about it as ya'll are in Fl. and I'm in Tx.




I understand your thinking, but remember you have posted this info on the WWW.



World Wide Web, meaning that anyone, anywhere can now get that info. Again I was just trying to look out for you.





Another question.



How loud are these air motors? It just seems in the scheme of things trying to have a relative quiet evening that they would be even louder than a large genny.


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## 2112 (May 4, 2008)

They are kinda loud but not so loud you need to wear hearing protection. To me, one ofthe allures is the sound because its not so much the engine you are hearing but the blades ripping the air that produces the sound. The first time I ever heard one I remember thinking to myself, WTF is that but in a cool way.It sounds like a box fan, one that is real big and produces a deep, penetratingstaccato basssound. The noise is directed with the thrust of the wind so it is louder be be standing to the back or sides, when you are standing in the bow its not disturbing at all. <U>I will say that they are loud if you are behind them.</U>

I also want to add thatthey are very tolerable at idle and slow speeds and this is the operations at wich it will be used most of the night. <U>The only time it gets loud is when you</U> <U>stand on the throttle</U> to make a hard turn or to power yourself off a sand bar, etc.

I think I've heard gennys that where much more annoying.


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## X-Shark (Oct 3, 2007)

That's pretty much what I thought. I'd have to seatrial one before I commented to buying one, but the other thing is storage for me. No way to go in a standard garage hight door.





> I think I've heard gennys that where much more annoying.




Oh yes. The cheap contractors gennys are the worst and just simply will not do for me.


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## Flounder9.75 (Sep 28, 2007)

That's a sweeeeeettttt lookinnnn rig But like DFA said you need a Jene


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