Cray Pot Haulers
Submitted by Mahi-mahi on Thu, 2017-02-16 08:59
Hi
I'm looking at getting an electric cray pot hauler with a preference for the crane arm mounted type. I have found 2 types that i like,
Does anyone have any knowledge/experience/recommendations on Pot Hauler types.
The hauler will be used on a 6.7 metre Custom ali walkaround, it's a very stable boat at sea. Any helpful advice welcome.
Thanks Mahi Mahi
S.Cotchin
Posts: 138
Date Joined: 24/11/14
Stress free
hey Mate
i have the stress free , on 6mtr Trailcraft center console
i have it mounted midship as i have nowere down the back for it
whilst an awsome Hauler and strong as.
if i did it again i would put a tipper and capstan oposate
as it does get a bit hairy at times and you have to couter balence the boat with other peaople on the oposite side
especially with a stuck pot as the hauler wont stop at anything, it has pulled my boat down close to the water a few times
and also leaning over to pull the pot if the swells up a bit
have broken the top pully on the gantry a few times with stuck pots - can buy replacments direct form stressfree aorund 90 bucks.
you need to make sure they are well mounted
mine has sheered the ali fold apart on the topof the gunnel
whist still having a rachet strap back to the rocket launcher bar.
Reel men smoke shimano's
ranmar850
Posts: 2702
Date Joined: 12/08/12
Do not get the arm type
The one you have a pic of is downright dangerous on a small boat, IMO. People get themself into enough trouble hauing things over the side without adding all the extra leverage of one of those. You are placing the actual point where you are pulling from both higher and wider. If you have a pot snag just as you are riding up over a swell, and don't get the weight off instantly, you'll be over and in the water before you can blink. These are OK on very light crab-type pots in calm water, or if you have a heavy boat of , say, at least 8 metres. Perhaps, even, plastic pots with a lot of care and very little ballast. Which means they'll disappear on you the first time the sea comes up and you'll be blaming pot thieves, not the fact that the bloody things just skate and roll off over the horizon without a lot of ballast.
As the poster abover said, just get a capstan and tipper like everyone else, much safer and more efficient.
meglodon
Posts: 5981
Date Joined: 17/06/10
I have to agree
A mate of mine has one on a 6 metre quinine like mine and it scared the living hell out of him when he picked up a pot and didn't check whether it was stuck or not.
The line tightened up and a small swell came along and he near as hell lost his boat from being pulled under on the winch side. The near tragedy my have been caused by inexperience with this type of pot lifter who knows, however he got rid of it and brought a capstan winch and was a lot happier with that set up.
They (pot lifter) are a great piece of gear but on a small light weight boat they can be deadly. They will pull the pot up, or you down to the pot.
S.Cotchin
Posts: 138
Date Joined: 24/11/14
+ 2 above i still have mine
+ 2 above
i still have mine but i didnt put my pots out this season
dhu to being super busy at work (excuse the pun)
but i am stronly thinking for next Nov changin my whole set up to the tipper and capstan .
as i have had a few too many close calls as discribed above for my liking on my 6mtr trailcraft.
Reel men smoke shimano's
craytail99
Posts: 76
Date Joined: 29/04/14
We use the davit style down
We use the davit style down here in Tassie roughly 40 to 50lbs pots and pretty average weather at times. Ab divers use them as well to haul big loads into their boats.
Getting a pot stuck is the same as getting an anchor stuck you dont free it by brute force alone unless you dont mind breaking things or a few hairy moments.
No one uses tippers here either just the davit then swing it into the boat.
When your not using the hauler it is removed from the boat so its out of your road.
A thousand way to skin a cat this is but one method.
ranmar850
Posts: 2702
Date Joined: 12/08/12
Tassie is a bit different in some ways
All jokes aside--You are using stick (beehive) pots, and as you say, they are only 40-50 lb. The little pensioner pots some use over here, light on ballast, may be that light, but full size pots are heavier. You can swing a round pot over the side with them, batten pot is generally too long and it will foul on the gunwhales as you try to swing it in. Yes, ab divers use them to swing the bags inboard, but the weight is predictable and only an issue for the time the bag is outboard , as the bag swings in the effect is reduced. And most ab divers have solid lumps of boats, too--no light 16 ft tinnies.
