Best Ram Mounts For Rough Water

[StarBoard7]

Hey guys,

I have recently started fishing lake erie a lot and have already gone through a few gimbal brackets (busted off by waves) 2 in the last 3 weeks actually.
I have an older ranger and am still using the mounts that came with it but they are not going to cut it anymore.

Right now I am running 2 HDS-5's one at the bow and one at the console however I plan on upgrading this winter to 2 Hummingbird 998si's.
So I was hoping to get ram mounts for both the bow and console that will work with my current electronics and then with the HB units that I plan on getting this winter.

Thanks for any tips guys .

[Mike S.]

You will want the big one. It has the 2.5 inch ball. I have my 1197 and my 858 both mounted on them. I fish Muskegon And White mainly, and they both get very rough. I have yet to have one of my mounts loosen up and let one of my units move.   I bought both of mine through amazon.com. They had the best price I found. Think it was right around $84 each.

[red68prostreet]

I am very disgusted with the ram mount. No matter how hard you tighten it it still moves. The ball also starts to fall apart after several yrs of use. I herad about another type of electronics mount from Cisco Fishing Systems. You can Google the name to go to their website. This looks to be a very good system. It is a stainless steel mount with a handle that locks it in place. Very reasonable price of approx $100. I plan to order one in the near future. Check it out.

[Mike S.]

That is surprising. I run my boat hard, anyone that has been in it can attest to that, and my RAM mounts have never budged. My 1197 is a pretty hefty unit. The one on my bow, with the 858 on it, stands straight up. I haven't had to mess with it either. You have to Super Man tighten them I guess.

[djkimmel]

I have had the smaller Ram mount balls flatten out in the past after a few seasons but they have so far been the best overall for keeping electronics in the boat when fishing the Great Lakes a lot in the past for me.

Many of the anglers I go out with now who have the bigger electronics (mine are older and regular-sized on standard mounts right now since I don't do the pounding I used to) use the large-sized Ram mount balls recommended about.

They can move if you run far enough and fast/hard enough in rough water. There's just nothing made that is completely, 100%, everlasting impervious to the Great Lakes. Thousands of large ships, and who knows how much equipment including expensive electronics and trolling motors, on the bottom attest to that. If I had an reasonable experience with other mounting systems, I would share that. I have not had enough good feedback yet on other options.

My friends who use the large size Ram mount seem to get a good number of seasons out of them. Maybe try re-positioning the mount on the ball every now and then, like when you are running for the unit(s) you aren't using at the time to move the pressure around. I did that even with the smaller mount size I used to use for years and that help them last longer. My one friend is a pretty aggressive drive turns his front unit on the side against the deck so it can't move around and it re-positions the pressure.

He says he had it flip over once when he left it up and it landed with the unit's buttons onto the edge of his trolling motor pedal. Pretty funny in a way because it landed on the waypoint button and 'entered' something like 200 new waypoints while he was running down the lake. He was freaking out because the networking was causing them to keep popping up on his dash unit while he was running up the lake! More funny since nothing got broken but he did say it was a pain to hand-delete all those waypoints!

If anyone else has used other systems with success more than a season or two, please do share. This is one of the more common boating on the Great Lakes questions I get asked.

If you do buy something from Amazon.com, please remember to go there from a link on this website first so that GreatLakesBass.com gets a referral credit commission. There's a text to the GLBass Amazon store and other links to more options on the right in the green box. I sure would appreciate that. Thanks.

[Genie]

He wouldn't have to hand delete if he was using Genie Logs ...

[Mike S.]

That's a bummer, Dan. I have never seen the amazon.com link on here. I bought my new Fortrex off of there last month.

[Crankinsmallies]

Buy the Marine Tech Multi mount best one out there and they come in several sizes up to 17" long, I have the 14" mount with an HDS-8 and it never budges.  RAM mounts suck, they never stay in place.

[djkimmel]

That's a bummer, Dan. I have never seen the amazon.com link on here. I bought my new Fortrex off of there last month.

That is a bummer. Would have been a nice little commission. I hear this all the time. Wish I could figure out how to make it easier...

[Mike S.]

Dan, it is time for an easy button for dummies. Had I known about that link, I would have bought it through the site for sure. Now I know, and I will make sure that any future eBay and amazon.com purchases are through GLB links. I promise.  I just really hope I don't have to buy another Fortrex any time soon.

[djkimmel]

Maybe a new graph?!?

[Weedsnager]

Instead of cranking down as hard as you can on the ram mount, rough up the arms a tad with sandpaper, and do the same to the ball to give it some bite.

[bsimpson]

I have the 2.5" ball for my 1197 and the smaller ball on the bow for my 898 and love both of them!