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Spotlight options for boat

Printed From: The Fishing Website
Category: Saltwater Fishing
Forum Name: The Briny Bar
Forum Description: The place for general chat on saltwater fishing!
URL: https://www.fishing.net.nz/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=136536
Printed Date: 10 Feb 2025 at 2:43am


Topic: Spotlight options for boat
Posted By: Reel Deal
Subject: Spotlight options for boat
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2022 at 8:07pm
Ermm am tired of my hand held spot light. Very little grunt and have to have crew to use while I’m driving boat. So…. Remote spotlight on hardtop or barlight mounted ?

Which is the best brands from the experienced users?

Thanks 


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The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent on fishing - Assyrian Proverb



Replies:
Posted By: Pcj
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 3:31am
Bar lights are one thing that I would like banned. Yes they light up the world but hide your nav lights.

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"Times up"


Posted By: kimber7wsm
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 6:26am
My mate's boat has a bar LED light. It is next to useless. It has no range at all. It doesn't get used now.


Posted By: Alan L
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 7:10am
I use a spot light - for night fishing. There are a few things to know. If you get it wrong, you can't see anything. The LED ones are worse - the light scatters and gives you a blinding white in front and no penetration/distance.
The one that works for me is an old fashioned incandescent bulb . You want a focussed beam. I have one on the rocket launcher when I use it.
Alan


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Legasea Legend member


Posted By: Steps
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 9:10am
This subject came up a few yrs back when I was (well crew) using hand spotlights. Espec when going into narrow breakwater late at night.

Ideally a spot light if mounted should be up on the bow rail. Bring it back any further, and definitely not on a cabin roof, even the front (bow end) edge, you will get reflection back

Also as PCJ mentions , fixed spots when used without consideration of others is more than just a problem, its huge potential to be down right dangerous to others.. on shore on other boats, around the ramp etc.

So following advice in old threads.. was not practical to mount mine on the bow rail so mounted on the very front edge of the cabin to eliminate as much reflection back off the decks as possible.

Its is directed down on to the water about 30 meters in front... picks up and thing laying in the water at night.. a dingy with no lights, a log on big tides etc.
And not much good for anything else.
 Going into breakwaters , maneuvering around stuff at night, back to handhelds each side (if 2 other crew) held on markers, rocks, bouys as approach and go past..
 Cant do that a fixed spot...and hand held does everything a fixed does far better.

 Unless comm, charters mounted spots a not much more than bling.. as mine is on my roof.


Posted By: Alan L
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 9:27am
I have a spot I can mount on my rocket launcher via screw clamps. It also rotates/swivels. I put it on the frame on the side and can operate it from the helm. A focussed non-LED beam works well. The LEDs make a flood light type thing and you get a blinding scattered light. It doesn't penetrate to give any range and gives you a bright scatter close in which is a real nuisance. I wanted a bit more light for night fishing - catching bait - scooping flying fish. So I bought a 'powerful' LED spot. It sits in the shed.
Alan


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Legasea Legend member


Posted By: Reel Deal
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 10:33am
interesting info here.
A summary as I read it. Don’t get a light bar for anything other than flooding an area with light eg deck, transom. 
Ideally mounted on bow but for most unpractical so top of cabin. Maybe set back a bit as to shade front deck/canopy. A concentrated bulb on a remote will pick up buoys, markers, rocks, other boats etc. 

Is this correct?


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The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent on fishing - Assyrian Proverb


Posted By: Kevin.S
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 11:04am
Not much help for the original question, but if you want a hand held LED lamp with great distance performance these are pretty awesome.

https://store.marinebeam.com/marinebeam-ultra-long-range-led-illuminator-flashlight/" rel="nofollow - Marinebeam Ultra Long Range CREE RLT Illuminator

I've got one of the original ones and the range and tightness of the beam is amazing.


Posted By: Otto
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 11:05am
Played around with a few options and ended mounting a Hella (sea Hawk) on the roof.  Ok, moved back so as to stop the glare. Good at slow speeds like driving through moorings.
Has a high/low setting and while not legal i often switch it on if entering a busy harbour at night for short periods.  Amazing how many then shine tourch's from unlit boats.



