After 45+ years of Crappie fishing, I have nearly as many uhoh's as Bill Dance. Certainly I have launched the boat without the plug, but once I launched it and didn't have a plug. I got the boat close to the bank and had my buddy keep his finger in the hole until I could whittle a plug. Finally got it done and worked fine. I now carry at least three plugs in my boat. I took off once pulling my cousin on skis with the anchor down. After considerable bouncing, it finally broke off. One other time, I bought a "Flats" boat that was sitting at a repo yard. The boat looked good and had a 90 HP Johnson. I cleaned it up really good and first trip, discovered it was heavy. Went ahead and fished. Didn't know what the problem was until I got into the bilge area and discovered it had a double hull and the bottom half was full of water. Bet I drained 500 lb of water. It ran great then.