Homemade underwater fishing lights...
 

Well i was asked in another thread to show some homemade underwater fishing lights that i rigged up to help fill the freezer with sac-a-lait on those summer nights when its to darn hot to fish in the day time.

I looked at similar setups to these online and it seemed like everyone is in agreement that you need to have about 100 led's total in your light for enough lumens to be generated. The point of this was to do this on the cheap vs. paying 200$ for a product made with 10$ in parts.... plus i am a cheapskate.

here are the necessary parts

1 Quart Mason jar with good lid that seals very well.

8 ounces of lead weight

25 feet or so of 14-16 guage insulated wire (your gonna be dunking this whole thing in water so you want to get some decent wire)

5 multiple LED bulb type lights (i used 5 28 led lights, but it seems like the cheapest ones nowadays are the 68 led lights.. you could wire 3 of them for about 200 led lights in one unit.) something like this.
drill and drill bit to drill thru mason jar lid

hot melt glue gun and glue



What you need to do is identify which are the positive and negative sides of each led bulb. once you id this mark the positive side.. as you can see i did this with a plus sign.

After this you need to solder all 3-5 led bulbs together in Parallel (in other words all the positives together and then all the negatives together)

Then solder your electric wire to the positive and negative solders junctions on the bulbs.

Run your wire through the hole you drilled in your mason jar lid (leave some slack on the inside and then hot glue both the hole and wire on the inside and outside of the lid) put alligator clips on the ends of this for attaching to your battery.

Then put some hot melt glue in the bottom of the mason jar, and while its still hot put your weight in there (you dont want it rattling around with your bulbs. )

Put it all together and your ready to go fishing.

I don't have any pictures of it in the water... Next time i use them i will try to remember... but i only use em in summertime... so not anytime soon. The picture below does not do it justice when in the water... also this is the "Green" LED the bright white one is much brighter (but i loaned my white ones to my sac-a-lait fishing buddy and dont have em back yet)

I can tell you that when i use them i use two of them on my boat. one hanging from a cleat in the front of boat and another from cleat in the back. I lower them down about 5-6 feet and they light up an area around 5 ft diameter on each one.

The nice thing about this type of light is that the draw almost no energy, you can run 4-5 of them at a time off 1 12 volt battery for days. Plus they dont get hot so you dont have to keep them submerged.

Hope it helps

That's pretty nifty


Spiral Out

Well look at that! Awesome set up! Guessing they work good huh


"Go ahead, share your opinion! I won't cry"

Looks like I'll be doing arts and crafts Cajun style soon thanks for the tip

very cool

Comon man... don't call it arts and crafts... you gotta say your gonna Macgyver something and give it some cajun kick.. :)

LOL....

Does it matter if you use green or white bulbs?

some people say that you attract more with the green light than the white... but honestly i have not noticed a difference...

the white light does seem to be stronger and put out more light than the green leds... plus the green led's are hard to find.. so i would use white.

that's a great post.

I will make 4 of these because I plan to hang them off of some inshore platforms in PAC about 6-8 ft of water and will put one on each corner and use a motorcycle battery to run them off of.

I might try using a cheap extension cord too so its more durable and less likely to be a problem if the wire gets tugged on.

have you ever tried a regular household LED light bulb? are they as bright as the high intensity plug in LED bulbs or not so much?

Attachment 66032Attachment 66033
Here's mine.

a charged up motorcycle battery would run 4 of these all night and probably then some.

Not sure about the household LED light bulb. most of them are pretty low lumens... but might still work. The LED bulbs that i ordered are definetly not high end stuff...... Cree bulbs are probably 50 times as bright but they cost big money... i just wanted something that would work good enough.

Brown fin, did you make it yourself? did you use some type of led strip light or another type of bulb?

Made it. Magical potion in a tube.

sorry can't hand over the official Macguyver merit badge to you unless you break with teh secrets.. :)

Attachment 66129Attachment 66133

I made these with some led strip lights off eBay, old extension cord, a metal stake for weight, pvc fittings, and clear PVC tube. Probably cost about $10 each, but I had the clear tubing already.