If you are talking about using them on larger commercial boats, different story--I've worked on them myself on an old cutter, no issues, the stability of the boat makes the pull you are applying no issue. They are the standard for fishing round pots in southern waters.
But the real problem is the sudden snag--you say you don't try to pull too hard when the pot is snagged? Mate, in a small recreational boat, if you have a pot snag as the weight suddenly comes on, and you are lifting on a swell , you just won't have time to get if off. The sudden roll of the boat throws crew to the low side, making things even worse, and over you go.
craytail99
Posts: 76
Date Joined: 29/04/14
LOL
Lol My pot is bigger than yours…. We are fishing not shootin pornos!
Yes the beehive pot is lighter, stronger, less likely to get snagged, catches better, doesn’t walk in swell and is an all round champion.
My advice is trade in your old pallet of bricks pots and step up to the new game in town THE BEEHIVE.
Save your back and your bank balance Vote 1 BEEHIVE
More than happy to help hook a brotha up!
We all to a man use davits down this way or haul by hand depending on the depth. Never drowned a boat yet or heard of anyone doing so with a davit. We have some real peanuts down this way as you might imagine, if there was a problem it would have become evident many moons ago.
Getting a pot unstuck is where common sense and seamanship meet or it should….
You WA blokes have it all over us when it comes to general fishing techniques and deep drop in particular I have learnt heaps.
Crayin is a different story I reckon we have you well covered.
My vote is go the Davit the first photo looks the goods .
carnarvonite
Posts: 8627
Date Joined: 24/07/07
Weight of pots
The weight of a pro slat pots usually runs around 50-55KG not Lb, full size stickies are not much different.
When in Tassie a couple of months back I noticed that the pots there are one about 2/3 to 3/4 the size of what we use here in WA
craytail99
Posts: 76
Date Joined: 29/04/14
Christ....
Fuck me drunk 50 to 55 kg jeeeezus now that is a POT or should I say a mooring LOL.
Yeah I reckon you guys could do yourselves a solid and reduce the weight a bit. We put ours in some pretty shit ground and it gets pounded with some average weather and they don’t tend to move about.
But if I was hauling gear like that it would be difficult to know when you were stuck fast or not due to the weight.
Even the blokes that fish the edge of the shelf for the Giant Crab don’t use pots that heavy, im impressed……
ranmar850
Posts: 2702
Date Joined: 12/08/12
Err, if they caught better..
...up here we would be using them. Early fishing here was done with all round pots, mostly cane or tea-tree stick woven with cane woven neck. Still used by some commercial fishermen towards the southern end of our fishery, but not usually year round. The batten pot is pretty universal , now. But I think you are referring to all-steel round beehive pots? With either galvanised wire, plastic coated wire, or cod-end net cover with a plastic neck? If you are , I always had a few in the early days, for jamming in close where they'd take a hammering, less likely to snag, etc. like you say. But take them out of the breakers, and they weren't worth a pinch of shit. Horses for courses. If you think you've "got us covered" for crays, think you'd better take a look at comparative size and value of the two fisheries, and get back to me.
craytail99
Posts: 76
Date Joined: 29/04/14
Big pots and small crays....
The stick pots are made from dogwood or tea tree, I prefer tea tree myself but the dogwood catch just as well.
The wire pots are normally covered in netting with a couple of bait savers and a zinc anode on the bottom to help any corrosion issues you might get.
The stick pots do better in shallow and the wire ones out to 100m + bring home the bacon. You do have to bait the wire ones a little differently to get the best results funny as it may sound but they are absolute killers in the depth.
Plastic neck or cane it seems to make little difference as far as catching goes. The real shmick ones have the plastic coating but mine are plain wire.
Funnily enough my best catcher is wrapped with chicken wire and has a cane neck. I have copped some shit over the years ranging from Chicken Man to Red Rooster but it catches enough said….
