scotty rail mount adapters

just mounted 4 of these on my new rig that has 48″ rails in the cockpit for trolling. The package comes with standard nuts. My question for those of you that mount your rod holders to rails and use these adapters is do you changed out the nuts for nylon locking nuts? I feel like the many vibrations of trailering and boating with eventually cause them to come loose and could be a pain. Easy upgrade I think I should just do anyway, but maybe not if you haven’t noticed a problem with it. Thanks for your feedback.

Also, on a 48″ rail, how many rods you think I could fit to troll. Right now I’ve two on each side and it seems like there is plenty of room. I could see myself wanting three on each side sometimes when I’ve got a few people in the boat with me. Just not sure how to spread the lines out to avoid tangles with 3 rods in such close proximity to each other.

48″

Man, I could see at least 4 per side with that much rail. You may want to get some extensions for the forward rods though.

Scotty even makes horizontal trees with 3 rod holders. Check them out too.

Your front rods are set with the tip as high as you can.The next rod drop to a 45 and the last rod flat, so if you get a fish on a forward rod the line will go over the next without getting tangled up. You need to run planer boards though.

Not sure of what kind of boat you have, but you could consider setting up one rod holder on each side the main motor. Then you could run those strait out the back.

FDR

Lock nuts would be smart, but I’ve never had any issues not using them. I have 4 on each side. You have on my a few options to troll multiple lines on each side. 1. Get planer boards. 2. Run multiple rod lengths from 10′ down to 5′. 3. Run some straight out the back. 4. Run deeper diving cranks or heavier weights on the rods furthest to the front, and shallower/lighter the farther back you go.

I do the opposite. I run shallower running stuff on the front of the boat,and the furthest out boards and run deeper as I get to the back of the boat. The reason I do it this way is if a fish hits the outside board and it is running deeper than the baits behind it. There is a good chance it will tangle as the fish gets pulled over and through the lines behind it. Maybe I have been doing it wrong, but this system seems to work pretty well for me.

[/quote] 4. Run deeper diving cranks or heavier weights on the rods furthest to the front, and shallower/lighter the farther back you go. [/quote]

What I wrote was assuming he isn’t using planer boards. But yes, deepest baits on the inside, shallower to the outside, if running boards.

A quick comment on the locknuts. I think the design of the rail mounts causes a good preload where you wouldn’t really need them. I never had any issues with them loosening myself, but I never really used them a lot.

biggill wrote:

A quick comment on the locknuts. I think the design of the rail mounts causes a good preload where you wouldn’t really need them. I never had any issues with them loosening myself, but I never really used them a lot.

X2 on that