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bending my trolling plate


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I have a 97 islander with a 3 liter in it. I keep bending my plate. I had a buddy beef it up and I still bent the heck out of it. I put it down to fish and when I throttle it up to go into the wind and waves it bends it!! Should I get a different prop for my boat?? Any suggestions will help!!! I have a happy trolling plate.

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Why don't you just pop the plate to the up position when you are going to need more throttle to get the speed you want? It is likely in that situation you could run without the plate down at a little lower RPM. Easy to put it back down by putting the boat in neutral when you need it again.

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Get bags you will love them they slow you down and stabilize the boat. By letting you run a higher rpm you get much better boat control. I ran a plate for years and thought I liked it till I started running bags I was wrong trolling plates suck LOL. Throw a set of 20in bags of the midship cleat and you will think your on a bigger boat they will flatten out small waves as they keep the boat from rocking. The best setup is birds but they are not all that practical for our way of fishing. I also have a design for what I call mini birds. My design is like a huge Dipsey Diver and while they provide drag which will slow you a bit are really about boat stabilization and getting rid of roll.

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I don't use my trolling bags on my current boat a s I shut off the main motor and run on the kicker. But on my last boat I had the bags all pretide with ropes and hanging on the inside oof the boat. When needed I just had to throw then over the side. absolutely no work to deploy. Rope lenghts where all the right length. I never have liked trolling plates.

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i guess im the odd ball on here, because i,ve always likeed the trolling plate better. i dont understand why your plate is bending. i used a happy troll plate untill i switched to the easy troller. the only time mine bent was when i took off with the plate still down. then i had a hard time getting it bent back in place. i had to lay it under my old motorhome and set a 10 ton bottle jack on it and jack the motorhome up. but that worked.

now if you really want to stay with a trolling plate, throw that happy troller away and get you an easy troller. they look and work alot like the happy troll. but the bottom half is hinged and spring loaded, if you give it alittle to much gas the bottom half will swing up and nothing bends. its the caddy of trolling plates. boatersoutlet.com has them for 99.00, or you can sometimes get them alittle cheaper used on ebay. but its hard to beat 99.00 for a brand new easy troller. give them a look and let me know what you think.

i have forgot about mine and took off with it down, i think it might have bent it just alittle but not enough that it hurts anything. im not even sure its bent. but the easy troller is so much better than the happy troller.

sherman

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I agree with Sherman. My 3 cyl. 2 stroke loves the plate. Even at 3.0 to 4.0 mph it would load up and foul plugs. I have been extremely happy with the Easy Troller. The hinged bottom is the key. Adding the notch as Turfwrench showed would be an easy fix for you and might solve the issue.

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I've never had a plate, kicker motor on my first boat, bags on the next. Do think keeping the rpm's up a bit is a good thing. Just wanted to pass along a caution about using bags. Twice in the last few years a boat using bags has sunk in the IL / WI area. Both outboard powered with low transoms - deep cut motor wells. Weather - waves started getting rough. The occasional wave would slop a good amount of water into the motor well. Operator at some time saw a larger wave approaching and throttled up thinking this would keep the wave from dumping water in the boat. With the bags deployed the resistance and mid cleat tie caused the nose to pivot up, actually lower the transom to the water. First wave swampt them, next few finished the job.

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I had the same issues with bending the plate. To solve the problem I bought some 1/8" X 1/2" X 1/2' aluminum angle iron and and pop riveted it to the plate backside, ie away from prop. Install two 6" lengths of the angle iron perpendicular to the bend after straightening the plate. Install the angle iron sections about 2" from each side of the plate.

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before i started using the easy troller i used the happy troller. i tried to take off with the plate down and bent mine pretty bad. i got it straught but it still had a tendency to want to bend. i went to a metal scrap yard and got a 4" strip of 1/4" aluminum plate about 6 or 8 inches long. i placed it over the weak spot on the plate and bolted it on with about 8 1/4" stainless screws. it didnt bend anymore. but i was afraid of what it might do to my cavitation plate if i forgot to raise it again. so when i seen the easy troll i bought one. they have them at boatersoutlet.com for 99.00 plus shipping. or you can get the ones with the hydro fins for alittle more. i bought the one with the hydro fins but i had went to a 5 blade prop and never needed the fins.

i have used the bags and they did do the job. i just didnt like getting up on the bow to put them out and bring them back in. i think they would work better if you did like somebody said and leave them tied off and just bring them in over the side of the boat and store then there. but i will probably just stick with my easy troll.

sherman

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