Overboard Boater

Back in May I took a trip to Andros South in the Bahamas for a fly fishing bloggers junket.

I wrote a couple of follow-up posts on it.

Here’s one from my fly blog called “Bonefish Perspectives.”

Here’s a guest post on the lodge blog called “Things I Learned At Andros South.”

Going bonefishing in the Keys again this month and hopefully in the Bahamas again later in the fall. Hope to have many, many more thoughts to post on the subject.

I read this article in today’s New York Times talking about Virgin Mobile’s new MiFi card, which provides you with a personal wireless hotspot, and immediately thought, how great for your boat?

It’s about the size of a credit card so you can take it with you, and not worry about a separate internet connection for your boat at the marina.

The Virgin Mobile MiFi

It has its limitations (the range of the Sprint network), and most cell phone networks lose a signal a few miles offshore, unless you pay for and install a signal booster. Satellite is still the best bet for long distance cruising, but as far as logging on at the dock, it looks to be a cool little device.

Name this dive boat for Dive Bimini at the new Bimini Big Game Club.

The reopened Bimini Big Game Club needs a name for its new dive boat, and is holding a naming contest: Winner gets a free dive trip.

The Big Game Club, opened this spring as a Guy Harvey Outpost Resort, features eco-friendly fishing and diving packages. The diving part comes through a collaboration between Harvey and Neal Watson, and will be operated under the name Neal Watson’s Dive Bimini.

Here’s the gist of it:

First, send your suggested names by posting it to  Biggameclubbimini.com (deadline is October 1, 2010). Send as many as you can think of. There are no rules on the names submitted, although the Guy Harvey Outpost team is going to favor ones that are clever, entertaining, easy to pronounce and not too long.

Then a group of at Guy Harvey Outpost, including Guy and Neal, will rally up and review the “keepers”, from which they will create a shortlist of four names.  These four names will then be posted to our Guy Harvey and Outpost Facebook pages and be put to a vote by our fans.

The name with the most votes wins and becomes the new name of our dive boat. And in addition to receiving a personal “high five” letter of thanks from Guy and Neal, the winner will receive a complimentary 2 night stay at the resort and include a two tank dive on “their” dive boat.

Just got this notice in from ACR Electronics:

To read the full announcement, click here for the PDF: Marine Safety Alert

Here’s the map of the affected area:

We spent the day chasing striped bass and bluefish with Rich Armstrong of Boston Fishtix charters, and asked him about running his McKee Craft Freedom 22.

Armstrong’s been running the boat for three seasons, and got it for several reasons.

“It was mostly the beam, it’s got one of the widest beams for its size,” he said. “When you’re taking people out you don’t want to be rocking around, and the stability of the boat is great.” Also,  ”With the high gunwales, no one’s going to be falling out of this thing.”

The boat has a full 8’6″ beam and a 22 degree deadrise, similar in its dimensions to the Whaler 220 Outrage (which has a 21 degree deadrise.) Fishing on the boat, we noticed the wide walkway access on either side of the console, and the wide gunwales with molded nonslip.

Armstrong also likes its versatility: It floats in 2′ of water with the Suzuki DF250 trimmed up,  so he takes it into shallow back bays and runs out to Stellwagen Bank and fish for tuna in 2-4′ seas.

“It’s got more fishing mojo,” said Armstrong of his boat. But the guide might have something to do with that.

iPhone camera shots.

This is the first in a series of quick interviews with fishing guides, and why they fish the boats they do. Eric Wallace is a fly fishing guide from Maine who specializes in sight fishing to striped bass in clear, shallow water.

Eric Wallace has been guiding for striped bass in Maine for 11 years, and essentially pioneered sight casting to big stripers on the local sand flats. He needs a boat that is easy to pole, tracks straight, balances well, and doesn’t spook fish with hull slap. This year he got a new technical poling skiff, an Inshore Powerboats 16.

“I was looking around for a small light skiff that is comfortable to pole,” said Wallace. “The original reason I picked it was for the price, under ten grand with a two stroke and a poling platform, a pushpole, and a trailer. By the time I got it where I wanted it, it was well above that.”

Eric’s boat is simple, with few  amenities. It weighs about 500-pounds with his tiller-steered 40-hp Suzuki. One change he’d advocate with the four-stroke is to put the gas tank forward towards the bow to even out the extra weight. Another is to make sure the poling platform mounts have backing plates.

His opinion so far? “It’s not designed for big water, but as a poling skiff it’s a wonderful little boat,” said Wallace. “I wanted something able to float in six inches of water and that I could pole through current from a nine-foot tide change.”

Contact Eric Wallace at Coastal Fly Anger dot com.