Posted By: RockCrashing
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 1:34pm
Few seasons ago some question was ask follow by langhtly debate, pros & cons. At the time I was making decision of fitting some kind of forward/search light. 
The reason was... got myself in a pickle beaching at pt. Jackson at night.
And so heaped at the time Hella release the  new LED bars, model SH-470.
Initially I've the got combi model/ spread and spot lens, I thought the spread light was of no use so have exchanged for spot lens only. 
The light from the bar is very,very intense with narrow focus and the housing it's corrosion resistant.
Over three years i've used it only three times Ermm but it works well imo Wink
I'was concerned with the reflection but after try and error i've found it the sweet spot Big smile 
Hope thats helps to make your own mind ...

   



Posted By: Steps
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 4:02pm
Ideally mounted on bow but for most unpractical so top of cabin. Maybe set back a bit as to shade front deck/canopy.

 Few pics above could confuse a little.
My 'cabin'  on the Commander,I look over .. roof a Bimini....
 Where as pics above a 'cabin roof over the helm.
 I did mess with puting up on the bimini frame, but any spill that hits the top of my cabin for foredeck simply reflected back. So ended up not practical to mount up there.

Sry not best pic but shows where I ended up mounting...Would think not reflection back , but it does, and its the least amount outside mounting on bow rail right up front.




Posted By: RogueOne
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 4:41pm
I use a IP67 LED driving spotlight and add a railblaza connector to the mounting arm then put the railblaza starport wherever works best within range of the cigarette lighter socket. Can turn it into a handheld with a bit of wood with a hole in the top if needed but on the starport it locks in and is hands-free


Posted By: RockCrashing
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2022 at 5:04pm
Ok, tomorrow i'll take a close up pic of the spotlight and show why the bar light don't reflect inside the cabin or front of the boat. 
Steps... hope you do same and take close up pic of your lights, cos the only thing i can see is bbq (very nice) chair and some grass LOL
the top pic was taken 3 weeks ago at 4am, was waiting for a mate.   


Posted By: kimber7wsm
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 6:59am
If you do put a forward mounted light on I would use a remote spotlight. It will be infinitely more useful than a fixed light forward. One thing to check though is how quickly they move. If it takes 1 minute to swivel side to side then it won't be as useful.

They do make through roof spotlights, that have a shaft under the roof for hand operation. That would work well, but I haven't seen one for marine use.


Posted By: Steps
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 8:06am
Steps... hope you do same and take close up pic of your lights, cos the only thing i can see is bbq (very nice) chair and some grass LOL

 That is the only pic have pre loaded that shows the spot.. already got far to many rubbish, irrelevant, duplicate etc, to sort thru to find examples of stuff ..Would like to delete rubbish but permissions dont allow.

Look at the boat, the spot is on the cabin roof as described.


Posted By: smudge
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 8:28am
Can you not add a new pic Steps, that's odd. I have hundreds of pics and it works fine for me

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Best gurnard fisherman in my street


Posted By: Alan L
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 9:08am
I think what he is saying is he can't get rid of a lot of rubbish pics in the file, so not keen to add more.
I have same problem - how do we clean that pic folder out?
Alan


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Legasea Legend member


Posted By: Steps
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 9:09am
I have built a basic collection of pics ,instructional, examples, how tos etc..
 And over the yrs, obsolete pics of weather charts, a pile fish in a bin, random stuff, and duplicates of both of these.
So when I go to find an example of a how to for reposting to a question thats been asked before (often several time), there is a heap of crap pics to go down thru.

I would like to be able to delete the obsolete , irreverent and duplicate pics Then add odd new , how to informational pics and not have to dig thru heaps obsolete crap.
 Permissions to do so are in admin permissions, thu can be also given to mods.
 They could be made for a 'window'   to give option a clean up.


Posted By: Phantom Menace
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 11:13am
Steps - you can delete old pics if you like.  It is not restricted at all by "admin permissions".  

Click on "Member Panel" then "File Manager" then select the pic you want and click the delete button.  

