# trolling motor or fly fishing



## c-los (Aug 17, 2014)

i Dont have a poling skiff but i do have a skiff carolina skiff dlv that floats in 8inches.. getting into fly fishing and have caught my first trout/first fish with a fly.. i just got an i pilot trolling motor..i was wondering if any body else use a trolling motor to sight cast to fish.. id get a pole but my boat is a barge.. i try to fish the coast atleast once a month so still figuring out this saltwater fishing and new to the fly rod..


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## seadave (Feb 7, 2005)

I have an ipilot on my curlew.... I use it when flyfishing the jetties by myself..... does well, just make sure that the fly line doesn't hang over the side! I have a basket so no issues there.


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## karstopo (Jun 29, 2009)

My neighbor has a Blue Wave with a troll motor and there are shorelines and places where I have fly cast off his bow to sighted fish. You just have to pick your spots. 

I didn't use a basket. I just was careful how I stripped off the line. He has some marine carpet that holds the line in place. Fishing barefoot helps avoid the loose line finding its way under the shoe, helps with balance, and avoids getting line hung up on boot straps or laces. I think one can get a feel for stripping off line and directing it where it needs to be without looking. 

I've fly fished casting while standing near the stern too. If the wind is right, we would have 3 people fishing the surf, a weedline or a shoreline. I'd just set up wherever the wind would blow the cast away from the other guys using their baitcasting gear. 

If you want to get in really skinny marshes, just mothership a stand up type of kayak in your Carolina skiff. We've done that in the Blue Wave. Gives you the great range of a boat with the potential stealth and shallow water potential of a kayak. Best of both worlds.


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## Worm Drowner (Sep 9, 2010)

If you have a trolling motor, laying a wet towel over the motor/motor mount can help keep your line from wrapping around things sticking out. Also works when fishing from a kayak as well.


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## karstopo (Jun 29, 2009)

If you haven't mounted your trolling motor yet, mount it on the part of the bow away from the hand you strip line with. So if you cast right handed, mount the motor on the right side, starboard side of the bow. That gives your left hand more room to strip line without worrying about the motor mount.


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## Popperdave (Jul 9, 2016)

Used a trolling motor for years fly fishing with no problems. All the advise above is great. Mount mother away from stripping hand, wet towel over motor mount, and use a stripping basket or bucket. Nothing worse than having your line fall overboard and get caught up in the trolling motor and ruining an $80 fly line.
When setting up to fish plan to cast off the side of the boat rather than out in front, this will reduce the chance of your back cast catching on the boat. I usually try to setup to drift a flat/shoreline down wind and use the trolling motor to keep the boat sideways to the drift line.
Good luck and have fun.


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

they can be great in deeper water.

just understand that sooner or later the fly line is gonna end up in it pretty good.

carry an extra line for each type line you have on the boat so when it happens your day isn't ruined.

g' luck.


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## Meadowlark (Jul 19, 2008)

C-LOS, 

I'm in the process of doing the same. I'm refurbishing a near 50 year old center console that I'm the original owner of....floats and will run in 8 inches of water. It was one of the first on this coast and has seen many spectacular days.

I'm putting the new auto deploy I pilot on it....getting too old for poling. That auto deploy has some real good things going for it. 

Maybe we will cross paths some day out on the water. Would love to hear your experiences of how it works out for you. I expect you are going to love it!


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

if it's me i'm mounting it off the back to keep the front deck clear.


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## Meadowlark (Jul 19, 2008)

With the remote operation, I plan to cast from a nice cushioned box behind the console. No issue anticipated with line around the TM...or anything else....and you get excellent elevation that way, better than the front even. 

When you want to anchor...just hit deploy, anchor lock, and fire away....all without ever leaving the center of the boat. 

I'll put a power pole on the stern if that proves necessary...but I don't anticipate that it will. 

I'm curious C-LOS, what size TM are you going with? I could easily get by with a 12V system but for extended operations such as anchoring in currents below tail races I decided to go ahead with a 24v system.


