Why your fishing boat needs a bait board

A cutting board or workbench should be one of the first items fitted to every fishing boat. Having somewhere onboard to prepare baits, rig lures/lines, and stow tackle is essential. You can make a cutting board yourself, or buy one off-the-shelf. Let's examine your options.

At one time or another, I am sure most of us have fished from a boat that hasn't been very well outfitted for fishing. You can get by without a range of fishing aids, but there are a few things that are really quite important.

Well-placed rod holders, for example, are just about essential.

Another item that I always feel lost without is a decent bait cutting board.

The bait cutting board is one of the most simple, yet important items to have on any fishing boat - be it a 3.4 m tinnie, or an 8.0 m sport fisherman. Interestingly, until you try and fish from a boat without a bait board, you don't realise how useful a feature they can be.

During the last few decades, there have been many times when I have fished from poorly outfitted boats. New boats offered for long term testing (a rarity these days) might have had the odd rod holder, but few were offered with a cutting board or other fishing accessories.

When fishing from these craft, we would often find ourselves trying to chop up baits on the lid of a tackle box or cane fishing basket - rather than risk marking the gelcoat on these shiny new test boats. It was on these occasions that I truly recognised the importance of having a decent chopping board/workbench.

Bait boards can be made from a great variety of materials, including timber, nylon, alloy, whatever. They can be as simple or as elaborate as you care to make them.

For many anglers, a simple flat cutting surface is suitable. For others, nothing less than an elaborate, multi-compartment workbench with aft rocket-launcher rod rack and built-in bait tank will suffice.

If you want to make your own board, timber is an easier material to work with. Plywood is good because it is strong and durable, but other timbers can also be used to good effect.

In designing a cutting board or bench, there's no limit to what you can come up with. Having said that, if you're making your own board, you might as well make it reasonably elaborate, with provision for the storage of things like lures, knives, terminal tackle, etc.

On a 1980s vintage SharkCat many years ago, my father and I made two tricky looking workbenches from strips of Oregon. The benches, glued and screwed together, then oiled for a natural appearance, were suspended on stainless steel brackets above each of the outboard wells in the SharkCat.

Thinking back, those workbenches were probably a little too large, and they were positioned quite high up over the outboards wells. As a result, they did sometimes get in the way when we battling a good-sized sportfish.

Then again, at the time, ninety per cent of our fishing involved bottom bouncing for species like morwong, snapper, flathead, jewfish etc., and for this type of fishing (where you tend to be constantly cutting up baits), the workbenches were invaluable.

We learnt from our experience with that SharkCat, and in the subsequent craft we made the workbenches a little lower and less elaborate.

Subsequent workbenches were also removable, and this meant we could wash them down easily at the end of a day's fishing.

Having removable bait boards also gave us the option to leave them at home if we decided to go offshore lure trolling - and were unlikely to be cutting up or rigging dead baits.

With regard to positions, there are plenty of "dead spots" in and around the cockpit of a trailer boat where you can locate a cutting board or workbench.

With older style trailer boats - those with a formed, single island type outboard well - positioning a cutting board directly over the outboard well works exceptionally well. Here, it is away from the working cockpit area, yet immediately accessible.

The only trouble with this location is that you must design the cutting board so that there is still room to tilt your outboard up for trailering.

Better yet, if the cutting board is removable, then you can simply take it off, or move it to another location when you get back to the boat ramp.

Transom layouts have changed with modern trailer boats. Most new boats now have a half pod-style transom that has the outboard well located behind a full-width internal cockpit/transom wall. With this common layout, the cutting board can really be mounted anywhere along the rear transom wall or suspended above the side coamings.

An alternative is to incorporate a cutting board into a centre cockpit fish box/work station - which you can make yourself, or buy off the shelf.

In small tinnies and open boats, there is obviously a limit to the size and scope of the cutting board or workbench you can use. There simply isn't the space for the elaborate, multiple compartment workbench that you might find on a larger trailer boat. However, it is possible to build or buy a smaller, simpler cutting board.

A lighter, more portable bait board can also then be positioned in a variety of locations around the cockpit.

With smaller boats, the most difficult part of the construction of your own bait board is producing the mounting platform to fix it into position.

In runabouts, centre consoles or other larger boats which have a formed outboard well or proper side coaming, you can secure the bait board directly down to the coaming or over the transom.

Small tinnies don't usually have side coamings, so you may need to buy a mounting bracket to secure your homemade bait board to a side rail or a transom corner gusset; this will still be cheaper than buying a complete, ready-made bait board from a commercial retailer. 

If you haven't got rails, or don't want the cutting board to get in the way while fishing, another option is to position the bait board at gunwale height within the boat so that it is then held up with a vertical strut (or two) extending down to the floor.

Still another alternative is to secure a cutting board directly onto one of the thwart seats - or perhaps on top of a central fish or icebox between the thwart seats.

If you don't have the time or inclination to make your own workbench or cutting board, there are plenty of production models available. Most are pretty basic with features like slop trays and a knife holder or two, but if you shop around you can find some more interesting models.

Sant Marine Fishing Essentials (www.santmarine.com.au) manufacture several useful polyethylene cutting boards. They are available in a variety of sizes to suit different size boats and fishing applications. They can be rail mounted or deck mounted.

Brisbane company BaitMate makes an excellent range of aluminium framed bait boards. BaitMate models range from very basic, single posted cutting boards for small tinnies, to full custom made models equipped with multiple compartments, rod holders, tackle storage drawers – and even a built-in live bait tank.

BaitMate boards can be ordered online and can be made to suit a specific position on your boat. They can be fixed in position, or designed to be removable with legs that slot into a pair of rod holders on your side or rear coaming.  

Other bait board makers you'll find online include Reef Marine, Prowave, and Southern Stainless.

Bait and cutting boards can also be bought from leading marine boat dealers and chandleries.

Closing tips

Whether you decide to buy a cutting board or make your own, there are a couple of important points to note. Firstly, a good cutting board should have a border around at least three sides to prevent the bait, sinkers, knives, etc., from falling off. This is particularly important if the board is mounted over the transom or over a side gunwale railing.

The low point in each bait board compartment should also have a drain hole to prevent water pooling in that cavity/recess and potentially rusting out your knives and tackle.

If you do not have a live bait tank on your boat, consider making - or buying a bait board with a built-in live well.

Incorporating rod holders and/or a rod rack into the bait board is also a good idea.

When mounting the cutting board, you also need to keep in mind your preferred type of fishing. If you do a lot of sport fishing, then consider making the bait board removable - or at least keep it mounted down low so that you won't catch your fishing line on it when fighting a fish.

Conversely, if bottom bashing is your thing, then a higher mounted cutting board may be preferable to allow you to stand comfortably upright while cutting or rigging baits. Stooping over a low-set bait board all day at sea is a sure-fire way of straining your back.