Is your boat a “too-fast-boat?” If so, you have choices of ways to slow “Ol Wavewhacker” down to get it in the speed zone the fish want at several price-points. A couple of five-gallon buckets and 25 feet of rope will come in at about $20 at a hardware store. Expect to part with the better part of a hundred-dollar bill for a pair drift socks.
Small boats with big motors will often need a way to slow to trolling speed.
Since 1980 I’ve owned several boats dedicated to fishing on the Great Lakes. Each one was somewhat different than the previous model, but all of them shared one feature. The slowest they would go at idle speed was between 3 and 4 miles per hour—too fast for most Great Lakes trolling.
That was a common problem when outboard motors were all two-stroke and it’s not uncommon now since outboards are often two or three times more powerful than they used to be. What to do?
It wasn’t uncommon to see walleye boats equipped with splash guards on their transoms to keep most of the water out of the boat when the owners trolled in reverse to achieve “walleye speed.” Some anglers dragged a couple of five-gallon buckets as trolling brakes. Others went with sea anchors or drift socks to accomplish the same thing. A few people equipped their boats with kicker motors; but that was expensive and to do it right required special brackets, a steering linkage and other mechanisms. That made it more expensive and for many, that was too much.
There was one more option available, a trolling plate. A trolling plate is a hinged plate that attaches to the anti-cavitation fins on the outdrive or lower unit of an outboard motor. When slow trolling speeds are required, the plate locks down behind the boat’s propellor and acts as a baffle to deflect a significant amount of the forward thrust, slowing the boat to extremely low speeds—as low as 1 mph for guys who troll with worm harnesses for walleyes. Plenty of people (including me) bought a trolling plate. Some still use them (again, including me) but I don’t see them as often now on other boats as I used to.
Though several companies have produced trolling plates, few stood the test of time. Either they didn’t sell enough to be profitable, or they just weren’t sturdy enough to stand up to the demands of Great Lakes anglers.
A steel support bolted to a Happy Troller plate before it’s installed is one way to keep it from bending when in use.
The trolling plate I installed on my first “too-fast-boat” was (and still is) called the Happy Troller. It’s still being made and marketed now, nearly 35 years later, by a company called Davis Instruments (www. davisinstruments.com).
The name of them is deceiving. I know many former owners of Happy Trollers who are decidedly unhappy with them. Me? I’m mostly happy with them but getting to “mostly happy” was a process.
I vividly remember the first time I headed out with a Happy Troller bolted to my outdrive. When I got to the fishing area, I raised the lower unit, tripped the mechanism to drop the plate from horizontal to vertical and lowered the propellor back into the water. I popped the boat into gear at idle speed and the boat barely moved forward. A few more RPMs added speed and a little bump more had us at what seemed a likely speed. I was happy!
I stayed happy until the end of the trip when I raised the plate back to horizontal for the ride back to the marina. The trolling plate was bent maybe ten degrees past horizontal.
I’d not revved the motor with the plate down. I hadn’t forgot to raise the trolling plate to horizontal at the end of the trip. Yikes! If it bent that much on one trip, would it continue bending on the next? Most likely.
Back at home, I removed the plate and hammered it back to flat. I’m not a metallurgist, but I know some types of aluminum can be bent without losing much strength, other types are brittle and will break with only a small bend. The plate was made of the latter type of aluminum. By the time I’d hammered it back flat, there was a small crack just under the hinge on the starboard side.
Installing a kicker motor is the expensive method of controlling trolling speed.
To prevent it from just bending back and cracking more the next time it was used I reinforced it by bolting short pieces of steel angle iron across the bent areas. That patched the plate well enough that the plate made it through the rest of the season though the crack near the hinge had grown. By the next season I’d purchased a replacement plate from Davis Instruments, but I reinforced the new plate with angle iron splints before it was installed. That solved my problem. Was it poorly designed?
I had the size “large” Happy Troller advertised to be for motors, both outboards and sterndrives, 50hp and up. Perhaps if I’d bolted it to a 75hp outboard, it would have worked just fine. However, what I suspect is the plate was designed to fail.
I’m sure the last thing the makers of Happy Troller wanted was to build a unit so strong that if someone forgot to move the plate to the horizontal position after fishing and slammed the throttle down to get the boat up on plane, the Happy Troller would be so strong that it would break the anti-cavitation fins or crack the lower-unit housing. The plates were designed so something would give.
