still looking!
Still looking…I finally found a boat that checked out healthy and it sold 2 days before I was able to get there to buy it. If you have a boat that might fit, please contact me. Thanks!David.furman “at” hotmail.com
Wow, Schodackbassman, thanks for the intro! My name is Dave, I live in Northwest Vermont. I fish mostly smallies on Northern Lake Champlain, not a tournament guy but ever since I was a kid fishing the mohawk river Ive wanted a bass boat. This summer I sold my Lund and just dragged this boat home from Michigan–and I saw it on boattrader, but I ended up contacting the guy through this site, so thanks BCB! Ive been looking halfheartedly for 18 months and seriously for maybe 4 months at 19 Champions and basscats, but Im really impressed with how welcoming folks have been and how much of a family it really seems to be–that speaks volumes about you folks, so thank you, and especially thanks to the schodackbassman for the help and encouragement along the way.The boat is gorgeous and in fantastic shape–the owner apparently is an aircraft mechanic and very particular about his stuff and how its used and maintained, and this boat only has 21 hours on the console gauge. Im still a little skeptical of that on a 11yr old boat, but looking at the condition I could believe it! I havent had the boat out yet except to test drive it before I purchased it so i dont know the setup numbers–looks like a 15x25p prop but theres no markings other than that–I assume its a yamaha prop but I dont know. The test drive it handled well so it seems like setup is at least in the ballpark right now. I definitely hope to take Up the offer of driving assistance, this sucker is FAST and I will clearly have a lot to learn. Registered her yesterday AM, she goes in to get a hotfoot and blinker trim next week, and Im shopping for a new trolling motor and sonars right now…rigging will be my winter project. Ill probably have a million (possibly stupid) questions, so i hope you folks will put up with me. Thanks a ton for the welcome!Dave (Mac is my dog, in the fall Im an avid partridge hunter so right now Mac and I are more likely to be found in the woods than on the water)Here she is drying out after a long wet drive.
Isnt the difference between 95psi to 115 PSI a pretty significant difference? Thats almost a 20% difference–I know when I was looking recently the mechanic I was using told me if I was looking for a well-kept motor I should be looking for less than a 10% difference between highest and lowest cylinder, or better yet a leakdown test of 5% or less.
Looks like they dont have a snow shovel on board.
Thanks! If I understand correctly you are doing what I’ve always done up the motor shaft—no question there—then rather than tie it to the foot-pedal cable you are tieing it to the side of the mount until it gets to the deck, then drilling a small hole and running it under the deck to join the rest of the cables. Sounds fairly clean, I will likely try it on the foot-pedal cable first and see about interference, but if the sonar is affected will look to something like this. Thank you!If others have a good solution without drilling any more holes in the boat, I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks guys! Shortening the power wire to the plug would help clean it up for sure, currently I have it wrapped around the steering cable but obviously it’s far longer than it needs to be. A while back I switched to a terrova motor since I often fish deeper big water and I loved the spot-lock, and when I got this boat I wasn’t sure what I’d want—I got this motor used as it was fairly inexpensive so I could try a cable steer again without much of a financial commitment and then get a new one when I was certain whether Id want another Terrova or not. That carpeted block for the recess looks like it might be tailor-made for a terrova pedal, so you’ve got my mind going—I figured if I ended up going that route I’d have to fabricate something myself to raise the pedal, but it might be a good solution for me in this case too. I definitely use the butt seat nearly 100% of the time, mostly as a balance-aid in waves, but I don’t think I’d mind having the pedal up an inch or two just to have something to push against to avoid feeling like I’m falling over forward…probably have to try it out before I make up my mind I think.If anyone else has ideas I’m definitely all ears, keep it coming, this is great. BTW…”for the last 10 or 12 boats”?!? You’re clearly doing something right!!
Thanks Catman–Im fairly certain that the plug linked IS the plug I have–looking at the proportions it looks identical to mine and its definitely only about 3 inches…in any case its the one that came installed on the bow panel direct from BCB. As far as hard-wiring it Id prefer not to since at some point in a year or two Im going to replace the motor anyway, I guess re-connecting it wouldnt be the end of the world but the plug seemed clean at the time! 2003 boat, 2003 trolling motor, I figured theyd fit together like they were made for each other!
might have been done cold. A leakdown test will be a lot less questionable
I had a Terrova with ipilot on my previous boat,mI can answer questions about that but have never even seen one of the motorguide version. I loved my terrova on a Lund multispecies boat, it did a decent job of solving my “getting blown around way too much” issues, but if all I did was fish sheltered shallow water Id go for a cable steer motor for certain, but thats a relatively small % of what I do. My new pantera classic I put a cable steer on, figure Ill try it for a season and see what I think, and might go back to a powered-drive motor with a gps function, well see.Among other things Im interested to hear from anyone who has one of these on a basscat how they have rigged, how theyve solved rigging the motor with regards to bounce while running, and also how theyve rigged the foot pedal in the recessed tray.
