80 Gallon LiveWell Build - Simple, Affective, Affordable!

[Music] welcome back guys so i'm excited to share today's video with you guys we're going to build a portable live well to take in and out of a boat whether you want to fish tournaments or you're just trying to keep fish alive it's going to be really cheap effective and it's going to be pretty simple as well now for those of y'all who follow the channel you know that me and my son fish were trophy catfish so that's why we're building this tank today we plan on fishing a few tournaments this year so we want a suitable live well for those big trophy catfish you know up to 50 inches long or bigger but you got to keep in mind guys you can use this same plumbing system on any any uh container whether it be a tote that you put down in your boat or a cooler or a big tool box like this you can use this same plumbing setup on any of that and it'll work great so this is a 56 inch toolbox from tractor supply and i got a good deal on this because it had some dents in the side of it you can shop around a lot of times and find these tool boxes that get damaged and they'll sell them to you for 20 30 off so it makes a huge difference so the way we're going to set this thing up we're going to have fresh water in and water out all the time if we want it the boat's not in the water or we're running up and down the river we can shut a couple valves open a couple valves and recirculate the water so it's going to be really simple i'll show you guys everything i'm going to do step by step so let's get started so we're going to be running two 800 gallon per hour pumps one's going to be inside the toolbox one's going to be through the hole the boat and i made sure i found a bilge pump that had a threaded end on it versus a barbed end you can put a bar bend on it or you can put a an elbow on it in this case i'm going to use a 90 and i'm going to plumb it in solid and that's what's going to hold the that's what's going to hold the bilge pump down in the tank so i'm not going to have to run screws through the tank i'm not going to have to glue it in and stuff the actual pvc is going to hold the pump up right in the tank you know i'll show you guys a little more about that in a minute so i'm going to be using a step bit to drill the holes in the back of this box they make a pretty clean cut in aluminum i've got my first hole drilled i'm going to be using a t and a 90 degree elbow to kind of make like a throwhole fitting by putting a piece of three-quarter thread in the middle of them all of my plumbing is going to be above the water line so it doesn't really matter if it's watertight or not if you're going to put something down here under the water line you'd probably be better off to use like a a bulkhead fitting or something with a rubber seal on it but for what we're doing right here this is going to work [Music] [Applause] fine [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right so we got our pump mounted i'll probably drill a little hole underneath here to bring my wires out of just so it's a little cleaner and kind of a straight shot if i ever need to change the pump i'll just have to take that tee off on the outside and swing it up and take it off that's going to hold it in place right there really nice now we just need to build two more one inch holes in the back of the boat all right so we got our other two holes drilled i'll show you guys what we're going to be putting in there so i'll order these spray heads and they had this 90 degree fitting on them and i thought i could just screw that off well turns out the nut screws off but all this is one piece so what i did guys is i cut that elbow off and these these are three quarter pipe threads and i'm going to screw it on here like this that's what's going to secure to the tank right there i'll show you what i'm talking about right here i have one of these as a 90 degree and i have one of them with straight [Applause] [Applause] all right guys we're almost done [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so so i'm going to go over with you guys how i have the plumbing set up on the outside of the box so from our through hole pump we come up through the transom of the boat i have a couple fittings right here and it comes up to a straight fitting and on the inside of that fitting is my adjustable spray head i had originally planned on just running the hose right up behind the tool box in front of the splash well here i guess i didn't really think it through because it kinked my hose up and it also kept me from sliding this tool box all the way to the back it's a lot cleaner and neater now now i don't really mind drilling a hole right here because it was actually a plate where somebody had already patched a hole so it's not like i'm drilling a hole in the actual boat so on this side we come up from our pump into a tee now on the straight side of that tee we have a shut off valve with a piece of hose coming over the transom of the boat on the other part of our tee we have a short piece of hose going to our other spray head and this one shut off valve right here is what's going to allow us to either pump water out of the boat or recirculate the water well we've got the live oil in the boat we've got everything hooked up we've got the pump and the tank wired up there's only one thing left to do and let's head to the lake and show you guys how this thing actually works [Music] guys we made it out to the light the water is extremely high and muddy so we're going gonna pump some of this chocolate milk into this tank here that's the easiest way for me to show you guys how this works is actually go through and use it just like i would be if i was gonna put fish in it the pumping i'm using to bring the fresh water in was actually already mounted in the boat when i bought it it's got a small live well on the front that i never used so i unhooked it and i've got it hooked up to this now there's a switch mounted up here on the dash i want you guys to keep in mind if you don't want to put a through-hole pump in your boat if you don't want to cut a big hole in it i completely get that you can throw a pump over the side of the boat when you're sitting still fishing with a piece of hose coming in to a spray head just like this it'll do the same thing you just uh instead of having the pump mounted in the boat you'll just have it on the outside of the boat [Music] so we've got our water level about where it'll be at when we're fishing tournaments by the time you add a few uh good sized fish to that the displacement of the water is going to bring the level up even more so that's quite a bit of water that's probably 50 gallon of water or so if i had to guess when you get the water level up to where you want it we're going to start pumping dirty water out as we're pumping fresh water in obviously if you just let it keep pumping as is you know the tank will be overflowing within a few minutes so that's where this pump comes into play so we're going to hook up this pump i just got a uh two pin connection on that so right now we're recirculating the water there's absolutely zero water coming in from the lake all the water that we have coming in through this valve is just recirculating it's bringing water through this pump straight over here into that 90 and out of our spray head so we can use the recirculating right here without the boat even being in the water say we're waiting in a long way in line or something that's going to give the fish a little more oxygen than just water standing still but it's going to do nothing to clean the water there's still going to be a lot of gases ammonia stuff the fish regurgitate all that's going to be in the water anytime we're not running up and down the river we're going to be pumping in fresh water and pumping out dirty water and i'll show you guys what we do so all we have to do to pump in fresh water and pump out the dirty water is close this valve right here and we're just going to open this valve right here we're going to plug our pump back up then we're gonna turn our through-hole pump on so it's bringing in fresh water from the lake and it's pumping out the dirty water i just got a hose going over the back of my boat right here so even though both my pumps are 800 gallons per hour one of them still gonna pump more water than the other one that's just the way it is so if you don't have a way to regulate how much water is coming in and out eventually your tank's either going to overflow or you're going to run it dry so that's why it's really important to have a way to regulate how much water is coming in and out so we got this ball valve right here we can adjust how much water comes out with that ball valve and these spray heads are adjustable so i can turn that thing down to where it's just barely a trickle or i can open it up where we're getting the full 800 gallons per hour but once you once you get that adjusted right you know you don't have to worry about it anymore all i have to do is unplug this two-prong connection right here and pop and pop that hose off and we're you know it's like it was never there so i think we're gonna go out here and catch some bait and try to do a little catfishing this afternoon it's absolutely beautiful day out here nicest day we've had in a long time but i want to thank you guys for watching god bless you guys and we'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Hagen Grubbs Fishing

Views: 18,078

Rating: 4.9675927 out of 5

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Id: EpNpDt3AMWs

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021