Friday afternoon team building exercise

How To Fix ATM's Boat

You may remember a while back I mentioned my front livewell came from the factory with a drain hole that no plug would fit. And that I was gonna take it to War Eagle for them to fix. What i haven't mentioned was that I have a aerator pump that fills the front livewell and baitwell. It hasn't worked right from day one. The longer I have the boat the worse it works.
I went by Counce Marine yesterday and they called War Eagle to schedule me for next Tuesday. While they had them on the phone they told them I wanted my front aerator pump changed out too. Come to find out War Eagle has been having trouble with these front aerator pumps. Seems that with the big heavy four strokes, 3 group 31's plus a starting battery, 4 bank chargers, etc. the backs of the boats are setting lower and the fronts higher. With the aerator pump being in the front of the boat and pulling from the front starboard side they are getting air lock. Makes a whole lot of sense to me. Their cure is to plumb a new pump into the rear of the boat. Sounds good so far.
On a related project. Occasionally I could get the aerator pump to work and fill the baitwell, which is a 3 gallon molded compartment with a 2 gallon perforated minner bucket. With the bow rising while getting on plane, when I got to where I was going I had a 3 gallon molded compartment with a 2 gallon perforated minner bucket, with about a gallon of water in it. 2 gallons of water would go out the overflow on acceleration. This left about 2" of water for all my minners.
Now, down to my questions:

1) The aerator pump is connected to a 1" dia. 6" long piece of aluminum welded in my hull. How should they patch that hole?

2) Even if the baitwell worked perfectly, which it doesn't, it would still be a sorry excuse for a minner bucket. Should I have them remove it and build be a liner for general storage?

As a welder , i would take a short piece of solid alum. round stock and put it into the hole the weld it up , solid stock would give me more metal to work my weld from. Then i would make it a storage area, you will never have enough storage no matter how much you have. That's my two cents.

2 words. DUCT TAPE

If you like feeding outside water to the minnows and you're OK with that, think I'd have them install a manual drain valve and plug the overflow. Hitch is, if somehow your pump gets stuck on, you're on your way to a boat sinking, unless you have an auto bilge that can beat the fill pump, which should be the case.

If the fresh water pump is no big deal. I'd plug it and have a timed recirc pump. Never have figured why anyone would want to take on outside water to their minnows in all except about 2 months of the year. It's almost always a temperature shock to the minnows.

On the hole deal.....you can bet WE will weld it however it should be. Them boys do it for a living and the last thing they want is you back over there 2 months later.

Wannabe...

new rig

I throw my floatin minner bucket over the side 12 months a year, and if it shocks em, I don't know, but they're always alive when I dip more out to put in my styrofoam minner bucket, whether the water is 35 or 95. I did use the floaters in my boat live wells at Grenada, and the minners were fine, and believe me, ALL but the first twelve that we used were alive. After that we pulled cranks! Still didn't do very good, but you can't kill a crank!!!

I thought that the bait well up front on the WE was just for holding the minners while you were fishin. I was under the impression that you used the holder in the live well to transport them, and then move them up front to the bait well when you stopped running. Shows what I know!!!!!