Crestliner give us boat owners a very easy boat to rig. With any luck at all this article will help you with some of the decisions, tips and a couple tricks. The first thing I do is get in the boat and fish. Sit at the wheel, fish out of the bow, cast cranks, rig, jig and generally move around. then move to the back of the boat, troll, rig, jig even act like I went swimming and am now climbing back into the boat. While I am doing all of this I make note (I use a pencil to mark everything) of where everything should go. Then walk through one more time and double check all my decisions. I will then place the objects on my marked areas and check them again. I realize I am doing things over and over again but once I drill a hole in my boat that decision is final.

This year I started out with my Ram rod holders,

When mounting these I like to make sure they are all facing the same direction. When they are in use it really does not seem to matter but it does give me a "cleaner" look. I put 2 in the bow and 2 in each side of the back of the boat.

My trolling motor is always easier to mount if I ask a friend to help me with. First of all I always mount mine to a removeable plate, then I set it up on the bow and make sure it will deploy. I also make sure it will slide on and off the plate in the right direction. Once again I measure twice and drill once. I like to drill one hole, bolt the plate down and check the position of the motor one more time. I do not like to take the boat apart any more then I need to. For this step I do rely on being a bit uncomfortable. While my helper slowly turns the bolt I am reaching up in the bow with a lock nut and a fender washer taped to a wrench.

I always make sure to use locking nuts and fender washers. The 101 I-Pilot has a lot of torque and I do not want a nut "pulling through or coming loose.

When I mount the Lowrance HDS 10 and Touch screen 9 to my dash the "prep" work takes a little longer. A mistake here could "glare" at me for a very long time. I am under the dash for quite a while making sure I am not going to drill in a wire, stereo or any thing else. I mount my Lowrances to Ram mounts the place them on the dash and move them around till I find the perfect spot. After mounting my bases I attach the sonars to then and plan my wires.

Crestliner gives me a very easy fuse block to plug in all my extra electronics. All I needed was a spde and a fuse that came with the sonar and the power cables were done. Whenever I crimp wires, I always coat them with dielectric grease. It helps prevent corrosion.

The transducers came next. These are very easy to mount just remember to use a transducer plate. Lowrance has a special transducer for the strucure scan as well as the "normal" skimmer transducer. When ever I put a screw in the boat I use some marine grade silicone to help keep the water out of the boat. I like to use a leval when mounting these, I might have to make an "on the water" adjustment but generally do not if the boat is on a leval surface. This is a step that once again measure twice and drill once. Befor I bolt the transducers down I will hold them in place to check for my wiring. Using wire ties and other mounting hardware I can keep the wires tight to the boat. It's a cleaner less problematic way of running wires.

I do need to take the side wall off the starboard (drivers) side of the boat to run the transducer wires to the units. When I run these wires I do not tie them to anything. If something happens to the transducer (ie; hit something) I can cut the exsisiting transducer off and "fish" the new one through with very little effort.

This looks a lot worse then it actually is. Just make sure to check everything and place it all back together in an orderly fashion. My next step was the Batteries, Mercury suggests I use a Trojan AGM 31 battery for the cranking battery. That is a heavy duty battery (did I mention it's a heavy battery). Mounting the battery box to the floor of the compartment, then strapping the battery in. After the battery was mounted I used a couple of Mercury's battery accesories to secure my cables to the batteries. These kept my wiring neat and I was able to keep each wire fastened to a separate bolt.

The Minnkota is being powered by 3 Trojan SC225 deep cycle batteries. Three batteries do fill the battery box on my Fish Hawk, once again I used dielectric grease on the terminals.

The boat is now rigged and ready, if anyone needs any help with your boat please give me a call. I have been rigging my boats for over 10 years.