Every year I try to evaluate new or new to me products that seem helpful and or interesting for the boat. I also have noticed that as I get a touch older lol, that those items have changed through the years to fall in my category of “old guy” friendly ! :]
Two products that I used for last year that worked out really well and exceeded my expectations were the Drotto Boat Latch and the 8 ft Power Pole with drift paddle.
The Drotto simply makes life and the learning curve of boat loading a non issue of being on & locked without having to be a circus acrobat. Especially nice in current and windy rough water days. Darn near a “must have” especially if you load solo frequently. Very pleased !
Power pole with drift paddle, As far as a shallow water anchor goes, either the talon or power pole work just fine, but with the improvements of spotlocks on our trolling motors, on water anchoring really wasn’t my main goal. Not by plan, I had the opportunity to fish with a friend in extremely rough water on LOW. The drift paddle made a amazing difference in boat surge associated with rough water. My boat at the time without the paddle simply surged too much to effectively fish the same water. I also found benefits with fine tuning trolling speeds and drift fishing. The final “old guy” friendly factor was docking the boat and had far less bumps and bruises on this years boat from mis judging and being tied up at the dock.
I really didnt have any losers this year that I know of , but normally I do have new things that just don’t pan out as I expected. A good example of this would have been the first year non blue tooth ultera. Not to bash, but obviously the new Bluetooth and spotlock features are awesome today as compared to the first year.