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## c-los (Aug 17, 2014)

i have my boat at the dealer right now i did not think about mounting the trolling motor on opposite side of my striping hand.. they installed it already but i have not picked it up yet im currently working out of town.. hopefully i wont have any issues with the trolling motor getting into my line.. i will be purchasing one of those line tamer buckets to hopefully prevent that i was planing on getting one anyways, because im using my yeti as a casting platform and ive hear fly line can get caught on that as well. @meadowlark i went ahead and got the 24volt with 80# thrust my boat seems to catch wind pretty good and thats what most people get with my kind of boat..


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

c-los said:


> hopefully i wont have any issues with the trolling motor getting into my line..


re: getting tangled in the trolling motor...


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

now, earn your keep around here, make with the goods, and post up some pictures like fishsurfer did.

or gtfo!


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## c-los (Aug 17, 2014)

lol calm your tits!! ill post some pictures of my setup once i pick up my boat


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

: )


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## southpaw (Feb 25, 2009)

c-los said:


> i will be purchasing one of those line tamer buckets to hopefully prevent that i was planing on getting one anyways, because im using my yeti as a casting platform and ive hear fly line can get caught on that as well.


I'll sell you one for a lot cheaper than the line tamer ones and you can choose the height, color trim y todos. Hell I'll even slap a yeti sticker on it for you


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## Ripin' Lips (Jul 3, 2012)

I flyfish solo the majority of the time and I cant pole and fish so a TM is a must have on my skiff. As long as you are not a complete idiot, you will never get your fly line tangled or mangled by your TM. You may wrap the line around the head, base/foot or get tangled in the power cord but never in the prop. Probably one of the least mentioned aspects of fly fishing is line management. Don't let your line get off the boat, ever.I use a yeti as a casting platform too and have found that the rubber latches will hang a fly line no matter how the yeti sits on deck(facing forward or rearward). I also have a stripping bucket that I bring on every trip, windy or dead calm. One thing you can do to minimize the hang ups on the yeti is lay down a towel on top of the yeti so it covers the rubber latches. Wet towel in windy conditions and dry towel in calm conditions. A stripping bucket will help you and if you are standing on a yeti, I would suggest getting the tallest one they make. When I don't use the stripping bucket I thrown my fly line into the cockpit. It cant fly off the deck and into the water if the line is behind me and in the cockpit. 

I would also recommend getting a back up pin for the TM. If you fish long enough, you'll end up getting grass wrapped around the prop shaft of the TM. You will have to take off the prop to clean the grass. On the inside of the prop there is a pin the transfers the energy from the shaft to the prop. The PIN is held in place by friction and its easy to accidently knock it out.


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## Matador (Nov 8, 2006)

My buddy just flipped the hinges around on his Yeti so the fly line didn't catch on it...


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

yeah, unless you are a complete idiot you turn the latches around and it's never an issue.

heh heh heh...toca madera, amigo.


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## Permit Rat (May 13, 2014)

In the Keys we all got away from using trolling motors for tarpon and there was no other species that we _could_ use them for. The reason is/was that there were just too many places where they should not be used, to bother with them where they could. I guess some guides wait and mount theirs after the first worm hatch, when the majority of the tarpon have moved to the ocean side of the Keys.

In Texas, I think trolling motors would be very beneficial for tarpon in deep waters, (around the jetties)......or off the beaches, again in open water. Just know that no matter what size motor you use, and how slow you run it, the fish will hear it. Off the beaches, what I like to do, is run out to where I think the fish will be cruising, according to the wind and tide conditions that day. When I get there, I stop the boat completely (no more forward motion) and hit the MOB button on my handheld GPS and save the waypoint. Then I wait 5 minutes and my GPS will tell me how far away and in what direction the MOB waypoint is. This gives you the speed and direction of your drift. Now you can position your boat "up-drift" of where the school of tarpon are and not use the motor at all, as hopefully, you and the school of fish meet on a collision course with no motor noise. This is what we do off the beaches on the West coast of Fla. and no reason to believe it won't work here too.

