Mine are mounted far forward which makes for easy access and you can swing the rigger boom forward along side the hull which removes a hazard when playing fish and lets you have lots of room in close beside the boat for netting, identifying and releasing fish. Just don't put the boom in real close to the hull in real bumpy seas or the ball can slam into the glass hull like a wrecking ball.
The kicker is on an outside corner, way out the back on a pod, and the main outboard is also on the pod. To handle the rare tight turn, especially in strong cross current, the kicker has a prop. guard and I only use steel on the other side to protect it from the main outboard non running prop in a bad cross current and overly sharp turn, which is rare as we are very careful. Steel no problem, but if braid ever hits the non running stainless prop. on the main, the blades cuts it off like a knife.
The previous owner (old guide boat- he knows his stuff) made extremely heavy duty aluminum U-Shaped mounts, that bolt onto both the inside and outside of the side hull and are very strong. In my view the plastic rigger swivel mount on top of it would break way before the custom U-shaped heavy Aluminum base mount and in the ten years I have had it, there has not been a problem and at times there has been a lot of force on those mounts.
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