Sea/diver duckin' rigs

Charlie S and Titan

Charlie S and Titan

Well-known member
Hi All,

I know a bunch of you have posted some great photos before, but I lost them somehow. Could I get you to post some pictures of your sea/diver duck blind setups. I remember Steve Sutton, Scott Farris, Bill Wasson, Matt Snyder and others had great setups for their big boats.

Right now I have a mudbuddy pop up blind, but frankly it is overkill for divers and I don't hunt puddlers out of it enough to make a difference.

I'd like to rig up a low simple semi-permanent railing system with a cloth curtain - maybe chest height when people are sitting. I'd like to make it so the railing is removable in the summertime.

That is basically how we use the mudbuddy for divers (open top mostly - not with the top up) but there is a lot of extra junk (conduit, cloth) in the way when you are not using it as intended. The motor cover is also just one more thing to get wound in the prop. I'd like to make it more simple before next diver season (2008).

Any pictures you can share would be awesome. Thanks.

Charlie
 
The Blind is made from discarded S.S. Bimini bows and Bimini and railing hardware.

up running.jpg

side reduc.jpg

stern reduc.jpg

blind stern quarter.jpg

Bow on.jpg

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Sewing by me. Blind material from Dave Clark.

Scott
 
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Bill Wasson's 20 ft Lund Pictures taken at the 2001 eider hunt:

billslundclose.jpg

Inside the bow:

Heading out reduced.jpg


Bill had a very nice blind, you can see the dog door on the port side opposite the console.

Finally an artsy picture of Bill putting the eider rig out for us.
Bill at work reduced.jpg

Scott
 
Scott,

Exactly the ones I was looking for! Thanks!!

I'll have to check with my friendly boat yard to see if I can get some scrap boat bimini/railing parts in the summer.

Charlie
 
Charlie, I have a Lund 1600 Explorer that I used to use for waterfowling-it's blue and silver. I found some old square stock shelving units from a store that was in the scrap pile and my buddy Scott and I basically mounted some removable brackets on the boat. He had this huge tarp from a deuce and a half that he "borrowed" when he was in the 24th Mech. We used that tarp as the main cover and hung the panels over the shelving using scrap 2x4's for weight that were screwed to the tarp with big washers. The tarp stunk like creosote and practically made you sick but it worked great. This was a budget rig that served me well on the Great Lakes and everything in between. The old frame I have permanantly attached to my full-time duck boat now with luan panels.

Not a great view but you can see how well the boat was hidden. The black plastic in front of the dog ramp is a piece of plastic I got at work(my summer job) that is used to line pallets when produce is iced so the water doesn't run all over the floor and cause the fork lifts to slip. It did a nice job of covering the blue and silver hull and I had plenty of it. The ramp is scrap from the shelving units.

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The inside view shows how I took some scrap PVC pipe and some old chicken wire I found in my rented garage and made some panels to put over the top if we were hunting puddlers....we'd zip tie the vegetation to the panels...they worked great. It was a fairly laborious endeavor to get this rig squared away but man did it work well. The netting was also commandeered from the US Army when they discarded it during a maneuver and my buddy Scot snagged it threw it on the back of the truck. My buddies would beg me to paint that boat but I still have it and it's still blue and gray!

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Another shot of Wasson's rig from the back in action. See if you can figure out who the passengers are?

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This is my current rig which has the same shelving unit blind frame I used on my Lund. Now it has permanant panels and I can still use the removal panels on the top if needed. You wanted something more simple and the reason I wanted to show my older rig is to illustrate how easy it was to really camo the heck out of that rig and use it for marsh hunting when it's predominant use was for diver hunting.

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Jay,

That guy setting on the right side in the back sure is a handsome devil......! HA HA That was a cold day for sure. Glenn from Texas said he was sure we were hunting at the North Pole.

Thanks for posting,

Jeff
 
Charlie...I swear I'm not hijacking this post! As I recall it was about 3 degrees that morning. Here are a couple more of my favorites from that morning.....

Alvin and Steve laughing at each other.....
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Mike with the well insulated chin....
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When it's 3 degrees in dead air and you're doing 15 or 20 mph across a bay for a 45 minutes boat ride on your way to the edge of the open Atlantic and you're smiling...I'd say that's a pretty darn good indication that the ducking is real freakin' good out there!
 
Your right, the gunning was great that day. I think you stand corrected though. I think that it's
Alvin laughing at that MUSK OX Steve is wearing on his head! I'll have to dig up a picture of that thing.

Jeff
 
Charlie, what kind of boat are you using? I just got through fabricating a clamp that fits onto my gunnels and screws down like a C-Clamp attached to a pice of tubing that the conduit can slide into. The conduit height is adjustable via a cotter pin and holes at different heights that attach it to the clamp. I have kee-clamps that allow the vertical legs of the blind to fold and the entire blind can then lay flat on the gunnels for trailering. I'll post some pictures this weekend.
 
Charlie ,


Check out the newengland hunting site at New england hunting. com RI Griz has a great blind setup on his CC boat , we hunted seaducks out of it last weekend and it worked great . Good luck




dave M
 
Often times, you can kill sea ducks without a blind. The biggest thing for being successful on sea ducks is finding where they want to be and setting up on that spot. If you do that, the birds will come no matter what kind of boat you are in. My friend Louie has a 20' Novi that is painted white and it has a pilot house on it and he will routinely shoot a limit of sea ducks out of that boat. I would say paint your boat green or gray, wear camo and cover up your face and be extremely still in the boat. The slightest movement (gun barrel moves, dog shifts position, turning of your head, etc) will flare sea ducks, especially in the late season. Being in the right place and having a fairly good rig of decoys are perhaps more important than having a blind - just my 2 cents.

Nate
 
Nate,

I know, but part of the fun of duckin' is having all kinds of cool contraptions...

My wife won't let me paint the boat green (yes, she is the boss) and a blind that covers the boat and blocks some of the cold wind makes me feel better.

If I can make it myself, it is fun too.

Like I say, the mudbuddy works (works great in fact) but I'm always looking for the perfect mousetrap.

Charlie
 
Here is one I found that Steve posted of his sled:

sutton_rig.jpg

Anyone know what his frame is made of? Are the posts wrapped in rope?

What are folks using to mount the frames to the hull?

Charlie
 
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