hey folks glenn may here with bassresource.com and i've been fast
fishing for about five decades now it's dating me and I'd be the first to tell
you that bass anglers don't necessarily like personal watercrafts and water
skiers and that sort of thing mainly because they're loud they are disruptive
to the serenity of fishing they put out these big wakes and rock the boat and of
course there's some of the operators out there are a little dangerous don't
operate in a respectful manner they get too close they drive their personal
watercrafts in a dangerous matter that's again they're the minority bass anglers
have that too in our community there's some best anglers out there that just
aren't really good voters so they give everybody a bad name so there's always
been this kind of a friction between Tricia Sherman and personal watercrafts
so when C do attack got ahold of me and they said hey we want you to try this
new personal watercraft that we've designed we want you to fish out of it I
was like really you want me to fish out of a personal
watercraft and they said no this is actually designed for fishing and you're
gonna be the world's first bass angler to use it and you get a fish at
Florida's famous 13 stick Marsh farm pond which is notorious for having giant
bass and I was like wow okay all right I'm gonna give it a shot you don't
really learn anything new unless you try something new and you get experience new
things for yourself so I'm just going to put myself out there and see what
happens why not so I want to take a little bit about what happened what my
impressions are and see if this might be something that you want to try now for
years personal watercraft owners they've modified their CDs for fishing there is
they've added rod holders an ice chest tackle storage and so on to make it
possible to fish from their PwC's some of these are really whacked-out
modifications they look kind of wild and some of these I'm telling you they're
pretty modified but now sea-doo has come out with the first production model PwC
that's design specifically for fishing it's called a
fish Pro and it's actually pretty cool it's built on a large platform it comes
with a large cooler rod holders tackle storage a depth finder an extended rear
deck and it even has a nine position slow-speed settings for trolling which
I'll talk about that a little bit but my first thought was hey I could use
something like this to get into areas that you just can't get into with a
traditional bass boat those real skinny water shallow areas you're just not
gonna be able get into this looks kind of promising but you know is this really
something you can fish out of so when I first got there I got a little walk
around got to see what this thing look like and upon seeing it my first
reaction is that yeah this is big it's actually it's a very capable three
seater with an extra rear platform that gives it an even larger profile I'd say
it's one of those not the largest PwC's I've seen it has a large thirteen and a
half gallon cooler on the attach to the back with rod holders attached to that
the chest has a lot of room in it has plenty of room for beverages food ice
and of course if you want to put fish on ice it has room for that today I had
actually a bait bucket in there with several water bottles ice lunch and I
still had a ton of room left in there to put whatever else I wanted in there and
it's attached to this rear platform using these locking mechanisms they call
link and that actually the reason they have this is it adds a modular approach
to attaching all kinds of different accessories to this this watercraft you
can put this in here you can put a smaller cooler in there you can add a
fuel tank if you want I can see transforming this cooler into a live
well for like tournaments you can actually do that so it'd be pretty handy
and then you attach the little other cooler on a smaller cooler and there you
go you got your lunch and beverages in there but one of the things that really
stood as I walked around was this integrated depth finder it's actually a
fish finder it's built into the console for easy viewing while you're driving
and also while you're fishing I mean the placement of this thing is they thought
this out it's actually well designed and it's a good unit it's a Garmin eco Mac
unit Eco map unit has GPS navigation on it
technology it has traditional chirp sonar and their clear views it's a
really good fish finder and I was impressed that that's on there also it
has a really large waterproof storage compartment on the front of the seat and
this is actually you can access this while you're sitting down in this so you
can put tons of room and it's actually huge you can probably put easily two
maybe three tackle boxes in there plus rain gear plus a PFD and and other
equipment tons of room without having to modify it so that I thought was really
thoughtful so after getting a look through all this I'd said okay well now
it's time to get on and actually go ride this thing
and when I first got on it the very first thing I noticed was that it was
actually very comfortable it felt like a custom fit it was it was nothing was