Very clever and a great idea! Gus

I am going to attempt to make some of these. for my first attempt the led strip lights seem easier for me to make. my plan is to wrap a piece of pvc with the led strip then insert that pvc pipe into a clear plastic pipe that has weights at the bottom. i am not sure if this is the correct but next i plan to attach some heavy duty wire or extension cord directly to the wire at the end of the light strip. at this point drill a hole in the top of the cap run the wire through and seal it. on the end of the wire connect my battery clips. am i missing anything. i am not familiar with running lights off of a battery and if i need any type of converters or anything else. thanks in advance

the led lights have coverters built into the light strips / bulbs.. so you just have to hook em up to get em going..

I chose the bulbs because the LED strips are not as bright but with enough of them i am sure you can do fine.

thanks i didnt realize that they were all built in. I thought the light strips would be brighter shows what i know. I will have to give this a try. thanks. I was worried about the bulbs having to have a ballast or something. I also didnt know about heat shrink. thanks again

Sweet lights! I like the idea of the PVC tube. Wonder if you could use the bulbs in a tube like that? Also wonder how well they'd work in salt water???

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So how much do you feel these lights help? Holds bait to you or just looks cool

Can't speak for those lights but I have el cheapo lights that use batteries and they held bait and I caught fish off em in 6' of water. The ones in this thread seem to be way better than mine so I'm sure they work. Plus they "look cool" too.


"Go ahead, share your opinion! I won't cry"

Drop Em out at the jetties and hang on for big nasties should be the game plan

Well, I'm all in. I ordered the bulbs and 2 24" pieces of poly carbonate pipe.

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Got my lights and clear tube in today. Hopefully will have some time to get one together this weekend. Will have 4-68 smd xenon white 6500k bulbs in each tube.

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cool let us know how they turn out. i am in the process of making one as well and will post when all supplies are done.

Sneak peak
Attachment 67620

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thats very cool looking. show a pic when you light them up. i have been trying to upload the pic of mine which is a different set up than yours but i am having a hard time. I am going to take another picture and see if it works. hopefully tomorrow i can put it up

Will do. I'll try and get a pic tonight

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pic
 

Not finished yet still awaiting for some parts but puts out good light. Pic was taken with no flash

Looks great! Didn't have a chance to get a pic last night of mine but I should tonight.

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you selling these things

I'm not but I can give you the parts list I ordered.

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Here's a night pic. Wish I would have done it in a garage or enclosed area. Attachment 67792

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Looks great. Thanks guys for the help on these. Hoping to finish mine soon. So I can do a little night fishing for some trout

pic
 

This is the light in a pool. Thought it looked pretty good

another angle
 

Another angle

Looks good! I'm still trying to decide what battery to use. I had hopes of using a little battery like they use for the battery powered toy cars for kids but I don't think it will light them long enough. My hope was to set the lights up and get away from them.

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I wouldn't mind seeing a parts list.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4X-Xenon-Whi...-/251445126417

Clear Polycarbonate Tube Small Parts
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Other than the above, just PVC fittings and copper wire.

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Thanks..

Do you have a picture of how your connection from the copper wire to the wires you run to the battery?

I can get one. I just drilled 2 holes just big enough for the wires to go thru. Soldered my wires and coated with liquid electrical tape.

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Got ya. Thanks a lot.

Use a lawn mower battery. Should work great.

I might try that Paul. I need to hook my multimeter up and see how many amps its drawing.

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What size tubing?

1-1/2"

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Ordered bulbs and tube. Hope to have it together for trip to the bend Sunday. Will be fishing up there for a week.

Also, when u buy your fittings, get 1-1/4". 1-1/2" is too big. I used a belt sander to sand the ends of the pipe down so the 1-1/4" fit snug then glued it.

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