09-28-2015, 02:39 AM
Well Tom, my thoughts are that it looks so good that you should have a "Patent Pending" disclosure. You are definitely on the right path, and possibly just a test run or two to determine the correct height to fix the pump and you will have a perfect system. The tank itself, besides the cool factor for matching the paint, looks perfect and I would give it 100% confidence in not loosing bait due to the corners, as I believe the key to having happy bait is giving them room vertically to move and not crowd each other. The entire design of portability is genius. As far as the main water inlet of the system goes, these are my thoughts: Generally a live well is going to be much smaller and used to keep a few fish alive, and in a shallow tank an aeration nozzle is usually used. But now you have stepped up your game into an actual bait tank, that is usually much taller and can be used to keep as many live baits as happy as possible for as long as possible, and Im talking about 100+ gizzards without hesitation should you so desire. To accomplish this the one and only goal is to keep them in fresh water. From experience myself, a tank that fills at the top and has a drain at the top, by design the fresh water will come in, possibly penetrate a few inches, then drain right out of the tank. And what I found was that my bait would always hang out at the top, and several baits would die, more so if I aggressively crowded the tank. But with a tank that fills from the bottom, the fresh water must move throughout the entire tank to reach the drain. And now I have bait comfortably swimming in the entire water column and only die if I clean forget to run the pump. I am a member of the Nevada Striper Club, and I regularly try to fill my 12 gallon tank to the absolute limit, and I am sure I have had 150-200 gizzards in there just to try and find the breaking point of killing shad and I am yet to find it. And as peaceful as the sweet melody of a waterfall is now, you will eventually find yourself having to pee all the time or just really annoyed at something interrupting the great outdoors. This only leaves one possible weak link in a perfect system, and that is simply operator error, by not running the pump responsibly. I do agree that as a recreational striper slayer, this is not a bid deal and not a necessity. But I have been around long enough to know that you always do top notch work from the design to fabrication, and I imagine you will eventually include an adjustable timer to your system. And they are very easy to install by simply replacing the on/off switch with the timer and adding an additional ground wire like a 3-way switch and are totally waterproof. I got one on Amazon for $35, and now it is as simple as set it and forget it. Thanks Tom for sharing another project, Im sure this will be a big help to all our local fisherman.
[signature]
[signature]