awkward about it nothing felt uncomfortable I actually felt that I was
very safe in it and actually stood up that was me had a check it rocked it
back and forth isn't gonna tip over and really it felt very very stable
it felt low low center of gravity it didn't rock that much it took a lot of
effort to do it and so what I did is I actually swung my legs over the console
and I stood up on one side because I figure that's gonna be the real test and
it just barely tipped it really didn't take much at all so I was really
impressed I could move around ice whipped my leg around 40 backwards I
moved around sent sideways on the bench and I can move all over this thing
without it without feeling like I'm gonna fall over it was very very stable
platform so I was very relieved about that and I've heard that PwC is they're
notorious for slow speed maneuverability just not being very good so that's the
first thing I did as I kicked it on and and kind of motoring around at idle and
and then real slow speeds and it actually was really easy to steer I can
make circles with ease and this actually has a reverse throttle on and that works
as a brake and trust me it it is like a brake if you've been on a bicycle before
it hit the brake it felt a lot like that on water which is pretty cool but it'll
add in two additional manoeuvrability on it so I took up and got on plane what I
realized right away is that this engine was really responsive and very very
powerful it had a lot of power quick quick acceleration
now I'm used to going 70 miles an hour on a bass boat don't get me wrong but
this has a very different feel to it you're right they're very close to the
water and it's a different you know type of watercraft
so I took a little bit of getting used to but it was it was fun I'm telling ya
at first I wasn't really confident the stability and controlling this thing so
I didn't go full-out but by the end of the day I was going over 50 miles an
hour in choppy water without any problem at all and I can tell you the learning
curve just wasn't very steep so if you've ever piloted a bass boat before
any kind of boat you can handle one of these with ease trust me on that one the
cool thing about this is that the engine really just as a gas miser
I drove all over this Lake and it's a pretty sizable lake and I used maybe
three gallons of gas at the most maybe and this has a really large fuel tank in
talking to seed you they said you can go over 70 miles on a single tank so you
can you can reach pretty much any destination you want to with this and
make your way back without any problems whatsoever so that's pretty cool and the
ride itself was really dry even going through choppy water it was a dry ride I
really didn't get wet I expected to get wet by and be soaking wet and some boats
you know during during the day but I didn't it was actually really dry ride
so cool nice I can drive it steer it not a problem
that's a PwC but really this is a fishing machine so how old is this fish
that was really wanted to know so let me tell you about this so I'm used to stand
on the front of the deck with a bass boat while fishing and so naturally
that's what I did on this I stood up to fish and yeah you can do it yeah you can
fish with these but understand it's not like normal standing up you've got a
seat between your legs so you're kind of at a stance and that takes a little bit
of getting used to it wasn't really awkward and I wasn't tired or my legs
didn't get tired with the other day but it's just a different kind of stance and
again you can fish while you're seated if you want to or while you're seated
forward seated backwards you can sit on a sideways there's a little angled
gunwale along the side you can rest your feet on it while you're doing that it's
got kind of a gripping material on it so your feet don't slide and it's
comfortable and I can move I you know I tried all those different ways and again
didn't feel like I was gonna lose my balance oh this thing was gonna tip over
at all I felt really comfortable moving around on it not a problem but the one
thing is is when you're using this the rod hole there's a stick straight up and
stick the rod straight up in the back behind you so if you're facing forward
whether you're standing or sitting you're casting you got to be very much
aware of those rolls rods behind you because you could get tangled up on them
in the back cast and you know I nicked the rods a couple times and I thought I
was doing pretty good but there was one cast I made the middle of that day were
right at the hooks on my crank bait got caught on the line on the rod behind me
and that made for a nasty backlash so you know you just just got to be real
careful I'd like to see those rod holders maybe have them adjustable or
something that you can lay the rods down horizontally while you're fishing so
they're not standing up in the way but nonetheless it wasn't that big of a deal
but it's just something you got to be aware of while you're fishing so the ice
chest is in the back and this is where you can also has a little tackle storage
back there you can put your planos back in there and get to your tackle you do
have to slide to the back to get to it which really isn't a problem if you've
