Night time craziness

[DockShootinJack]

I fished from dark until 2 am last night. Saw at least 8 bass boats zipping around at full throttle. It was a full noon but not bright enough to run those kind of speeds. Moon was red when I came up over the trees. It was a least 1 am before it started to show light on the water. All boats in question had the 52" flat screen monitors at the helm. Some had 2. I saw no use of spotlights. They were either runn8ng night vision or driving by the map section of the graph. Kind of makes me draw up thinking about running 60 mph or so using the chart to drive by. My truck has the map showing on the radio. That would be like painting the windshield black and driving by the display. No thanks. My graphs doesn't show floating logs or boats with no lights on them. Either one could ruin your night

[CrappiePappy]

Yeah, we have a law that was imposed several years back, that says you cannot run the lake with a spotlight on continuously. Supposedly, it can "blind" an oncoming boat driver but in all the years prior to the law I've rarely (if ever) met an oncoming boat where their spotlight was of great concern to me. I just did the same thing as I would do on the road when an oncoming vehicle had their brights on .... I didn't look right at the oncoming light.

At first I had my doubts about the validity of their reasoning. I kinda thought maybe it was being pushed by the Bass guys that fished a lot of night tournaments, who were getting tired of being spotlighted to find out the banks they were fishing on. I never did dig into that theory very deeply, though, and just went with the crowd & ..... anyway, it's supposed to be "okay" to periodically turn the lights on for guidance, just not run them continuously.

The other rule that was implemented around the same time (I think) was that boats not under power at night still had to have their transom light on ... which was supposed to be a guard against another boat crashing in to you when you're fishing down a bank & the other boat (without a spotlight on) decides to come to the same spot. The transom light must be visible 360deg & at a distance of 2miles in clear weather. (what they didn't take into account was that the transom light draws bugs at head level of the person in the back seat, or that it also casts shadows towards the bank you're fishing & dampens the effect of any "black lights" being used).

[DockShootinJack]

Had several of the bow fishing boats out as well. Looked like floating soccer stadiums.

[BobC]

Yeah, that is kind of crazy, DSJ. Almost like “what could possibly go wrong” stunts. beyond stupid.
Bob

[DockShootinJack]

Sadly everytime you get away with something like that. The more bold you become. I was a passenger in a boat that went over a log ar night in the winter. No one was ejected from the boat, but a lot of water splashed in. It was a cold wet ride back. Not to mention slow with a damaged prop. I have also saw the aftermath of the transom busted out of a boat when the motor hit a submerged stump at speed. Not how I want my night to go either.