next day, Ron called me up and told me that Craig Brannon from Brannon Tires in Stockton had jumped on the opportunity.
After getting the trailer over to Brannon it was determined that we could go up to a 14-inch wheel for the trailer. We swapped out the existing five wheels and tires for the new, larger set. I can’t say enough about how much better the towing experience is with all the upgrades that have been made to the trailer. New bunks, axles, bearings, leaf springs, wheels and tires; it’s basically a new trailer.
Just as we were beginning to make some progress on the actual restoration of the boat and trailer, I got a call from Bill Cook from WON BASS. They were to hold their Clear Lake Pro Am in September but the Clearlake Bassmasters Release Boat was already rented for another tournament. They wanted to know if my boat was ready for service. I told them I’d need a week to figure out if I could really get the boat done and ready a couple of months before I had originally planned. It really wasn’t a matter of whether or not I thought we’d have the boat ready. It was much more about the budget and whether or not I could afford to get the work done sooner then the original plan. After much contemplation I decided getting the boat up to Clear Lake would be important. Being ready to back WON BASS and provide the service, I hoped, would be a good introduction for the boat. So I told them, yes, it’d be there and ready to go.
The last step left was to add capacity to the boat. At 400 gallons, the boat filled
58
up quickly at a lot of events.
Photo by Jody Only
Once filled it takes a while to deliver fish back to the water, so it’s not like the boat could take a load of fish, dump them and then come back and service the same weigh in. Too much time elapses and the weigh- ins are over by the time the boat is ready again. It’s a once loaded it’s over situation. That and the deck is short enough that adding substantial tanks wasn’t a consideration. There simply isn’t enough room to accommodate a lot more in the way of storage tanks on board.
With that in mind I knew I did have some space and that it needed to be dedicated to more holding capacity. So I put in motion a plan to get another 100-gallon tank on board and aerated that would serve to handle strictly fish coming to scales that were in excess of five pounds. Bigger fish would go into this tank and then be gently hand released once ready to go back into the water. It’d give me an area that I knew had the larger fish that generally require more attention to aid in a successful re- introduction to the water after enduring the stress of
be carted around in a live well all
day and then weighed in.
In short, the WON BASS
Pro Am came and the boat
was in service and everything
worked out well. I was stunned
by the weights coming to the
scales that first day of the
tournament. Before we got
to the third of four flights, the
boat had reached its capacity
and we had to go to release
fish. It proved to me that there
is a need for such a boat. And
at larger-field events, multiple
release boats, to handle the
load of fish our tournament
anglers are capable of
catching. This release boat
is perfectly suited for the