ever been on a PwC before they have a little bit deeper like a saddle type
seat this one doesn't it's actually shallower and they may
design it that way so you can easily slide around and slide to the back if
you need to and that's what I did the ice chest sports an external storage net
like I mentioned it holds about to playing out 3700 boxes it's really
strong it's got this elastic top to it that holds things in whatever you put in
this net storage thing it will stay which is great while you're running
around you're hitting wakes and bouncing around it nothing's gonna fall out but
it does make it a little bit difficult to get those plena boxes out you have to
use both hands you just can't reach back there and grab it so keep that in mind
the ice chest has a recessed flat lid on the top and it works like a tabletop it
actually has kind of a rubber like lining so things don't slide around and
move around that works great I used that while I was rigging nice little platform
I and that was really a good idea that they put in in that design that said
though I would like to see then add a few storage options up to the front of
the watercraft we're holding a few bags of baits or hooks or weights you know
those things like you breaking off or you have to retie or
rear it or what have you it's right there available to you so you don't have
to go to the back of the boat and back of the PwC and get all that so I'd like
to see that maybe in a future iteration hopefully they make something like that
there now if you're a bass angler you're probably wondering about controlling the
boat without a trolling motor and this is a big thing for me I was like yeah
how do you do this so I thought it was gonna be kind of a pain but quite
frankly it wasn't as much of an inconvenience as I thought it was going
to be for the most part I just drifted along the shoreline using the wind just
has kind of pushed me along and of course the wind wasn't going perfectly
parallel to the shoreline so every once in a while I had to kick on the engine
and back it up a little bit or move it around
reposition a little bit and then just turn the engine off and let the wind do
its job the engine wasn't very loud it's actually very quiet engines and what's
that when you kick it on it's not like kicking on a prop Inge and it's very
quiet and so I actually I wasn't really worried about spooking the fish so with
time a little bit of practice it didn't wasn't really much of a hindrance at all
and I was able to fish just like you would normally for bass fishing it's
just that you don't have the full control that you would have with a
trolling motor but it's not that hard to adapt it to the wind now what I'd like
to see on this is maybe if you could attach an anchor to it maybe a power
pole micro anchor or something like that I think that would be very useful if you
want to stay in a spot and maybe bed fish or fish a spot thoroughly or maybe
if you had an anchor with you again that storage compartment up front is plenty
of room so you can have an anchor and attach that to it that will work as well
in a traditional rope anchor but yeah I'd like to see something like that
where we can attach that to the boat but other than that again it wasn't that big
of a deal it did have this trolling feature you know it has nine incremental
slow speeds for trolling basically from one mile an hour to about nine mile hour
and I tried the one mile an hour tried fishing that for a while along the
shoreline and I found it was just a bit too fast it was kind of a can to set in
here if you gottem in Kota about forty right or a four feet you've got you know
they're either trolling motors but it's just a bit too fast now yeah at a
headwind then it probably would compensate and slowed
or you could fish it but it's definitely too fast if you're a fish and say worms
or plastics jigs flipping a pitch and that sort of thing but if you're fishing
us you know spinner Bank crankbait moving covering a lot of water it's
doable yeah it's still but you can do that now if you are doing other kind of
fishing and say walleye fishing or trout fishing then you can trial troll with
this with ease it's actually really designed for that and it's perfect for
that so if you're a fisherman that likes to troll this will do it for sure
overall I think this is a good platform from somebody that wants a
family-friendly recreational watercraft that also wants to use it for fishing
especially if you don't have the room to store a large boat in your garage or
maybe you live in an apartment and you don't have a big budget I think they
started around 15,000 it's a lot of more affordable than a pricey fiberglass bass
boat especially a new one but I'd say for guys like us like me that fish for
bass all the time it's actually a really good option to get into those little
tight small areas that you just can't get to with your traditional bass boat
and I think I'm gonna get one of these because I can think of several places
that I want to get to but I just can't with my fast boat yeah so this fish
better watch out because I'm coming for you get the fish bro check it out guys
you're gonna like it