A guy had owned and fished out of an Allison XB (left) with a good 225 Mariner on it for several years before selling it and buying a BassCat. The fella who bought the Allison wouldn't run it hard and, in the opinion of the former owner, "couldn't even begin to drive it."
As luck would have it, these two gents met up on the river one day, and the new Allison owner talked the old one into getting back in the boat and showing him it really was as fast as he had said. At this time, it had been about two years since the old owner had driven the Allison.
"When we got to a good stretch of water," said the old owner, "I opened it up and started bumping the trim, trying to get as much speed out of it as possible. I was getting near the max when, just for an instant, I lost control and nearly wrecked it. The passenger told me he could read the lettering on both sides of the boat before I got it back under control.
"I was pretty shook up, so I pulled up on a sandbar, then asked my companion if he knew how fast we had been going. He noted that the GPS had been registering a little over 88 mph the last time he had looked at it."
That was the last time the old owner ever drove that Allison...as well as the last time the new owner ever asked him to drive it.
Bad experiences, that is, to learn your lesson. This is the tale about a dude who was a passenger in a 20-foot Bullet (right), with a 300 Merc on it, when the driver bow-hooked the boat while running in the mid-90s range. Lucky for the passenger, he survived that incident, thanks to the fact he was wearing a helmet and an impact lifeline safety vest. However, he was sore for a few days afterward.
In a second incident, he was at the helm of a 20-foot Bullet, with a 250 Merc on it, heading down the Arkansas River. He was running about 65 mph when he misjudged the size wave a loaded barge was making. When he hit the first wave, it launched the boat into the air, and it didn't come down until about the third or fourth wave. That spearing broke the trolling motor off the boat, ripped out the front pedestal seat, and sheared off all the front electronic gear. The windshield also was broken.
When the boat came back above the water, the two-time victim navigated to a safe area, where he pumped water for more than an hour before taking the boat back to the ramp and putting it on the trailer.
That's good advice in any situation. In this case, though, it was an early June day, and Darien was fishing famed Lake Guntersville with some of his buddies. They were on an offshore spot when Darien noticed a bass boat approaching at a fast idle. At first, he thought it might be some friends of one of his buddies stopping by to talk or something, but that wasn't the case at all.
Before he knew it, the approaching bass boat had nosed up on the back deck of his Phoenix. The helmsman claimed he was staring at his graphs and letting his boat idle while talking on a cellphone...and simply never saw Darien's rig.
Check out the accompanying video Darien put together of the incident. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7l0KS1CYhs&t=169s.
My tournament partner and I was on our way back to weigh-in when we noticed a young girl frantically waving her arms for help. We were headed toward her when we noticed two other people in the water, as well. Their craft, a small paddle boat, had been swamped by high waves.
The girl was sitting on the back of the paddle boat, which was the only part not submerged. She had no life jacket. Her brother, also in the water, likewise had no life jacket and was treading water. The girl's grandmother was in the water, too, holding two youth life jackets to help keep her afloat.
"My partner and I were able to rescue all three, thank God," said the boater, "without injury to any of them. We tossed them our throw cushion and our life jackets to keep them afloat until we were able to pull them out of the water."
It turned out that the grandmother had taken her two grandkids for a paddle-boat ride at the mouth of a bay where they were camping. The high winds and the current pushed them out into the main lake, where the high waves swamped their boat.
"They actually were in the channel when we got to them," said the boater.
They only had two youth life jackets aboard the paddle boat for three people, which could have been a very life-threatening mistake, especially since the current and waves had separated them from the swamped boat.
The sad part of this story is that at least five other tournament boats went by these folks without even slowing down.
"I guess getting to weigh-in was more important to those fishermen than helping people in distress," said the boater. "Not one bass boat even stopped to help after we started our rescue. They just would veer around us and look our way as they passed."
These two anglers, however, did all the right things by rescuing the victims and taking them safely back to a dock at their campsite.
"We stayed with them for a few minutes to make sure they absolutely were OK, then headed to the ramp, released our fish, trailered our boat, and reflected on the day," noted the two Good Samaritans. "In our eyes, this was our best finish ever in a tournament...dead last!"
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