It's simple.

Bear in mind that it will make the posts that included that pic less useful as the pic will no longer show in the post.

I had forgotten how to do this as it's been some time since I have deleted a pic so TBH it took a few seconds to find - but it's there.


Posted By: Apex Predator
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 11:38am
Instead of a light bar have you considered night vision.  Some of the options available would be similar in price to the cost of buying and fitting a decent light bar or spotlight.


Posted By: Alan L
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 12:21pm
Originally posted by Phantom Menace Phantom Menace wrote:

Steps - you can delete old pics if you like.  It is not restricted at all by "admin permissions".  

Click on "Member Panel" then "File Manager" then select the pic you want and click the delete button.  

It's simple.

Bear in mind that it will make the posts that included that pic less useful as the pic will no longer show in the post.

I had forgotten how to do this as it's been some time since I have deleted a pic so TBH it took a few seconds to find - but it's there.
So you can't clean up the old library of pics without taking them out of the old posts either?
Thats not very useful?
Alan


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Legasea Legend member


Posted By: Reel Deal
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 1:05pm
thanks AP, never thought of night vision …hmmm.

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The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent on fishing - Assyrian Proverb


Posted By: Alan L
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 2:18pm
Depends what you want to use it for I guess. I think the one thing you can take from this is it is tricky getting the right setup you want, and working properly.
It is easy to night blind yourself. It sounds simple, but it is not straight foward.
Alan


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Legasea Legend member


Posted By: kitno
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 2:22pm
Originally posted by Reel Deal Reel Deal wrote:

thanks AP, never thought of night vision …hmmm.


He's got me thinking too



Posted By: Steps
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 2:38pm
Steps - you can delete old pics if you like.  It is not restricted at all by "admin permissions".

Sry those permissions have not been granted ever since being a member...
 And its good practice for Admin not to do so, or at least limit those permissions to certain groups..mods, groups of members with a 'senior ' statis etc.
 


Posted By: RockCrashing
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 2:47pm
Anyway, here as promised, few closeup pic of Hella Sea Hawk-470 light bar.
Some time i've installed in the back two Sea Hawk-XL dual colour (blue&white) LED lights.
Hope that helps someone/ anyone who considering fitting one of those lights.


 









Posted By: RockCrashing
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 3:03pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUUzbySaGw" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUUzbySaGw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhuY4e4jZg" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhuY4e4jZg

Two videos from Hella.


Posted By: Reel Deal
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 3:22pm
those vids looked great 



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The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent on fishing - Assyrian Proverb


Posted By: Phantom Menace
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 5:48pm
Originally posted by Alan L Alan L wrote:

So you can't clean up the old library of pics without taking them out of the old posts either?
Thats not very useful?
Alan

That was an assumption based on how the site used to work.  I will test it now by including a pic then deleting the pic from my pics on the site.  Various forum used to do it that way so that they would only have one copy of a pic stored on the servers rather than multiple copies taking up space.

If you see a pic below then I was wrong.


Posted By: kitno
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 5:51pm
What pic



Posted By: Pcj
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 6:01pm

500 - Internal server error.

There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.



Cannot delete also comes up with something Administrator.


Click file managment,then brings up photo,select photo,hit delete  tab,pop up appears ,do you want to delete,yes. then up pops above message.


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"Times up"


Posted By: Pcj
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 6:10pm
Originally posted by RockCrashing RockCrashing wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUUzbySaGw" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUUzbySaGw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhuY4e4jZg" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhuY4e4jZg

Two videos from Hella.
Did you notice they werent bow on for too long and you couldnt see nav lights,best thing at night is head up away from screen lights or dim and natural darkness,found spots give a false sense of distance,things appear closer than they actually are.

