Homemade underwater fishing lights...

[AceArcher]

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.

Amazon.com: Jtech 2 x 68-SMD 12V T10 T15 White LED Car Lights Bulb Super Bright: Automotive

Amazon.com: Jtech 2 x 68-SMD 12V T10 T15 White LED Car Lights Bulb Super Bright: Automotive
Amazon.com: Jtech 2 x 68-SMD 12V T10 T15 White LED Car Lights Bulb Super Bright: Automotive

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