The cockpit-mounted fighting chair ranks as standard equipment aboard any sportfishing boat, even though many of them never get used for much more than an extra seat during cocktail hour. A boat simply looks naked without one, like a boat with no outriggers. And although you can probably get by without a tower (though many captains rightly believe they are vital equipment too), a fighting chair is mandatory.

Unfortunately, most people don't know much about actually using a chair to fight fish, posing the question: Is the chair on your boat up to the task, and do you know how to set it up and use it to help you land large fish?

An unlimited tuna chair looks terrific in the cockpit, but it's expensive, takes up a lot of room and is really overkill for most species. Many people opt for a midsize 80-pound chair since they rarely fish with 130-pound gear. And if you mostly target dolphin and sailfish on light tackle, the smallest economy chairs will work fine. But once you roll the dice and decide to start targeting marlin, tuna or swordfish on heavy tackle, you better know exactly how much stress your chair can handle. And, just as importantly, you need know how to fully utilize all of the advantages a properly set-up chair provides.

Landing or tagging a huge fish requires the proper application of large amounts of drag during critical moments in the fight. When you put the screws to the fish and start using 70 or even 80 pounds of drag, it puts tremendous pressure on all parts of a fighting chair, from the spot where the stanchion attaches to the boat, to the seat, the footrest and the rod gimbal. It also puts pressure on your anglers, but a good fighting chair helps them exert maximum pressure on the fish without pain or excess fatigue.

When buying a sport-fishing boat, it's a good idea to investigate how the chair attaches to the cockpit sole. That basic connection becomes very important when you're putting the heat on a large fish. "In the old days, all of the chairs were mounted to the keel," says Frank Murray of Murray Products, "because all of the cockpit decks were wood." The chair pedestal went through the cockpit sole and attached to the wooden beam that served as the keel, providing outstanding strength and support at all angles.

But these days, boats typically come with fiberglass cockpit decks, and even the few wood boats still produced usually core their decks with some strong, Space Age material. Since the glass decks tended to be stronger than wood, manufacturers began mounting chairs straight to the deck. Modern boats typically have large fuel tanks mounted beneath the cockpit anyway, so there's no access to the keel. You really have no choice but to mount the chair to the deck.

To make sure the chair (and the angler) stays in the boat during a tough fight, most manufacturers use a large backing plate to spread out the stress exerted on the deck. Some glass a steel or bronze plate into the deck, then drill and tap the plate to hold the bolts that will secure the chair. Others simply use a large plate that's drilled and fastened underneath the deck with bolts and nuts. This obviously requires an access point and enough room between the deck and the fuel tank to tighten the nuts.

New boatbuilders typically do an excellent job of building a strong mounting system into their boats. But if you're buying a used boat, you may not be able to determine exactly who mounted the chair. Check the mounting arrangement to make sure it's robust enough to handle the load.

It's not uncommon to see aftermarket chair installations using tapped metal plates as thin as 3/16 of an inch. With a tapping system, strength comes from the number of threads in the plate, and the more the better. Large chairs need big, thick plates to spread out the load on the deck and provide an adequate "bite." Obviously, a chair bolted to a 1/2-inch stainless plate is going to be much more secure than one bolted to that 3/16-inch plate. Even through-bolted chairs benefit from a heftier plate.

Once you're satisfied that the chair will stay in the boat under duress, examine the chair to familiarize yourself with its vital components. You need to become intimately familiar with the gimbal, the footrest and the spider under the seat, which mounts to the pedestal and enables the chair to turn during battle.

A good gimbal adjusts to allow you to use rods with different butt lengths. This also enables anglers of different heights to use the rod more effectively. Most gimbals swing up and down for long- and short-butt rods, and most also have height adjustments. Likewise, footrests should be easily adjustable to accommodate anglers of all sizes, from kids to Bubbas.

Most chair companies make it easy to adjust the footrest and gimbal. "We have developed and patented a quick-change footrest bracket," says Jimmy Dewberry of Release Marine, "making it extremely easy to change both the angle and the pitch of the footrest." One bar lets you make the adjustments effortlessly.
Release Marine also developed a quick-release gimbal cup, which moves up and down via two actuator pins. You reach in with your thumb and forefinger, squeeze the pins and move the gimbal wherever you want it.

The latest trend in fighting chairs is the offset stanchion, a necessity due to the proliferation of large boats with extra-wide beams. Without an offset stanchion, it's impossible to clear the transom corners with the rod tip when the fish is close to the boat — the distance is simply too great. The offset moves the chair closer to the corner.

Most companies build manually operated offset stanchions, but a number of them are working on motorized versions. Murray Products has already brought one to the market. "Our FC3 Power Glide is a mechanically controlled offset chair that runs on a 24-volt system," says Murray. "As the chair turns, it also extends off center as much as 24 inches. This allows it to cover about a 20-foot arc, good enough for boats with a beam as wide as 24 feet." The Murray system uses four electric motors to move the chair — one to turn it and three to extend and retract it. "It's reliable, it works, and it's safe," he says.

But Murray Products, Release and Pompanette continue to work on hydraulic systems that would potentially be even more reliable than an electric system. "We are just a few weeks away from launching our hydraulically operated offset chair," says Colin O'Neil of Pompanette. "Working with Roy Merritt and captains like Peter B. Wright and Skip Smith, we adapted the original Merritt design to accommodate the use of hydraulics." The chair ties into a hydraulic bow thruster system like the ones being built into the new 80-foot Merritts, giving the operator smooth and precise control in a system that's not prone to the problems often encountered by DC electric motors in a salt-water environment.

Don't have an 80-foot Merritt in your budget for the coming year? Well, Pompanette can help you out there too. O'Neil and Wright developed a chair for use on smaller boats called the Swordfish chair. It offers the toughness and durability of larger chairs in a much more compact size and comes with a unique footrest system that will enable you to put the heat on a big fish from even the smallest boat.

And that's what it's all about — putting heat on big fish. The right chair allows an angler, no matter what his or her size, to put tremendous drag on a fish without experiencing pain or undue fatigue. It also allows you to catch the fish and let it go much faster — which is better for both you and the fish.

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Fighting Chair Manufacturers

 

Blue Water Chairs
954-522-4238
www.bluewaterchairs.com

Murray Products
561-845-1366
www.murrayproducts.com

Pompanette
954-525-6367
www.pompanette.com

Release Marine
800-603-4448
www.releasemarine.com

Scopinich
772-288-3111
www.scopinich.com