This Made Me Sad...

I was driving down the main drag of town today and I spotted this old boat, motor and trailer loaded up and headed somewhere. I made me kind of sad because I'll bet it never sees the water again. 

That looks to me like some kind of late 70s rig. Not a huge boat compared to some bass fishing rigs you see these days but it comes from a time when they were starting to make the hulls a little more streamlined because people wanted to cover more water and the 80 plus sized outboard let them do it faster and safer. The after market trim fin on the foot indicates this was probably a heavy piece of fiberglass that someone tried to squeeze just a little more performance out of. I put one of those on a motor myself once upon a time. 

This rig makes me think of the good old days of bass fishing with my dad. Topwaters, spinner baits and redfins tossed up against logpiles. Since you didn't have a depthfinder all water seemed deep till the motor drug the bottom. A limit of bass was 15 till they cut it down to 10 and then they only had to be 10" long for to be a keeper and you hung them over the side of the boat on a chain stringer. We broke a few of those chain stringers, separating the links due to the weight of the fish we hung on there till we got smart and started chunking them in an ice chest. 

It was the good old days. The largemouth bass was not yet a holy fish receiving livewell supplements to keep him peppy for the tournament weigh in and a better preventive  maintenance healthcare plan than 99.8% of the planet and you better be sure he's alive when you throw him back. There were not $500 classes to teach me how to use my new depth finder. I can remember when I thought $10 was way too much to spend on a fishing rod. Boats were bought with cash instead of a ten year loan. 

Now before I sound like a get off my lawn baby boomer I know things are different and sometimes the things I know are not even valid anymore. Even though that old boat was suspiciously headed out a highway where one of those cash for scrap metal places is located people do restore these things. You don't see it much around here but I see vintage boats when I travel. That one might just need a good pressure washing, some fiberglass work and new hardware. Being that thousands upon thousands of outboard motors have been built for generations there are plenty of parts and occasionally I see old ones found new in the box in a warehouse or barn so finding the correct period motor in good running condition is not out of the question. It will certainly be easier to work on that my modern model which requires a trained mechanic. 

Hopefully this will be the outcome because it just makes me sad to think a boat won't see the water again. That means there will be people who won't be out on the lake, kids that won't fish or ski and somebodies old Pop-Pop will just be left remembering how things were.