Leaning Post / Bait Tank

[mwardncsu]

I've had a few folks ask for some pics of the leaning post I had made to fit around the SuperBait Tank II. I was able to find the below that I had posted on another Striper site that I hang out on and thought I'd cross-post it here.....


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As I was looking for a boat that could provide a mix of family & fishing, I kept struggling with where I was going to be able to put a bait tank and not have to haul it in and out of the boat when not fishing. I kept looking at the leaning post with a cooler underneath and said it would sure be nice to slide the bait tank up under there to get it out of the way and leave more room in the rear deck and not have to go with a center console with a removable cooler seat of a "striper" console or such.

I had my t-top guy (Modlin's Welding in Farmville, NC) who also does leaning post do some custom mods to make this work. He made it a little wider than normal, removed the rear support and got rid of the storage tray so that the tank lid can open, and beefed up the seat a bit for support of the bench portion of the seat.

This setup works great - a little over 1/2 of the tank is under the leaning post and it leaves me with tons of room in the back of the boat to move around. I'm going to get rid of the rope and replace it with some strapping (that was just there to hold the tank in transit from Modlins) and sit the tank on some non-skid carpet padding. Most likely going to wire the tank through the leaning post leg and down under the deck up to the center console. Still debating about plumbing the tank to one of the livewell pumps/drains.

I thought I'd pass this along to give some ideas to others who might have a similar need in the future....








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A quick update after 2.5 years of living with it - I love it - glad I did it - and it has worked out very nice.

The rope in these pics is long gone - the tank sits on a piece of that rubber "waffle" mat that you get to put under rugs on hardwoods - keeps it nice and steady even when the tank is empty and bouncing down the lake.

A number of the Bay Boat mfg's now have an option for a leaning post / bait tank, but its really designed more for salt where you'd have a continuous recirc of freshwater - there is no good way that I've found in the once I looked at to plumb in a filter system - I kept coming back that the way to go was to use a SuperBait Tank and build around it.....

The only thing I'm keeping my eye on is where the back rest is mounted / bolted into the seat - you can put your weight against the back rest, but need to watch and not kick your feet up on the t-top and push back - it will flex a little and I worry that eventually it will torque the screws out..... but it has been very sturdy with a couple of guys abusing it frequently enough - and worst case the seat could be rebuild.

One thing you can't see is that I drilled a hole in front right "foot" of the leaning post and then up towards the top of the tube to run the wire for the pumps - then a matching hole in the deck under the foot and the wire is cleanly run under the deck into the console to get power - no wires to trip over.

I am still debating plumbing the tank into one of the livewell pumps and then adding a 500 gph pump in the tank to pump out, tieing into one of the livewell drains - just can't quite commit to putting those holes in the deck yet however....

[BentRod]

Go ahead and plumb it Mward! That's my biggest complaint..filling and draining my tank..PITA. I need to get a larger diameter tubing for my pump, because that thing will pump some water if it's not as restricted.

[Shadslinger]

Ive got a shop vac hose hooked to a 1200gph pump, takes no time to pump water in or out of my 30gal

[mwardncsu]

I had a 1100 gal pump that I had on a 3/4" hose - would have done a lot better with a larger diameter hose.... I managed to destroy the pump when it sucked in some gravel when I was using it to pump out a hole where I had broken pipe to a water main....

I've thought about replacing it with another and using 1.25" bilge pump hose - just 30+ feet of that takes up a lot of space on the boat.....

[Brian]

What size is your SBTII?

How would you plumb a livewell drain hose to it? Would this be something you'd have to manually hookup when time to pump out, or would it be easy to do a semi-permanent install? Same question for the fill.

[mwardncsu]

40 Gal

Two options for a drain... install (another) pump and have it come up over the water line in the filter side, install a bulkhead fitting and come out, put a bulkhead low and drain onto the deck and out the scuppers or drill a hole in the boat deck and plumb it into a livewell drain. I thought about this, as well as plumbing one of my existing livewell fill pumps to fill the tank - but decided against it. For now, I just pump it out with the pump I use to fill it.....

On the bulkhead - I talked with Ron about this when I bought my tank - he recommended against it, but said if you were going to that you should drill a hole just large enough for the bulkhead from the inside of the tank. Then, drill a slightly larger hole on the outside - larger by the outer diameter of a piece of PVC pipe that the bulkhead could slip through. Basically, you use a section of PVC pipe as a spacer - to prevent you from compressing the tank, causing a leak around the bulkhead which could leak in between the tank walls.