A boat called Compromise

NSW STH COAST

Steve

Starling

www.fishotopia.com

Is there such a thing as the ‘perfect’ fishing boat?

Perhaps not…

It’s a cliché, yet nonetheless true, that all fishing boats represent a compromise. At its most basic level, that compromise is between affordability, portability and ease of operation on the one hand, balanced against seaworthiness, comfort and fishing space on the other. As boaties, we constantly seek the perfect balance of these desirable traits, but we’re fated never to achieve it. Perhaps we’d be better off not trying. After all, as Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy sagely observed: “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”

The older I grow and the more time I spend fishing from boats of every ilk, the surer I become that all serious anglers actually need at least two boats in their lives. One of these craft can’t ever be small enough, light enough nor portable enough to approximate perfection, while the other can never be big enough. Let me explain…

If, like me, your fishing handedly throw on and off the roof of a vehicle, or even into the tray of a ute. Those are not descriptions that apply to anything I personally want to go to sea in, although die-hard blue water kayakers might disagree!

Fact is, they just don’t make offshore boats big enough for me. Aircraft carriers or luxury ocean liners are getting close, although they still pitch and roll too much for my liking in a really big sea. Any boat becomes incredibly “small” if conditions deteriorate sufficiently.

Seriously, after decades spent chasing fish all the way from the shoreline to search for simplicity, one that involves the constant paring down of anything that can possibly be lived without. As the French adventurer Antoine de SaintExpury put it:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” He could well have been writing about what I like to call ‘minimalist boating’.

Minimalist boating describes that end of the scale where the smallest craft that can practically support an angler and his tackle is often the best choice for the task at hand. The validity of this justifiable desire for minimalism is reflected by a massive expansion in kayak fishing over the past couple of decades. It wouldn’t be stretching things to claim that the kayak market has been

Maybe addiction runs the full gamut — from chasing trout, perch, bream and the like in skinny, enclosed waters, to hunting game and sport fish out on the deep blue sea — it’s blindingly obvious that no one craft can tick all the right boxes.

For true small water work, a boat with a shallow draft, minimal hull weight and the ability to launch where there are no man-made ramps are all paramount considerations.

In an ideal world, your chosen craft for this sort of stealthy, backwater fishing will be sufficiently small and lightweight to single- the continental shelf and well beyond, I’ve come to the conclusion that five metres is the bare minimum length for anything like a “proper” offshore vessel, and that each metre over that size typically adds exponentially to the seaworthiness, fishability and creature comforts of the craft. I know there are exceptions to this “rule”, but they’re rare.

Back at the ultra-light, skinny-water end of the fishing boat spectrum, my quest is completely the opposite. In stark contrast to my ‘more is more’ attitude to blue water boating, I’m driven instead by a ceaseless the fastest growing sector of the marine business in recent times. Of course, some of its devotees have managed to lose sight of the essence of minimalism by hanging enough ‘fruit’ off their poor little ’yaks to sink a ferry.

This quest for aquatic minimalism can be taken even further than kayaks and canoes. I’ve caught fish from my stand-up paddleboard (SUP), and also from a strange contraption called a ‘float tube’: a device that vaguely resembles an inflatable armchair, which one propels about on flat water (albeit slowly) via flippers worn on the feet. Definitely not recommended in waters that are home to crocodiles or bull sharks, these bits of kit may be stretching the definition of “boats”, but the motivation for choosing them remains the same: a deep desire to move beyond the bounds of dry land in pursuit of fishing action. I guess it’s the same desire that drove our forebears to hollow out logs or stretch animal skins over timber and bone frameworks. So let’s agree that, as anglers, we all need access to a really big boat, as well as a really small one. Only trouble is, that leaves a yawning gulf between… a place where we might desire to take our significant others and kids out fishing or crabbing or prawning on a larger estuary, bay or harbour. Looks to me like there’s a clear need here for a third boat in the angler’s arsenal… Now, that’d be perfect!

Here we go again… Truth is, it never ends, this impossible quest for perfection.