Prologue -- How not to build a drift boat.

Some brief background on this drift boat project. If you know much about trout fishing, you'll know a drift boat is a dory-style rowing boat designed to provide a stable fishing platform and most importantly, they can safely run shallow rivers and boulder-strewn rapids. Every fly angler knows that there's a fine example of a drift boat in the picture just to the right.

So this story starts the way a lot of fishing mis-adventures start. Stop me if you've heard this one before. A fly-fishing buddy and I were sitting in a bar having a few and we started talking about the miles and miles of great smallmouth bass fishing rivers in Minnesota and Wisconsin that are practically unfished. If only we could find a way to comfortably fish these long stretches of prime water. Blah, blah, sure we'll have another round, etc, etc. You can see where this is headed.

Now we could use a canoe. And we certainly have. However, the more we do it, the more unappealing it gets. If you've ever spent a day trying to fly fish out of a canoe, you'll understand that basically it sucks. Only one guy can fish, the canoe is hard to maneuver, blah, blah, take it from me I've done it a lot and it sucks.

So there we were having a few beers and mulling over the problem and I said it: Hey, we should just build a drift boat.

And so from that simple flash of inspiration (or whatever), the adventure began. So with no previous boat-building experience, I'm building a 15 foot wooden drift boat in my garage

So that's what this blog is about. Hey, how hard can it be?

Jay