Friday 4/11

[Jason54]

Sorry for the late report but here it is anyway. Fished roanoke side above indian creek. Had good luck catching bait using Stripedyams 4am meathod:D Although I did throw my 10ft calusa net on a tree and had to tie it to the boat cleat and use the motor to free it. It didn't fair so well. Ended up with 2 fish both in the slot. Had tons of chases blow ups and pull downs but could only stick 2 of them. Used big shad on freelined boards and a float. Here are a couple pics of the fish and a couple of my home made bait tank.







It's not the best by far but it has worked so far this spring. My dad got the cooler at a yard sale for 5 bucks and i got most everything else at lowes for 25 so with the pump we have less than 50 in it.

[piper]

Great fish! Cool bait tank concept. Looks like it would benefit from a little more filtration though. Have you tried charcoal at all?

[mwardncsu]

Nice report - that cooler tank looks good - bet it will hold a bunch of ales when the time comes. Does the pump have the keep-alive plate on the bottom for aeration?

[mwardncsu]

Apr 15, 2014 15:51:19 GMT -5 piper said:

Looks like it would benefit from a little more filtration though. Have you tried charcoal at all?

Looks like mid-upper Roanoke creek water to me Has to filter a long time to clean up - that's pretty clear

[Jason54]

The water was nasty, No I haven't used anything but some washable furnace filter cut into pvc sized circles. It will clean the water up after a while and does a great job getting the scales and gizz slime out. I got the pump from my old keep alive so it does have the plate on the bottom.

[mwardncsu]

Some poly-fill will help clean it up more, but if you put a bunch of fresh gizzards in there then the furnace filter material is probably a good choice as the shad slime will clog the polyfil up real quick - of course can easily wash/rinse it.....

[Deleted]

Great report and tank. Provides me with some ideas!

We also got a net caught on a tree a few weeks back and used the cleat method as well. In our case the tree came up and we dragged the whole thing over to shallow water and retrieved the net with minimal damage.

[Jason54]

I need to make a couple of changes to the tank. I didn't use a big enough pvc line from the tank into the bottom of the filter so the filter can't keep up with the pump so I had to drill some holes near the top so the tank wouldn't over flow.

[Gotcha]

Apr 15, 2014 20:05:52 GMT -5 Jason54 said:

I need to make a couple of changes to the tank. I didn't use a big enough pvc line from the tank into the bottom of the filter so the filter can't keep up with the pump so I had to drill some holes near the top so the tank wouldn't over flow.

With this statement I see how it is ran now! Very nice concept! But the overflow is killing your filtration! Probably by half! Fix that and it will be great!

I use a cooler for my bluegills cat fishing with just a mr.bubbles! I can do this to that cooler an have a nice tank!

Few questions though! What did you use to make your walls? And how did you fasten it to side of cooler? What gph pump you running?

[Jason54]

I'm planning to use another hose to run my overflow back over into the top of my filter. I used aluminum sheet metal to round off the corners and to separate the tank from filter compartment and used aluminum rivets to attach the sheet metal to the cooler walls. some white silicone caulk to hide the sharp edges and it was watertight. The pump is either 460 or 500gph I cant remember for sure. I used 3/4 pvc to run the water into the filter but I should have used at least 1".

Does anyone know what size the filter intake line is in a sbt II?

[mwardncsu]

I'm thinking it's 1.5"

[Jason54]

One of these days when I save up enough money I'm going to own a sbt. The cooler works good for now but it is BIG! In the pic above it has 20 fairly big gizzards in it.

[Gotcha]

Apr 15, 2014 21:04:22 GMT -5 Jason54 said:

I'm planning to use another hose to run my overflow back over into the top of my filter. I used aluminum sheet metal to round off the corners and to separate the tank from filter compartment and used aluminum rivets to attach the sheet metal to the cooler walls. some white silicone caulk to hide the sharp edges and it was watertight. The pump is either 460 or 500gph I cant remember for sure. I used 3/4 pvc to run the water into the filter but I should have used at least 1".

Does anyone know what size the filter intake line is in a sbt II?

Ty brother!

[BentRod]

Actually looks pretty good besides the overflow..should work ok..with a Dannco and max aeration, it may work really good, even in the summer. How many gallons does it hold?

[Jason54]

I'm not sure how much water it holds. I am planning to add a dannco aerator in the near future.