Drift Boats

This is not your everyday purist fly fishing bunch, in fact it’s Christian and some buddies that came up to spend a few days on the Missouri a few weeks ago, as well as his custom General Lee retro Clackacraft.

I’ve been told more than once that I have one of the messiest drift boats on the Missouri River. I believe you can tell a lot about a fly fisher by their drift boat. I know guys that don’t have a scratch on their oar blades (means they don’t fish enough or at all)-but most of the guys that I fish with that have drift boats fish a lot. Generally their boats are old highsides or used low sides.

The floors are so rock worn that they move with the current and you wonder how many more fiberglass fibers you have left down there. The seats are either broken or taken out because if you are sitting you are rowing -there’s 2 options-either you are standing or fishing hard, or you’re sitting down and rowing and spotting heads.

There are no spare oars and no oar rights, just sun beaten oar shafts with cracked blades that would be replaced if gas was cheaper and we didn’t stay out so late every night. Generally there will be a number of "racer stripes" down the sides from algae that has dried permanently at different levels on the boat depending on how heavy the fisherman have been on each trip.

I could try to get a nice new boat and take care of it each day-not ready for that kind of commitment. Could probably clean the one I got but to tell the truth I’m not really a cleaner-room’s messy, fly tying desk a disaster (but I can find stuff), dishes aren’t done, fishing shirts are wrinkled, and I can’t find my keys when I set them down -ever.

One thing in common though is we all got a drift boat for the same reason.