Dad’s Fishing Boat
I probably spend 100 hours per fishing season out fishing with my Dad in his boat after work in the evenings. We got to be a very good fishing team. Here’s a little story about my Dads boat and what an evening on the lake with him and his boat was like.
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Dad’s Fishing Boat
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My Dad had been trying to get me to go in halves with him on a fishing boat for sometime when I showed up at his place in Phillips with a new Honda Scrambler Motorcycle. Needless to say this upset him a little, but he soon got over it, and he went out and bought a fishing boat on his own. He bought a 15 foot Terry Bass Boat. The boat had four seats mounted on poles located in the bottom of the boat mounted on aluminum slide in poles. When you got to the fishing area, you pulled two of the seats out of the bottom and mounted them on aluminum poles on the front and back decks of the boat that put you in perfect position to fish. The driving console was also mounted in the bottom of the boat with its own seat, a gear shift, a key electrical start, and a steering wheel. On the back of the boat he had a 60 HP Johnson outboard motor for running up and down the lake and a 7 1/2 HP Johnson motor with a hand start for trolling for white bass and walleye. The boat had a 10 gallon gas tank built into the sides and my dad carried a spare 5 gallon portable tank in the back of the boat. There was a 3 HP electric motor driven maneuvering motor mounted on the front of the boat where he sat with a 12 volt battery and a spare battery. He also had a high end Lawrance fish locator mounted on the other side of his seat up on the front deck.
We spent a lot of time in Dads old fishing boat on Lake Meredith perfecting our fishing techniques and telling lies to each other about the ones that got away.
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My Dad kept his boat stored at Deans 66 Station storage in Sanford, Texas. He would pick me up in Fritch and then we would pick up his boat at Sanford. When we got out to Lake Meredith, my Dad would run his Suburban with the boat trailing down one of the ramps and turn the rig around and park it. We would break the tie downs loose and disconnect the wench. I would back him into the lake and he would start the motor and back off. I drove the rig up the hill and parked it and walked back down to the dock where he picked me up. We headed to the North side of the lake running at full speed. When we got up around the big island we would shut down the big motors and move the seats up to the deck and Dad would turn on his fish finder. I would start the trolling motor and guide our direction with my foot as I trolled off of the back deck. We would troll big spinners until we caught a big sand bass or Walleye, we would throw out a buoy and fish back and forth across the area until we quit catching fish and then we picked up the buoy and moved on. When the sun started getting low in the sky, we shut down the trolling motor and moved in close to the rocky points and he would start the electric motor to maneuver us along the banks so we could flip white jigs up close to the bank as the walleye moved in close to the bank to feed in the evenings. We would usually catch four or five nice walleye before it got dark.
Old faded Polaroids of some of the fish we caught at Lake Meredith in the evenings after work. We kept records of the date, each fishes weight, the specific area we caught them, the time of day, and the water temperature and followed that guide on the next years fishing trips.
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We then moved off the lake and put the boat in storage. My Dad loved to get his name on the morning radio fishing report so he stopped in Deans 66 Station with the fish and got his picture taken. We then headed for my house where we cleaned the fish and put the fish in the freezer for a fish fry..
.More old faded Polaroids: Top Left – one of the pictures of my Dad’s catch at Deans 66 Station in Sanford so he would make the morning radio show. Top Right- Brenda and her mother, Wanita, at the buffet we set at our house for one of the fish fries we had. Bottom. That’s me just after I finished setting the table for a fish fry at our house in Arroyo Verde in Fritch.
Thanks for reading Dad’s Fishing Boat,
Bill