My New Boat

For the last 3 years I've been fishing from my Lund WC-16 DLX powered by a 30hp Merc. Most of my fishing over the last few years has been on Belwood Lake and lakes throughout Southern Ontario and aside from extremely windy conditions she handled well, went 40km per hour and suited me just fine. For a first boat, she was perfect. However, after joining the CBAF and becoming a member of the Golden Horseshoe Bass Anglers club, I quickly realized I needed a bigger, heavier boat and a whole lot more HP to compete on the big lakes like Erie and Simcoe. And so my boat hunting journey began. A few months ago I began looking on Auto Trader, Kijiji and scoured the southwestern boat dealerships looking for a bass boat. I struggled with aluminum vs glass, 90hp vs 200hp and really learned what the top bass boats were including Triton, Stratos, Skeeter, Nitro, Lund and Lowe. Initially I had my heart set on a Triton or Stratos and looked hard to find one. There were a few I liked, but I got caught up in the year (i wanted 2005+), horse power (i found a few with a 90hp but wanted a bit bigger) and length (i wanted 17-19 feet). A few weeks ago I came across a 2005 LUND U170 with a 2008 Merc Opti at Bay City Marine in Hamilton and the price was right. After staring at pics for 2 weeks on my computer and asking what I'm sure were too many questions to the owner, I trailered my WC-16 boat into the Bay City parking lot, got out, and checked the 2005 Lund out that was sitting out front. It was in good condition. I asked the owner if he could run an engine test and found out the motor had 80hrs on it which I liked a lot. I must have walked around the boat 50 times, jumped in and out 20 times, and expected every crevice of the boat. I checked all the electronics, asked about 100 questions, then sat down with the owner and negotiated a trade-in value for my boat. After 5 minutes of "negotiating", I signed the papers and I'm now the proud owner of my new (used) bass boat. I'm pretty excited to get out on the water, and bass season is just around the corner so I'm super pumped. Ken