Get Hooked: Fishing Is The Fastest Growing Segment In The PWC Industry

Listen, there’s this new sport that combines the speed and excitement of a PWC, and the age-old profession of fishing, it’s called PWC Fishing, and if you don’t already, your gonna love it. Chances are you have run across somebody that has embraced this new sport or seen a picture of that guy out thirty miles rolling in the chop fishing tuna. Well get ready to experience the best of both combined worlds, peanut butter and chocolate, baby.

There are so many up sides to PWC fishing it’s hard to know where to start, and over the next few months we’ll tackle each and every topic to get you, as a rider, in the fisherman’s seat. Be careful though, once you bring in the first 15lb salmon jumping 5 feet from your toes, a 65-pound sturgeon tugging for the bottom like a mad man, or that 250lb Goliath pulling your PWC around the bay, you’re going to be hooked on the sport. There’s nothing like the excitement of a rod going off inches from your finger tips and the fight is on, then landing that prize right at your toes. You are immersed in the action, the adrenaline and dopamine release is addictive.

Let’s just touch on a few advantages for those of you not convinced that fishing from a PWC doesn’t have a world of advantages over fishing from a boat. I’ll be preaching to the choir for most of you, but let’s start off on the right foot. How about the fuel bill for a day on the water. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, when I was a proud boat owner, it would cost a minimum of one hundred dollars in fuel bills, and that was for a quiet, reasonable day on the water, it just went up from there. I’ve spent upwards of two hundred dollars water skiing for the day, which would be close to three hundred at these fuel prices today.

I was fishing out of Marathon, Florida last year, and a gentleman came up to me asking about my rig, I get that constantly 24/7, he asked me about my fuel bill and what I was fishing for, he pointed to his boat with the twin 250’s on it. I told him I was out 15 miles where the green meets the blue, trolled and jigged some humps for the day and I just filled up for twenty five dollars of premium, his jaw dropped, he said, and this is a quote, that he can spend up to seven hundred filling his boat up after a full day on the water. We’ll touch on more advantages in the next series of articles, but I bet you can name a few already, send me an email if you have some ideas, we’ll get them written up for our readers.

To tell the story of PWC fishing, you need to start from the beginning so we can move onto the future. Back in the early 2000’s, there were a few fishermen that owned PWC’s that had such a love for both sports that combining them was a natural progression. These hot spots were mostly concentrated to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and North America. I personally caught the bug over ten years ago while I was on business in Miami, Florida. While down there I decided I needed a vacation, so I bought a used 2007 Yamaha FX HO with 20 hours on it. From Miami I headed down to the Keys, as I had never been, and my curiosity was killing me.

After being on the water for only a few days, my love of fishing started to creep in, so I headed to West Marine in Marathon and picked up some fishing gear. Within the first few minutes I realized that a factory PWC was not the best laid out craft for fishing from. Stowing away gear, which was the first problem that needed to be crossed. No problem, that engineering degree kicked in and I soon had a series of brackets and bags developed, we’ll start to get into gear in our next article, but what I did realize is that these obstacles are not insurmountable.

I was sold on PWC fishing within the first day of being on the water, I couldn’t believe I was the first guy to ever think of this, turned out, I wasn’t. Trolling, which is my favorite part of the sport, was definitely out, as there wasn’t any way to hold the pole and control the craft, we later fixed that with the Maverick bracket system and addressed the storage with the Maverick bags. Those first few days were a real education of which I was regulated to jigging and casting, still productive, still a bunch of fun. Florida is such a fantastic place to fish, I could free dive off the machine and literally go down to the reef to see if I was in a good spot for jig fishing, the water was that clear and warm.

One thing I’d like to mention is that when you’re in the Keys and you’re on a PWC that’s dead in the water as your happily jigging away, every law enforcement boat, search and rescue, military and government vessel on the water will come over to see that everything’s alright, they are just not familiar with seeing a PWC sitting still in the water. Some of the looks I get these days, when they see my fishing rig now and how far this thing of ours has come, is downright hilarious, they just can’t believe what they are seeing.

PWC fishing has come a long way from those old days when four strokes and stable hulls were making their first debut, with a multitude of gear suppliers to get you on the water quickly and easily, this unique experience is but credit card swipe away. We’ll touch on all the methods to get you on the water fishing, so stay tuned for future articles. We’ll cover all the set ups from coolers to bags, GPS, fish finders, tackle suppliers, you name it, if you need it for PWC fishing, we’ll address it. I want to officially welcome you to the world of PWC fishing here on The Watercraft Journal, soon to be your number one hot spot for PWC fishing, tight lines my friend.