Well me and a few buddies went out and ran West Galveston bay this past weekend. We had two 1860 GDSD 35 GD and a 17ft Legend craft with a 35 mud buddy. We caught some reds and specks that morning and as the day got hotter we decided to stop fishing and start playing. My buddy with the mud buddy left early so I don't know about his mileage but me and the other go devil ran roughly 60.66 miles on 9 gallons of 93 octane. Anyways...... we ran down this long skinny canal barely wider than our rigs and it dead ended. Luckily my buddy has a warn winch on the front of his boat so he was able to winch my a$$ end around and then winch the bow of his boat around and off we went. That winch saved us last year on the trinity and is worth its weight in gold. I bought my boat with no mods this summer and I can't seem to find any post on winch installs on Go Devil boats so I decided to do one and I will update this post as I go. My buddy has already done it on his rig so this is not my idea but he doesn't use the internet machine so I figured I would share the knowledge. I will be running all my wires under the deck but as you know Go Devil seals their front deck and they are full of foam so I am sure this will be a super fun task.

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Sounds good, I've been toying with getting a wench myself, what size wire are you running and what pound winch do you have? Thanks

It's the badlands 3500lb winch, I'm pulling the cable off and going synthetic right away, I'm going to try and use all the wiring that came with it and just mount a battery up under my bow. I am also going to run a few cube spot lights as well

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I have a 2500lb badlands for my boat, and one of their small 20K snatch blocks. The block will literally fit in your ass pocket. I recommend getting one for sure. I've pulled two boats with mine on the block. My boat had the winch mount welded in when they built the boat but I don't use it. I keep a short choker in the boat and extended the leads for my winch. I can loop it thru any handle, around the platform, etc. and pull off any point on the boat. The leads are longer than my boat so I just run to my trolling motor battery and away we go. With the remote control I just sit in the boat and enjoy the ride just consider not actually "mounting" the winch. It's far more versatile and doesn't clutter the bow. I used my winch mount for a light bar mount.

I was planning on making a plate with a pile that I could put in any of my spud holes on each corner of the front and rear of my boat. I guess I could just use gator clips to hook it to the battery when I need it.

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I get where some of y'all are coming from and I really love the idea of the winch being able to swivel to face where it is pulling. Its definitely more efficient that way. Hell even if you talk to Coco he talks about making some sort of swivel base to mount to the winch plate on the boat and I may tinker with that some and I will let you know what I come up with. Giga, how is the seat base on the bow braced?

I use a 3500#!winch on mount into spud pole holes and a remote. Save us several times. 2500# got hot and quit. Also slid into a few trees and the winch will break.

You could start a snickers type commercial.......I wish I had a PD with FPR......

Seen plenty of Pro Drives unspooling winch line too.... Getting in a bad situation isn't brand exclusive.

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So after work today i was able to mess with the boat some. I moved my fuel cans that were up under the overhang in the bow and tried to get as center as possible and drill a hole. Well i ended up drilling and cutting out a sloppy square which you won't see once i put the inspection door on it. I used a 1 in x 18 in long auger bit to get my hole started and then i used a 1in piece of aluminum conduit and drove it up to the nose of the boat. When i pulled it out the foam came out inside it perfectly. I then drilled my hole behind the winch mount on the deck and luckily i hit my mark and i could see the 1 in hole i made going through the foam. A little side note my boat is a 2013 Go Devil and my foam have absolutely zero water in it ( i remember this being a problem with the older ones). I will probably get around to pulling wires for the led cubes and winch this weekend.

There's a black plastic grommet in the deck about 8" aft of the winch plate with a hot wire and ground pulled to it. At least in the boats I've looked at.

SETx Longtail is exactly right on how the winch plate is mounted, the seat base had no bracing and in just built into the deck

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Had to drop the boat off at Go Devil for the day because of a hit and run that happened on memorial day

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I've talked to SETX about Badland Winches before. They are a pretty good budget winch.

