Fitting a Tackle Box

I spent weeks finding a tackle box to fit into the well of my Prowler Trident 13.
Some U.S. anglers use a Plano 1612 or a Flambeau 1408 dry boxes.
These boxes fit into the well perfectly and I've had yet another task to find one here in the U.K.

Whilst flicking through saltwateryakfisherman.blogspot.com post I saw that he had a box fitted to his kayak and after some time looking through his older posts he had quoted that he purchased his Flambeau from Solent Plastics.
I'd previously had been looking on this site and somehow missed seeing it advertised.
The box was a titled Zerust Flambeau marine box. So a quick phone call and one was purchased and on its way.





I had one small problem! They now only supply it in Brown!
.....BROWN! ....YUCK! ....NO WAY!
Well the box it serves its purpose and the seat and crate will hide it anyway!
I may change it if I come across another colour.




Now how do I fix this down and stop it falling out?

The stock bungee that is fitted to this well is too tight to fit over the box and if it was fitted I wouldn't be able to access it without removing the bungee so I planed to remove it and find another way of attaching the box.

In the end I decided to leave the stock bungee in place and sat the box in between the two cords. I then fixed 2x pad eyes, one to either side of the box using tri-fold rivets and used 4mm bungee cord and hooks attached to the pad eyes. I can now secure the box to my seat rear attachment pad eyes.




Job done.

Making a Crate for the Prowler Trident 13

After a lot of thinking on finding a way to store tackle and gear I decided on going down the route of many other Kayak anglers and build a Crate.

Many of the U.S. anglers use a milk crate which is unobtainable in the U.K. So I set out to find another type of crate which would fit into my New Prowler Trident 13.

After a bit of searching around I found some fold up crate in Argos made by Really Useful Boxes and £6.99 for three. These fitted into the rear tank well perfect.
I had also decided to attach some rod holders to the crate to keep the rods out of the way whilst paddling and not in use.
Waste pipe and clips was my first option but looked a bit untidy.
I remembered seeing some rod holders in the local tackle shop. So I purchased them.
Berkley triple rod holders for £11.99 They fit inside the crate like a glove.
Now to fix everything together.




I had an idea of mounting 12mm ply board varnished to the side of the crate and then mount the holders to the ply. This seemed to add a lot of weight to the crate. I had to come up with another idea.

I decided to use some UPVC sofit boarding that I had laying around, this is much lighter and once fixed together with stainless nuts and bolts and fixings is now very strong and hopefully corrosion free.
I have also added a UPVC board to the opposite end and a divider to separate my items such as my anchor. The Crate is now fixed and non folding which prevents it from accidentally collapsing up whilst in use.

Prowler Trident 13 Anchor Trolley Rigging

Rigging the anchor trolley was looking like it was going to be a tough task ahead.
I had to come up with a way to fit it with out drilling a single hole as I did not want to attack my new kayak with a drill.

After much thinking I decided to use the original deck fittings. So I ripped off all of the stock rigging from the right hand side of the Prowler and armed with 5m of 4mm deck line, 2x 20mm Barton blocks, 1x stainless carabiner, 1x stainless 25mm ring and some 6mm bungee cord I set out on a mission to fit a full length non drill anchor trolley and succeeded.

It was a lot easier than I originally thought.

I attached the Barton blocks to both front and rear end deck line guides using a small length of 6mm bungee and an overhand knot. The Bungee is strong and adds tension to the trolley lines so they pull in tight to the kayak and stop them flapping about all over the place.
I then threaded the top trolley line through the top deck line guides on the kayak, through the rollers on the blocks and fitted the carabiner and stainless ring to the deck line making sure the line was under tension once I had it all clipped up.

Threading the upper line of the trolley through the deck line guides gives the trolley some resistance as well as keeping the lines tidy which helps at anchor and with the top trolley line pulled up over the paddle keeper button locks the line and carabiner secure in place for safety when at anchor or retrieving your anchor.