Selecting The Best Fishing Boat For You

Choosing a Fishing Boat

As a keen fisherman who is lucky enough to live by the coast I have owned a variety of boats over the years all of which have offered various advantages and problems when out on the sea.

I'll offer my accumulated knowledge in this article in the hope that you can avoid some of the pitfalls I have been in and select the ideal sea fishing boat for your days out.

The Bow Rider

We started off with a bow rider style speed boat with a large two stroke out board engine, this boat looked great and was indeed fast and it offered a lot of seating however in rough seas the bow rider area acted like a giant scoop often gathering up the sea faster than the bilge pump could extract it.

Yes, I guess that means on several occasions we were enjoying that sinking feeling.

Also the abundance of upholstery would catch our hooks and take a long time to clean after an outing.

The V shaped hull was good and allowed us to cut though chop and get to our favourite fishing spots quickly and easily.

The Dory Style Hull.

Next we tried a double V or cathedral hull dory style open fishing boat, this gave great room of the overall craft length and great stability but a very noisy hull shape as waves slapped against the hull and rough seas sometimes gave an uncomfortable feeling as the boat tended to lift and fall with the waves rather than slice through them.

The Little Tinny.

Next we tried a smaller aluminium 'tinny' style fishing boat for coastal and river work, this was only 12 feet long with a very narrow hull design.

Perfect for river work but alarmingly unstable on any kind of sea state.

Also the lack of free board would mean taking on water even in calm seas.

The lesson learned was the boat was a delight to handle but size really does matter at sea.

The Deep V Hull

This experience led to the purchase of a deep V cuddy cabin purpose made fast fishing boat this vessel had the free board and cabin to keep us dry.

The deep V hull design to slice though the sea and the clean internal design that was easy to wash down and maintain after an outing.

At 16.5 feet the boat was easy to tow, launch and recover but gave us a great platform for four people to fish from.

The cuddy cabin gave a dry sheltered area in which to store kit and a level of comfort under way when the spray would easily soak us in an open boat.

We kept this fishing boat for years before upgrading to a larger cuddy cabin boat to enjoy exactly the same advantages only on a larger scale.