A boat

Someone said that a boat is a hole in the water into which men pour money. This is a rather accurate description of a boat. Another wise man commented that the two happiest days in the life of boat ownership is the day you buy the boat and the second is the day you sell it.

I dearly love to build wooden boats. I have built several through the years and have found it very satisfying. One of the first boats I built is on a web site called Uncle Jon’s if you want to see some pictures of my boat builds. I am now building a sneak boat. In reality it is a flat bottomed canoe or pirogue that I dream of using on small streams/creeks and snagging smallmouth bass, blue gill, black perch and goggle eye. I grew up fishing in small creeks and fell in love with them. Later my fishing focus naturally evolved as Stockton Lake became an amazing fishery and it was close to home. Now that I have time to rediscover who I am it occurs to me that I never really did like lake fishing as much as I did the stream experience and plan to return to my first love. Creek fishing engages all of your senses as you sneak into the fish’s kitchen and offer your subtle substitutes. Lake fishing is a communal sport with people all around. Creek fishing is done best in isolation. In isolation one can even think important thoughts and maybe even hear the voice of the Maker. I could go on about creek fishing and probably will in later blogs, but for today I want to talk about wooden boats. So forgive me when I don’t close the blog by saying something like, “I hope to see you on the creek”, because I really hope I don’t see anyone when I am on the creek.

I plan to build this canoe/pirogue as light as I can. I hope to keep it under 50 pounds so I can drag it behind me as I wade and load it easily into the truck. I am building it out of ¼ inch plywood and joining it all together with fiberglass cloth and resin. I plan to paint it camouflage so I can use it as a blind/hide as I fish, hunt and take photographs from it. I am now in the design and construction stage and will blog a picture of it when I get it finished.

I have not yet attached photo’s to my blog and if I can I will do so to show off some of the boats I have built so far.