Being able to fish in comfort whilst sat on your pontoon isn’t always possible, particularly if you have a built-in or standalone livewell that’s away from your seats.
Who wants to continually be getting up to grab fresh bait or drop their latest catch in, when instead you could be sat in comfortable on top of the livewell with all you need close at hand?
That’s why these pontoon livewell seats are so good.
There are two main brands I would recommend, Moeller and Wise. I’ve listed a few of their best livewell seats below, with details on what differentiates them, and which one might be best for you.
Handy Hint: The seats featured here do not come with the livewell included and you will need to purchase and adapt those separately.
Table of Contents
Understanding Livewell Seats: Function and Benefits for Anglers and Boaters
Livewell seats cleverly combine comfortable seating and a practical solution for keeping caught fish alive and healthy during transport. These innovative features optimize space on your pontoon boat and offer numerous advantages for anglers and recreational boaters.
Livewell Seat Function:
A livewell seat incorporates a watertight compartment beneath the cushion, serving as a livewell equipped with aeration and water circulation systems. These systems maintain a suitable environment for fish, ensuring their well-being.
Keeping Fish Alive and Healthy:
Livewell seats allow secure storage of caught fish, ensuring their health until they can be released or transported ashore. The system continuously circulates fresh water from the surrounding body of water and maintains optimal temperature conditions to prevent stress or harm to the fish.
Benefits of a Livewell Seat:
- Space-saving: Integrating the livewell system into a seat conserves valuable deck space, allowing more room for passengers and gear.
- Convenience: A livewell seat on board simplifies the storage and transport of caught fish, eliminating the need for separate equipment such as portable livewells or coolers.
- Comfort: In addition to its primary function as a fish storage system, the livewell seat offers a comfortable seating option for passengers on your pontoon boat.
50 Quart Seat from Moeller
Starting off with the smallest and best priced, this is the Moeller’s standard swing back cooler and livewell boat seat.
It only has a 50-quart capacity, with the size being reflected in the price, but still comes with the quality you would expect from a Moeller product.
The seat itself is made from marine grade vinyl that won’t develop mold or mildew, and it offers a very comfortable ride due to the deep foam innards and back rest section.
You can use it as a cooler or livewell, but for full livewell functionality you will need to adapt it yourself. But the basic set-up is all there ready for you.
You will need to buy the livewell separately as you will with all of these recommendations.
70 Quart Seat from Wise
The Wise Premier Series Pontoon Flip-Flop Seat is an excellent cooler and will keep ice for days so it’s perfect for weekend fishing trips.
It also comes in a range of different color options, so you should be able to find a design that’s suited to your existing pontoon style. For my Bennington I would choose the rock salt color as that’s in keeping with other seating on my boat.
The Wise livewell seats are amongst the most durable on the market, and they are known to last a very long time with virtually no negative feedback.
That’s down to the high impact molded frame, high compression foam padding, and heavy-duty swing back arms.
It comes with a pre-drilled drainage hole, so adapting this as a livewell will be relatively straight forward providing you follow the video tutorial guidance.
70 Quart Seat from Wise
This is virtually the same seat as the previous version but will often be a little cheaper due to being in the basic white design.
As with the other Wise livewell seats it has a very long warranty; 6 years on the frame and 4 years on the upholstery.
Hopefully you won’t need to activate those warranties as it uses UV treated and mildew-resistant vinyl seating that is designed to withstand the type of punishment expected on a day’s fishing.
72 Quart Seat from Moeller
And last but not least, the daddy of them all which is the larger 72-quart capacity seat from Moeller.
It has insanely good reviews on Amazon which you can read for yourself by clicking the product image shown on this page.
I believe it to be the best pontoon boat livewell seat that money can buy, and there are some very good reasons for that.
It uses a corrosion-resistant frame, has a double-foam insulated base, deep comfortable cushions, stainless steel arms, and is dead simple to install or set-up.
It will keep your ice very, very cold, and in fact one person I know who owns this told me that it kept his ice for 4 days whilst fishing in the north of California. You can’t get better than that.
If you want comfort, size, and livewell functionality once fitted, then this should be your number one choice this year.
Can You Make Your Own Livewell Seat?
Most definitely.
A friend of mine made one up to take part in fishing tournaments in Northern California.
Here’s a great example of a DIY livewell seat that could work on a pontoon by adapting your existing cooler.
If you want to do your own DIY job then I would recommend that you modify a cheap 120 quarter cooler (you can buy one on Amazon).
The seating structure is already done so all you then need to do is make up a seat cushion.
Once you have created a comfortable seating area on top of the cooler you will then need to plumb off a bilge pump to spray water in from the top and bottom on one side.
Next up drill a large hole at the level you want the water to reach on the opposite side and connect a drain hose.
That way you can cycle out fresh water as often as needed.
You could also choose to mount a bubble stone on the bottom and run a little battery operated bubbler. The trick is to make sure the water doesn’t get to warm and has oxygen. If you don’t plan on exchanging water, you can just do a recirculation setup.
I think they have them on Amazon.
Here is another example of how you can make your own livewell seat look:
Or you could add a splash of color instead of neutral whites and greys with this other idea using a cooler as a seat.
Why Not Just Use Fish Baskets?
I spoke to my fishing buddy about this guide before I published it, and he said to me “why not just use fish baskets”?
He’s kind of missing the point a little.
I want something comfortable to sit on whilst I fish, and don’t want to be leaning and pulling at the baskets. It’s a pain in the butt.
It’s also worth considering that in my area I’ve sometimes seen snakes get into fish baskets and they end up attacking the fish.
It’s no fun to pick that basket up and see a snake or clean a fish and find it black inside from a snake bite.
I am going to stick to my livewell seat!
Final Thoughts
And there you are, 4 of the best pontoon livewell seats that money can buy.
As with all of the recommendations on Pontoonopedia, don’t just take my word for it. Any boating and fishing accessory you are thinking about buying should be fully researched, especially ones which come with high price points such as livewells.
What I always do when buying for my Bennington is create a list of questions about what I need from a particular product, and then check that back against the options to see which comes out top.
You might have different requirements to me, but I hope the above recommendations on livewell seats has at least whittled down the choices.
I have deliberately left out anything that I don’t believe offers good value for money.
Also remember to read the reviews that you see on Amazon and pay particularly attention to the ones that have “verified purchase” on them. That is a signifier that the person leaving the review has actually bought the product themselves.