Other Trollers
Walleye fishing was reborn in Lake Erie in the mid to late 1980s and as several professional walleye tournament trails became active, the interest in walleye fishing grew like bass fishing and bass tournaments had grown in the 1970s.
Walleye “fishing” boats were being designed—mostly aluminum models. Outboard motors were getting larger, but most of the motors were still two-cycles. Trolling tactics were winning most of the tournaments and the interest in methods of slowing boats to “walleye” speeds was high. Several companies developed their own versions of trolling plates.
Drilling holes in the anti-cavitation fins are the only alteration to a lower unit required to install a trolling plate.
In the early 1990s a friend of mine put a trolling plate sold under the Cabela’s brand on a new boat and motor he’d just purchased. I was on board for his maiden voyage. Two things were unique about this plate—it was made from plastic and to “protect” the plate and the outboard from damage, it came with a brass shear pin which would break if too much throttle was applied.
Great theory and I guess it worked as designed in that neither the trolling plate or the motor broke. The shear pin did—about one second after the motor was shifted into gear. So did the spare pin. Eventually, we found a steel wire we were able to “machine” into a pin that would fit and hold up to the pressure. It worked for the remainder of that trip and my friend made some steel pins that perfectly matched the original shear pins. A month or so later, the pins were still good but the plastic where they fit split. He bought a Happy Troller and brought it over to my house where we did the “after-market” customization I’d learned to keep my plates from bending.
WHAT IF???
One of the concerns I frequently hear from trollers who are considering adding a troll-ing plate is, “What if I forget to raise the trolling plate? I’m afraid it will tear the anti-cavitation fins off my lower unit.”
I was concerned as well and I’m as scatter-brained as anyone. I’ve cleared all my rods except one at the end of a trip or have forgotten to raise a downrigger weight before powering up. I’ve never forgotten to raise my trolling plate in thousands of uses.
I’m at the helm of my boat most of the time, but occasionally one of my brothers or a friend is at the wheel and twice these guys went hammer down when the last rod was stowed but the trolling plate was still locked down. “Whoa, stop, hold it!” I shouted. It was too late.
Precision trolling speed control will put more fish on your lines and in your nets.
My lower unit, a Mercruiser Alpha One Gen II, was not damaged either time. I can’t say the same about the Happy Troller. The reinforced trolling plate didn’t bend—at least not where the reinforcement steel was placed, but the stainless steel hinge-pins bent as did portions of the brackets that attach the unit to the outdrive. Each one was totaled—still, no damage occurred to the lower unit.
Kickers
More and more anglers are opting to add a kicker motor to their Great Lakes trolling rigs. There are plenty of four-stroke models to choose from these days and the owners tout the quietness of the motor, fuel savings, the comfortable feeling of having a back-up motor if the main motor conks out. No doubt a kicker motor will putt along at a wide range of trolling speeds. What they don’t tout is the extra initial expense. A quick check at a local dealer pegged the price of a new kicker motor and installation to be way north of $5000. For many, that’s a deal breaker, especially if there are workable options—far less expensive options.
Walt’s Troller(S)
Last spring, I saw a post on a Great Lakes fishing site asking if anyone had any experience with a spring-loaded trolling plate called the Walt’s Troller. Most people responding had never heard of them, but a few gave them rave reviews. I easily found www.waltstrollingplates.com on the web and what I saw was intriguing.
The first thing I noted was the middle of the plate had a large hole in it. I learned later there’s an important purpose for this. The second thing I noted was the lack of “moving parts” on the unit. There’s only one. There are no strings to pull, no latches to open or shut, there’s just a hinge and a pair of strong springs to hold the plate in the “down” position.
I called Walt. Actually, I called Walt’s son-in-law, Chris, who had recently taken over the company after a couple of decades of Walt selling his trollers from his Nebraska-based company—mostly to anglers in western reservoirs, not so much in the Great Lakes. Chris sent me one to test for this article.
The hole in the plate allows unencumbered steering when in reverse gear.
Both the plate and the mounting bracket are heavy gauge, machined alumi-num, not flat stock, cut and bent. Neither will ever bend or break just from the thrust of a propellor.
Does it work? That answer is mixed. It didn’t work for me.
The way it’s supposed to work is simple. With the boat in neutral or at idle speed, the trolling plate is held in the “down” position by the strong springs. Put the boat in reverse gear to pull away from the dock and the prop pulls enough water through the hole in the plate and from around the edges to make the boat go backwards.