I had my terrova on a lund and the overhang was a non-issue, but Im told on many bassboats the overhang can hit the bow stop on th trailer so a slide-back mount is helpful…I did have one on mine but mainly for easily removing it, I never had a problem with clearance. The spotlock isnt perfect, if the wind is variable and gusty youll still get blown around, and it only works if youre pointing into the wind (if youre not now, you will be soon…) but its a heck of a lot better than without. My lund was like a sail in the wind and it made a huge difference. Its great fishing shorelines in the wind especially alone–if you need to retie or land a fish simply hit the spotlock and forget qbout it, itll keep you from being blown off the spot or into shore. Its NOT great at close-quarters maneuvering like you might find in flooded timber, channels through thick weeds, etc as the motor-steering is slow and takes getting used to. Its also a total pain to pull it put of the water, Im told you can rig a pullcord on it, if so that would be much nicer on a bassboat. I used a trolling motor RAM to stabilize it, as the mount doesnt provide any stqbility from hitting waves to the mount is under a lot of stress and Ive heqrd of people having them deploy at high speeds from this and tear apart the motor, the ball from the ram did make the motor easier to grab, but a cord would still be a massive improvement.Id love to see photos of the foot pedal insert mentiond above, or any other basscats that use a terrova or similar foot pedal.
Oh, the only other thing tht is totally wonky on these–at leqst the Mk version–is that there is no good way to mount a sonar transducer on the shaft, as the shaft has to slide inside the mount so you cannot secure a ducer cable to the shaft in the traditional way. If you can use the US2 or MG equivalent thats great, but that doesnt work with DI or SI sonars. Youd think that because MK and humminbird are owned by the same company theyd have a way around this, but their recommendation is total BS. On mine I had to remove the entire head of the trolling motor, slide it out of the mount and run the ducer cable up the groove in the shaft and glue it in place, then slide it all back into the mount and re-install the head. MK does not officially recommend doing this even though its the only way to rig a modern sonar to the TM without letting the ducer cable hang free along the entire length of the shaft. Supposedly removing the head yourself voids the warranty, so I paid a mk service center to do it. It works great, but Im told lowrance transducer cables dont fit in the groove on the MK shaft. Im not sure if MG has a solution for this, but if you are considering one of these motors you need to take this into consideration. If that didnt make sense let me know, theres some youtube videos that show how to do it that will make sense.Last edited by Macintosh on December 28th, 2014, 12:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
The hummingbird side-imaging units do have down-imaging (at least mine do, I’ve had a 598 a 798 and an 898) but they use the side-imaging crystals for it, they don’t have a dedicated down-imaging crystal—it’s basically a down-view of the side-imaging sonar readout. At any rate, the side-imaging ducer is an expensive object that collects weeds and slows your boat down, adds holes to your hull, etc, so most people I know mount it above the step on the transom by attaching it to the jackplate—this protects it, allows it to give good side-imaging readout at low speeds(which is the only speed it works anyway, more or less when idling)—but the whole transducer is out of the water when the boat is on plane. Even if you were to attach to the hull low enough for the ducer to stay in the water when on plane, the water is turbulent-enough there that you often don’t get a good readout at speed or you disrupt the water going to the prop, etc. The transducer in the bilge sits right over the smoothest water and gives a better 2d sonar view at higher speeds and it’s protected inside the bilge where it wont hit anything or collect weeds. There are something like 4 or 5 pin connections on the transducer cable for one of these units—one is for 2d sonar, one is for temp, one is for the left-side side image, one for the right-side side-image, etc. the “y-cable” basically is a splitter so the 2d signal goes to the puck in the bilge, while the side-imaging, temp, etc goes to the side imaging ducer on the jackplate—essentially you have 2 transducers but the unit “thinks” it only has one transducer, so there is no need to toggle back and forth—they function as one transducer as far the head-unit on the transducer is concerned.
For what it’s worth, I have an 898 on a RAM mount on my Classic—it sits with the bottom edge of the screen about even with the top edge of the steering wheel as shown in the photo linked below. I’m 6’2” and have no trouble seeing over the top of it—it more or less blocks the foot of the trolling motor but doesn’t project into my field of vision any more than that. http://Macintosh.basscatowners.yuku.com … id/3802155
cant tell from the resolution, but they almost look to me more like bait balls than they do individual fish?
© 2026 Bass Cat Boats