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"Times up"


Posted By: Alan L
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 6:32pm
Originally posted by Pcj Pcj wrote:

Originally posted by RockCrashing RockCrashing wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUUzbySaGw" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUUzbySaGw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhuY4e4jZg" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhuY4e4jZg

Two videos from Hella.
Did you notice they werent bow on for too long and you couldnt see nav lights,best thing at night is head up away from screen lights or dim and natural darkness,found spots give a false sense of distance,things appear closer than they actually are.
Haven't seen the vid - but this is my experience too.
Have a mate with a 7m Surtees. He wanted to rig it for night stuff to fish before dawn like me. I don't use my lights for that. He had the boat rigged up - and had to travel thru a minefield of reef/bommies to get to clear water, then thru a narrow channel to open sea. We could not see a thing with his lights on. He thought it was going to be like headlights on a car - but forgot - no reflector markers, center line etc. I told him before. Eventually he agreed to switch them off - but could not navigate in the dark on instruments. Finally gave the helm to me. Not as easy as it looks.
Alan


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Legasea Legend member


Posted By: krow
Date Posted: 03 Mar 2022 at 8:35pm
My 2c I am often heading wide in the wee hours and lighting is well worth it. 
I was like above, hand held spot out the side waved around by crew. Not very good. I now have 2x LED light bars. The one on the roof is super grunty 200+ watt it needs serious wiring and a relay. You can see the drain on the battery when this puppy gets lit up. It has the disadvantage of reflections off the bow. I use this when I am close to land and could possibly encounter a cray pot buoy or similar (includes idiots with zero lights). The second and smaller light bar is mounted on the bow rail. This I can leave on most of the night trips as it has no reflection but I'm not hopeful of it's durability at this location. Waterproof etc but it's only been there a couple months. 


Posted By: JustAnotherSpearo
Date Posted: 04 Mar 2022 at 7:13am
Just thought id chime in with pointless information.

We have a 20inch led bar on the roof of the little bathtub which is only good for mourings and anchored vessels when navigating in the wee hours of the morning. Absolutely kills any night vision with the reflection etc

On my ute ive got a 42 inch lightbar mounted on my roof tray and 2x 9inch spotlights. The light bar essentially floods light to the same distance as what my highbeams reach. The spotties do around 1.3km of light.

When driving along a beach at night it still doesnt seem like a lot of light..



Posted By: Steps
Date Posted: 04 Mar 2022 at 8:33am
Flood light: floods a close area with light
 Spot light, narrow beam of light that goes for.. miles.
Car headlights are sort of a mix between the 2 .. a spot that spills quite a bit light outside the edges.

So it sort of like sound proofing, weather to insulate or or to stop reverberation depends very much on source, sound and type of panel.

Back in the day (way pre leds) I put flood on the top rail behind the cab on my datsun ute (thats goes back a bit and was brand new)...reflected light back ff the hood, and in rain, hopeless... but excellent for  lighted work area in front.
Then added with a couple spots (interdependent circuits) and if directed beams to miss the end of the hood (bonnet) excellent... as work lights, lot dark shadows, limited area from each spot.
Floods reflect real bad

That little spot on the front cnr of of my cabin, does work reasonably , other wise would have removed it yrs ago.
It is angled to just miss the bow, but still slight spillage/ reflection...But still see the water out in front enough to pick up anything un lit traveling at speed on flatish water, and slower speed with bit of swell/ chop.
Going towards harbour , moorings etc ...the beam is too narrow to pick up stuff when direct changes.
And thats when the hand spots by crew come in.

Now effective hand spots by crew is very dependent on instructions of what you need at the helm.
Basically they pick out and object/ obstacle up front on their side of the boat... and hold that object in the beam until we have nearly drawn level, then go to the next , and next... Do not shine it directly on other boats, shore or people.. that really p155es my off so I  make a point of not doing it
I thought about going to those remote control spots..then scraped the idea, rightly or wrongly, not just because of the cost..reason was ideally need 2 spots for both sides... like car headlights go (sort of ) left and inside the center line of the road. So at the helm, watching controls , then add to that , remotely moving spots from one object to the next, steer...

That spot on the front cnr of the cabin, thu not as good as would like has picked up  a log out off Anita (bottom end) couple times a small un lit  dingy fishing in Waiheke channel, a kayak off dudders,  couple long line bouys off the front of pakatoa...all at bottom end of cruise speed in a slightly choppy water to flat.




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