I fish small south king county lakes a lot. I troll for trout, crappie, kokanee, bass and even troll slowly while casting towards shore. Trolling these little lakes can be quite a challenge with thier small size and weed beds that pop up out of nowhere. Then factor in the wind that blows through the foothills... and your boat is spinning in circles or travelling sideways. Kinda like a drift racer in a rear wheel drive car, except you dont gain any style points for wrapping your lines around the person's neck sitting in the back of your boat.
I use a remote controlled bow mount trolling motor in my little aluminum boat and in my larger Lund. To control the back of the boat better when trolling, I usually keep the outdrive of the 60hp outboard in the water in the Lund. When in the all electric powered smaller boat, I have thrown a bucket off of the back of the boat to control this swing when windy or turning sharply. This works, but costs a lot of valuable battery power and seems to get in the way of incoming fish. I have a second electric motor mounted on the back of the little boat, mostly there for powering in to shore or trailering. But this motor didn't have much of a keel or skag for boat control.... or until now it didn't.
This is just a thin piece of clear plastic bolted with three bolts to the little walmart sourced $100 minn kota c2 30 electric motor. I was guessing that its close proximity to the fish finder would have caused problems if I had made it from aluminum. I'm sure any sort of keel or rudder that you could stick to your small boat with a front mounted motor would have the same effect, although I'm not sure if the same idea would work in reverse if one had a transom motor only. The bow mounted motor is a $100 craigslist find with a remote control foot pedal and prehistoric compass type autopilot function.
As of last night, Ive now used this extended skeg or rudder twice in high wind trolling situations and am gonna claim success. I was very happy with the functionality of the mod and thought I would share.