Put the motor in forward and the springs will hold the plate down at dead idle. You’ll need to bump the throttle ahead a little to get the boat up to trolling speed and a little more to get it up to a no-wake speed around five mph. To speed to the fishing area, punch the throttle down and once the boat gets to seven or eight mph, the thrust of the prop will push the plate to the horizontal position and off you go.
My 21-foot Pro Line is built from heavy fiberglass in a deep Vee configuration intended for the saltwater market. With a 4.3L Mercruiser engine, 70 gallons in the gas tank, downriggers, rod holders and other gear, it’s past 4000 pounds once a few big guys climb on board. Without a trolling plate, idle speed in no wind or current is about 2.4 mph. With a little wind and/or waves the idle speed can approach four mph. It’s a too-fast-boat.
I mounted the Walt’s Troller and headed for the lake. The hole in the plate worked as it was designed. In reverse, no issues—the boat pulled away from the dock as normal. In forward gear at idle speed my GPS showed 1.2 mph—about the same as with my Happy Troller. However, as soon as I bumped the throttle to speed up to a normal two to three mph trolling speed, the plate would push up to the horizontal position and I’d be going almost four mph—too fast for general salmon/trout/walleye trolling. Though Walt’s are advertised to work on sterndrives up to 260 HP, evidently a heavy boat like mine requires too much thrust for it to work properly.
Trolling down to less than 2 mph is impossible on many boats but there are several ways at several price points.
I called Chris to advise him of the problem. He was surprised, but said in such a situation they would take it back and issue a refund.
Instead, I took “Wally” to a friend with a 19-foot aluminum boat that is half the weight of my boat. Like mine, his motor won’t throttle down slow enough to get to either walleye or salmon speeds. Derrick told me, “Without a pair of drift socks tied on at the bow, I can slow down to about 3 ½ mph at best.”
“Want to try a trolling plate?” I asked.
“I’ll try anything,” he said. “I’m used to using the drift socks, but that doesn’t make them any less of a hassle to deploy or messy when I’m pulling them in to move to a new location or to stow for the trip home.”
A couple days later I got the report. “I love it!” he said. Installation was a snap. Drill four holes and tighten four bolts.”
I asked a few questions: Does it slow the boat to trolling speed? How slow can you go? At what speed does the plate swivel up when you need to go fast? How does the boat operate in reverse or when docking? Any other comments?
All the answers were just what Walt or Chris would want to hear. Derrick said, “On my GPS, the boat would troll 1.2 mph. I nudged the throttle ahead to faster speeds and at 3.5 the plate was still down. I think I could have gone 5 or 6 mph, need be. I was by myself, so I couldn’t see the exact speed the plate pushed up, but it seemed to be up at about 7 or 8 mph. There was no big jump in speed, the boat just sped up and went on plane as usual. I didn’t notice any decrease in maximum speed for the boat, either. I did slow the boat down to 10 mph once—about the speed it would “wallow” trying to stay on plane. I moved to the rear, looked into the water and the plate was still in the horizontal position. (I’d applied some bright orange tape to the plate to better see it in the water.) As it dropped slower and settled off of plane, that’s when I assume the springs pulled the plate down.” Derrick is now a happy troller—without a Happy Troller.
A hinge and two strong springs are the only mechanical parts on a Walt’s Troller.
Is your boat a “too-fast-boat?” If so, you have choices of ways to slow “Ol Wavewhacker” down to get it in the speed zone the fish want at several price-points. A couple of five-gallon buckets and 25 feet of rope will come in at about $20 at a hard-ware store. Expect to part with the better part of a hundred-dollar bill for a pair drift socks.
Plenty of people spring for a kicker motor, often justifying the expense by saying the kicker saves them money in the long run when it comes to fuel economy when trolling. Others like the option of having a spare motor on board in case the main motor conks out. I would like it too, I suppose, if I didn’t have towing insurance, but only if port was a few miles away. Fifteen miles at 5 miles per hour is a long-azz boat ride. Speaking of insurance, the extra dollars on your boat insurance premium to cover the kicker probably negates the annual fuel savings.
What has worked for me, and thou-sands of others for decades is a trolling plate. For less than $200 you can have a trolling plate installed, whether it’s a ready-to-go Walt’s, a modified Happy Troller or other brands. All are solid options.
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