I've had a 3500lb on a duck boat in salt water marshes for 3 seasons, winching a the boat a good 500+ feet every weekend of season and it is still working no problem. I also have a 12k Badlands on a receiver caddy that has pulled out a few buried diesel trucks pretty easily. I put a 5000lb on the front and back of my Maverick SXS this year, but I haven't used either of them yet, except to pull my lawnmower up a tree to change blades.

With my new Uncle J, I had him weld a square socket into the bow of the boat and build a removable winch mount plate. I also have a troll motor bracket, and bbq put that can mount in the same socket. I figure if I'm not going hunting and know I need it, I can shed the few extra pounds.

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Well from the hit and run my shaft was bound up pretty bad because the shaft housing was tweaked so I upgraded my old carbon shaft to a stainless steel shaft and had them go through the hole motor, I figured I would post a few pics from when I got hit too

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The put the frame in a jig and made it good as new

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They do quality work over there. No doubt your unit is back to 100%. My motor has spent some time in that test tank as well. Made the right call bringing it straight back to them.

If your insurance paid I would have told them you had daul motors and the driver knocked your other mud motor off and you couldn't find it!!!

Insurance company screw all form our eyes out so you should taken advantage.

I would actually not suggest trying to commit insurance fraud but it sounds cool on the computer

Well while we are on the subject of insurance companies let me take a minute to talk about mine. I have Geico Marine because USAA does not offer boat insurance and they contract out to Progressive and they do not cover mud boats. Well back when I bought my boat I called and got a quote for 195 for the year and that insured my boat for 13,000 and my deductible was 500. So a month later I get a call saying the original insurance person quoted me wrong and they could only insure my boat for 11,000 and my annual rate would go up to 215 and my deductible would stay the same. I told them that was BS and I tried to get them to waive it and I did everything I could until they said if I didn't like it they would drop my coverage and refund my money. I should have taken that as a sign and tried to find somewhere else but since they were still insuring my boat more than what I paid for it I went ahead and paid the extra money and I forgot about it. Well my boat got hit by a drunk driver which was a hit and run. I called Geico they sent out a person and then they sent me a letter saying since my damage amount wasn't more than my deductible they were going to close my claim. So I called and was like what the hell are yall talking about, so they proceeded to tell me my deductible had been raised to 3,000. I showed them the paperwork I had saying 500 and they would not honor it. So long story short save yourself the trouble and go with anyone other than Geico Marine and if you have a better recommendation please feel free to let me know!

Well while we are on the subject of insurance companies let me take a minute to talk about mine. I have Geico Marine because USAA does not offer boat insurance and they contract out to Progressive and they do not cover mud boats. Well back when I bought my boat I called and got a quote for 195 for the year and that insured my boat for 13,000 and my deductible was 500. So a month later I get a call saying the original insurance person quoted me wrong and they could only insure my boat for 11,000 and my annual rate would go up to 215 and my deductible would stay the same. I told them that was BS and I tried to get them to waive it and I did everything I could until they said if I didn't like it they would drop my coverage and refund my money. I should have taken that as a sign and tried to find somewhere else but since they were still insuring my boat more than what I paid for it I went ahead and paid the extra money and I forgot about it. Well my boat got hit by a drunk driver which was a hit and run. I called Geico they sent out a person and then they sent me a letter saying since my damage amount wasn't more than my deductible they were going to close my claim. So I called and was like what the hell are yall talking about, so they proceeded to tell me my deductible had been raised to 3,000. I showed them the paperwork I had saying 500 and they would not honor it. So long story short save yourself the trouble and go with anyone other than Geico Marine and if you have a better recommendation please feel free to let me know!

I have Foremost on my rig. It's a sub company through Farmers or something. I'm not exactly sure how all that works other than, it's very inexpensive and I have family who have had to make claims and they have been super good to work with and paid well.

I've got State Farm on my rig. Insured amount is 19,500, my deductible is 500, and it cost 154 a year! It was by far the cheapest if found I just hope they don't try and pull some BS like geico. So are you still fighting for them to pay or do you have to just bite the bullet?