I've been toying around with the idea of mounting some detachable fishing rod holders to the transom boxes of my RIB for some time. I know this has been discussed before by a few RIBfishers on the forum so I thought I'd write up my solution.
Having weighed up the options of stainless tube mounted rocket launcher styles and the plastic omni directional type, I decided on the latter for two reasons. One was the cost and the other was that it's much more flexible in terms of use in that I can quickly and easily adjust it to any angle and elevation for different fishing styles.
There is quite a choice of different manufactures that sell rod holders for boats which made selection quite difficult. The main concern I had was losing a Rod and Reel over the side and it became quite obvious from talking to other fishermen that had used this type of holder that there was an inherent flaw with most of the cheaper (sub£25) holders in that the pivot pin snaps.
Therefore I had to reinforce this area with a stainless bolt.
After careful consideration I decided to buy the Snowbee brand of rod holder. It's a plastic type with the usual serrated pin in a bracket arrangement. The reason I liked this design was because the plastic looked solid and the fact I could drill out the hole down the middle of the pin to 8mm and fit a 80mm long M8 stainless bolt to reinforce the whole design. Now I cannot see how I am ever going to lose a rod though bracket/holder failure.
After a months trial I've now bought 4 holders at £15 each and mounted them on removable stainless box section on the transom boxes of my RIB. As I use my RIB for other activities other than fishing I can now quickly remove both banks of holders with the removal of two R clips.
I've been using these holders for fishing at anchor and trolling and they work a treat.
Photos to follow:
