COLUMBIA, South Carolina – Major League Fishing Select competitor Gary Clouse has been driving bass boats for almost 40 years. He loves them so much that he was one of the principals when Phoenix Boats opened its doors in 2007, and has been the company’s majority owner ever since.
During a period break in his Elimination Round competition at the MLF Summit Select in Columbia, South Carolina, Clouse shared a little bass-boat knowledge:
Learn to handle the speed
When Clouse started work as a boat rigger for Stratos in 1988, top speeds for tournament boats were in the 70s. Today, at least one manufacturer puts out a production model that tops the 100-mph mark, and 80 is a standard.
“A bass boat is a high-performance machine, and most of them are built to run that way,” Clouse says. “Most other fishing boats that run 40 miles an hour, you can point them in the direction you’re going, but if you’re running 60, 70 miles an hour in a bass boat – and it doesn’t matter what kind it is – you have to understand how to drive it like a high-performance machine. Yes, it has a steering wheel, a throttle and some other similarities to other boats, but a bass boat isn’t necessarily easy to drive. You have to spend some time learning how a boat runs at 50, 60 and 70, because it’s not like a car.”
Each boat drives differently
Clouse is unabashedly fond of the way his boats
“A Corvette responds differently on a winding road than a ¾-ton pickup,” Clouse points out. “Every bass boat ever built has its own little qualities that you can’t really understand until you drive it in different conditions. You can climb into a pickup and drive it 60 on the freeway going straight, and it’s not THAT different than the Corvette going 60, but once you hit the turns, the pickup and Corvette are totally different. Same deal with a bass boat.”