HomeFeaturesVideo – Advanced How-to – Running a Bass Boat in a Forest Red McPeak of McKinney, Texas One of the more nerve wracking activities in bass fishing can be operating a bass boat in extreme conditions. Be it rough water, tight turns or shallow water, the combination of a high speed bass boat and extreme conditions can cause even experience pilots to have concern. One of those situations is operating in timber fields left behind after an impoundment is flooded, or in natural bodies of water where stumps fields dominate the landscape. In Texas, when they built reservoirs such as Lake Fork and Ray Roberts, they cleared boat lanes, but in many instances, there are entire coves or creek arms that they did not even do that. In cases such as these; especially as a tournament angler when time is a premium, an angler can either waste long periods of time idling a boat through these trees, or begin to learn how to read the water and find lanes to run their boat through those timber fields. Last week, while at the Major League Fishing event in Denton, Texas, our Managing Editor Dan O’Sullivan got to experience running these types of areas with local angler, and McKinney firefighter Red McPeak as they covered the anglers competing on Ray Roberts and Grapevine for the taping of The Outdoor Channel original production. In this video, McPeak explains what he looks for and gives us an example of running through these fields. Let us stress – this type of operation is for experienced boat drivers. This not a full speed operation. It requires many hours of practice and should not be done haphazardly. It is also a good idea to have good insurance if you do this because the likelihood is that you will damage propellers, lower units and even hulls while running. Again, we always recommend caution when operating a vessel, and learning first hand from an experienced operator is best, but here, Red McPeak will give us a few pointers and demonstrate how to run in a Forest.
