How to Fly Fish From a Boat

Video Transcript

"A good fly fishing boat, whether it's for fresh water, salt water, anything along those lines, has to be designed to keep a very clean surface. Since, unlike a spinning reel or a conventional reel, you're not reeling your line back under the the rod every time, to where it's stored neatly on the reel. Your line is going to be laying on the deck of the boat at some point and time. So it's very important that there's nothing that line can catch on, when you're trying to cast. That's why flat boats will normally have cleats that fold down flat in the front, push holders for the push hold to fold down flat so that there's nothing to catch the line. Drift boats will also be for fishing for fresh water fish, will also be arranged in a very similar fashion, where there's very little to catch. Also it's great for a boat to have good gear storage system, just to keep tackle bags, coolers, anything like that from being in the way of the angler. For instance, on my last trip to Andreas in the Bahamas this spring, we were bone fishing for the bulk of the trip. And a lot of times you'll have sixty or seventy feet of line stripped off into the boat, and basically once a bone fish hits, if it's a half decent size one, he's immediately going to take all that line out. So, it's really really important on a boat to have all the line cleared, to where it's not going to catch a cleat, it's not going to catch on anything else, or otherwise when it hits a nod or a hang, you're immediately going to break a fish off. So, it's a big big factor to have it clean, in fact I can think of one time fishing for amber jacks, actually about twenty miles off of the heavier salt water set up, we had a twelve weight last year. But we had a couple issues clearing line. And it's a pretty good sized fish in that situation, and you really get into some problems pretty quickly, and it can actually tear your tackle up too. You start having your fall line wrapped around cleats, or wrapping around your buddy's foot beside you, it can turn into a bad situation pretty fast. So, having a clean boat, that doesn't have a lot of clutter on it, is really important. The only other way of getting around that would actually be, to use a stripping basket, which will hold all your line, kind of on your hip, to where you don't have to worry so much about it catching on other stuff. But otherwise the deck of the boat needs to be pretty neat, pretty free."