I had a squizzy at your size limits over there, christ we call them rats down here or throw backs. No wonder your industry is larger your counting prawns as well LOL
Rob H
Posts: 5743
Date Joined: 18/01/12
gotta agree with Ranmar
gotta agree with Ranmar here, Id be very wary using a davit arm on a small boat.
Not sure if Craytail is talking a small boat or not etc but I most definitely would not use one on my 7 meter boat.
He's using the anaolgy of a stuck anchor-anyone who tries to pull a stuck anchor from high and wide like that, is not long for this planet.
Give a man a mask, and he'll show you his true face...
The older you get the more you realize that no one has a f++king clue what they're doing.
Everyone's just winging it.
craytail99
Posts: 76
Date Joined: 29/04/14
Weighty issues...
Just found out how much your pots weigh, my oath no wonder Ben Cousins was on the juice, it wasn’t for football it was for pullin pots…..
ranmar850
Posts: 2702
Date Joined: 12/08/12
We had pots in excess of 70Kg when I was pro
They were deckie killers, triple ballasted wooden bottoms, really soaked the water up. Wet double-ballasted steel bottoms can go 60kg. My amateur pots, ex-pro steel bottom with one ballast, would go maybe 45-50, I'm guessing.
It's funny about the round steel pots , at least on the upper west coast--they just don't really catch unless you are jamming them into the breakers. Even there, the wooden slat pots will catch better, but take a hammering, snag up more, etc. I tried doing some with prawn net instead of wire--ordinary prawn net wasn't too flash, but the denser, thicker cod-end was definitely an improvement. Does anyone remember those big round plastic pots with the steel base, replaceable panels and the neck that was removable for stripping? I had a few of those for a few years, they weren't much chop in the shallows but could catch really well out deep. And the one year I fished out of South passage, well, they just donged it with those big Shark Bay crays. Makes me wonder how they would go around here, now, as the average size of cray is so much larger than it was when I finished fishing.
I regret having taken so few pictures during those years, but I do have some video.
carnarvonite
Posts: 8627
Date Joined: 24/07/07
Plastic stickies
The round plastic pots were made by Activ Industries and do not know why they went out of production
They use pine battened pots for the white cray run then usually swap to jarrahs for the reds because if you put a pine pot and a jarrah side by side during the white run the pine pot will have twice the number of crays in
As for the crays off Tassie, they are southern crays not westerns, we get a few of them but nowhere near as many as they get, on the other hand they get nearly bugger all westerns
craytail99
Posts: 76
Date Joined: 29/04/14
Yep..
Yeah we only get the Southern Rocklobster (or at least that is all i have ever caught). There is an Eastern one they occassionaly get down the East Coast but it is a rarity. Bloody funny how they will jump into one pot and not another but it is a fact!
ranmar850
Posts: 2702
Date Joined: 12/08/12
yeah, comparing apples to oranges
Southern Rock Lobster have a larger min size, as they breed at a larger size and have a larger growth potential. Western Rock Lobster are far more prolific, mature at a smaller size, hence the smaller min. legal. That's not to say we don't have plenty of large crays nowadays--market forces involved in the change to quota and abundant crays saw most fishermen grading, anything over a certain size was being returned, hence getting lots of second chances to grow, and third chances, and fourth chances.... market for large animals was mostly a brief window during Chinese New Years. That has changed a bit over the years, certain markets take larger fish at certain times. We actually removed the long-held ban on the taking of females ( not in breeding condition)over a certain size a while ago, as the bloody ocean was getting clogged with these big females. It's quite normal now to pull pots up where I am and get only large(1.5 to 2.5kg) crays in it, never have to pick the gauge up some days.
craytail99
Posts: 76
Date Joined: 29/04/14
Good regs...
We need the same regulations down here that you WA boys have the old Southern Rocklobster has it pretty easy down here the greenies and the govt have it tied in knots. Still i do like a feed of cray! Ha ha 70kg pot that would need some serious hauling, wouldnt exactly be easy to move about the deck either.