trolling with a drift sock

[livebait]

Im curious about using a drift sock under my bow to slow down my boat a bit more in order to troll with a 115 four stoke yammi, anyon edoing this and how hard is it on your engine? I cant seem to get her down past about 2.3mph so im hoping this would do it untill I by a kicker.

[auditor]

I have been doing this for years with my 90 merc and it works well.
Just don't over do it on the size of the sock.
Also be sure to tie it off on the front eye or a front cleat with a short lead to keep it out of your motor.
Before I had the sock I would use 5 gallon buckets. They worked well too. One off either side of the boat.

[MN_Moose]

I started trolling with a Cabela's 18" sock. It seems to be heavy duty enough. I try to keep the sock as close to bow as possible. I tie off on the front bow eye and tie the tail off to a front cleat. You want to have a quick way to pull in that sock.
I have a 130 Honda that normally trolls at 2.5m.p.h. I have used five gallon buckets in the past. Each pail slows me down 1/2 m.p.h. The drift sock seems to get me down to 1 to 1 1/2 m.p.h.

[FreeByrd]

A "drift sock" will work if you don't do it very often. What you should really get are two TROLLING BAGS. Look just like a driftsock, but are made to withstand the abuse of trolling them. Running a bag off each side of the boat is common practice on Erie. Run them from the middle/springline cleats with just enough line out to allow them to fully deploy in the roughest conditions you expect to fish. Run this way they won't get in the way of setting lines or netting fish or into your prop(s).

Good ones are available at www.amishoutfitters.com look for "buggybags"

Good Luck,
Steve

[glb]

I use a 40" Wave Tamer under the bow of my 19 foot runabout I/O (215 hp). Speed drops from approx 3.5mph to 1.5mph. It does burn more fuel than a kicker, but when there is no place to mount one and you don't want to spend the money.......... I clip the sock to the bow eye with a retrieval line on the tail of the sock running up to the bow cleat. Be sure to rig the length so you will not get it near the prop. The only downside I have noticed is that with a deep V hull the sock will move from one side of the hull to the other. This will cause you to chase the wheel, sometimes substantially. On the positive side, you can maneuver the boat forward, backward, or drift sideways without the sock really being in the way.

[Shellback]

Like the other post said, go with the trolling bags, and one on each side of the boat. I do alot of trolling on the Finger lakes and have used the bags exclusively.

[Koldfront Kraig]

When it's calm out and I want to back troll with my 75 hp Honda, I use a drift sock. I like to troll spinners between .5 and 1.0 mph. I have no problems reaching those speeds. When it's rougher, a 2 or 3 foot chop, that's usually enough to slow me down to the speed i'm looking for, so no need for the sock.

I cant see how it would hurt your motor, can someone elaborate on why it would?

[hntrfshr]

I used a drift sock for two years since I could'nt get down slow enough with my F80. What I did find, is that having the sock off the front made the boat much harder to control. I then centered it off the back( I used an old ski harness) this made it much easier to control the boat. Good luck

[Goldpig]

With two small socks you can do the following:

Take a rope and tie a loop on one end. The loop will be attached to a cleat on one side of the bow. From there the rope goes to a driftbag on one side of the keel and is tied in a fixed position on the rope. The rop then continues under the boat to a second bag on the other side of the keel. Again being tied in place. The rope continues its journey up to the other side of the boat and is snugged up and tied off on the other cleat. So, you have one rope going from one side of the boat to the other with two small bags tied in place on each side of the keel.

This is advice given by Scott Fairbairn.