Where you might get into problems with a motor, is in the more confined areas, like South Bay in the LLM. I know that in the Keys, any use of a trolling motor is enough to get laid up tarpon moving out. But we're dealing with trout, snook and redfish and these fish are different. They are not as spooky as a 100 lb. tarpon in the same depth of water. However, if you have enough depth to run a TM at all, even on the slowest speed to control your drift, I would advise against using the auto pilot, as I have heard they are quite noisy (at least the first models were.....maybe things have changed) and more than that, it is a noise that starts and stops with more frequency. You are better off leaving a motor on at a constant speed.

To illustrate this, I was running a channel through the Keys, early on a glassy morning. In the far distance, I could see about 4 bonefish tails on the flat that bordered the channel, glistening in the morning sun. I knew they would be in the channel long before I could get to them, if I shut down and poled the rest of the way to them. So I shined these fish on and just kept running toward them. Well, keeping my main motor at constant rpms., I got almost to within 20 ft. of the fish before they took off. I was amazed at how close I got. To boot, there isn't a fish more spooky than a bonefish in 8 inches of clear water!

So maintaining a constant rpm. and noise/pitch level is very important when pursuing fish under power. Sure the sound will get louder as you approach nearer, but it is a gradual increase and the fish don't seem to mind it.

I fish alone a lot, so I am going to try my motor in South Bay.....if the water is deep enough. On some days it won't be. But we'll see. Up north around the spoil islands, I do not foresee a problem, as it is more open.


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## Permit Rat (May 13, 2014)

Almost forgot.....for cooler hinges that get in the way, put a piece of duct tape over them. Might be a little bit of a pain the first time you open the cooler, but as the day wears on, the stickum will loose some of it's strength....but not enough to come off.

The wet towel over the trolling motor is the age old solution for fly fishermen wanting to avoid hang-ups, especially when the motor is on the deck and not in use. The problem with this is that the towel quickly dries out and flies away, if you're not careful. 

If you can find some netting material (I think 3/8 or 1/2 inch mesh is best) cut a piece 2ft. X 5 ft. and attach some lead or other material around the perimeter. (When I first thought of this, I sewed on 1/2 oz. egg sinkers.) Maybe some larger rubbercore sinkers would work as well.....surely easier and faster to attach!

Anyway, I think this works better. Nothing to dry out and fly away, and the small mesh allows the wind to pass through, while at the same time spanning all the irregularities on a trolling motor that snag fly lines.


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## Gottagofishin (Dec 17, 2005)

On my Yellowfin skiff, I stand on the center console seat and cast from there with my TM down. Works just fine.


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## c-los (Aug 17, 2014)

finally got my boat back i work alot out of town and finally picked her up.. going to south padre planning on heading to south bay. However if any one has a general area what place to go this time of year or any tips would help alot..


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

sweet, but that's not a skiff, that's a bay boat!!


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## eastmaty (Jan 9, 2013)

gota start somewhere Ish, my 2nd boat was a 16' Carolina skiff simi V, where I then slowly fell in love with fly fishing and got a push pole, used to pole it around backwards to avoid hull slap and someone would stand on the leaning post to cast. then I put a polling and casting platform on that narrow unstable beast. Gota love an HPXT though !


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

that thing looks like it'd work great for fishing the beach and passes.

i'm thinkin' a get something bigger for offshore, seein's how tpwd and cca and their **** stocker program have decimated the bay system on the middle coast.


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## Golden (Aug 1, 2006)

Bay Boat? I thought that was a YETI Cooler holder, well probably priced the same! sheesh...when is Yeti gunna put 6 x 9's in their coolers? And I thought they used to be innovative.


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## Tarpon1 (Jul 25, 2016)

Ish said:


> now, earn your keep around here, make with the goods, and post up some pictures like fishsurfer did.
> 
> or gtfo!


...now you sound like a Drakian.


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## Ish (Oct 30, 2008)

yaw since late 2006.


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