This was a few years back now but my first boat was a headache as well as some of the greatest fishing time I have had. My buddy Roland was with all the way through the good times and a few bad times.
First, my first boat was a double hulled fiberglass boat and it was extremely heavy.
I don’t remember exactly what I paid for this luxury liner but it was less than $400 and it came with a trailer to haul it.
The thing about the trailer was that the rollers were totally seized up so they would roll the boat on or off the trailer. Instead the boat had to be float because if you had to push that sucker off that trailer you were in for a fight.
It seemed lke the trailer glued it’s self to the bottom of the boat and wouldn’t let go unless you floated the boat, like I said. The few places we launched that wouldn’t go deep enoug into the water sure gave us a workout getting that boat wet.
Our very first trip two things happened. First we blew a tire on the trailer about half way to where we were going to fish which put us about an hour behind schedule.
Secondly. We finally arrived Saturday morning and launched for our first day on the water. It was so exciting and then the boat started to sink, bummer.
That’s what happens when you don’t put a boat on a trailer correctly and the bottom of the trailer goes through the boat’s outer hull.
So here is it is, early Saturday morning, nothing was open yet and we were getting ready to go back home when I looked over at the road and saw a man and a kid pull into a car repair shop. I pretty much ran from the boat to the car and asked the guy if he worked there.
Long story short, for $60 he fixed my boat and we were on the water in just two hours.
When I caught that first smallmouth bass both Roland and I did our happy dance.
This day started getting kind of windy which is normal here but I had spent my alloted budget on that boat and couldn’t afford a motor for it. I did however had a trolling motor which got us from point A to point B until the wind over powered our little motor.
We ended up on the rocks beside the railway line and had to get out of the boat and walk it around the point so we could get it back out into the water.
We decided to take a break for lunch and headed to the local grocery store to buy a few supplies. It was very hot that day so we took a drive around the lake while we were eating. That’s when I saw it…
There it was just lying there on the grass chained to a tree. A 9 horse Evenrude (I could be wrong on the size but it was small) outboard motor.
The owner was home so I asked how it worked. He unchained it and hooked it up to his little aluminum boat and it started first pull. It also pushed that little boat quite fast, I was totally impress.
Now this is something you don’t see or hear about any more but that guy gave me the motor and gave me his address so I could send him the money. He had never met or heard of me so he had no idea how honest I am but he just trusted.
Well that little Evenrude wouldn’t go any faster than 5 miles an hours once it was on my boat but that was a lot faster than my trolling motor was taking us.
That was just about the perfect speed for trolling though and we had a blast for about 5 or 6 years before I sold it. I still miss that old boat even though something went wrong every single time we went fishing in it.
