Jetboat Pros And Cons

[Gavin]

There is no denying that jet boats are great transportation. On the down side...they are loud, fast, pitch wakes, and pressure wash every shallow spot that they encounter.

Drunken river doofusses...have no pro's, only con's. They ruin the experience of others and pose a danger to themselves. If anything needs limits, it individual behavior on the river.

[Mitch f]

But I'll just be a curmudgeon and spend my time on the Bourbeuse and other rivers that nobody else likes:)

The curmudgeons are the ones catching all the fish!

[Mark]

I disagree, the jet boats do more to ruin the experience for me than the occasional fraternity party passing by. The frat party comes and goes in a few minutes, the jet props are all day long.

[Gavin]

Location is a factor too. If your floating the 11pt in the Summertime...jets are a real nuisance. Seems that most are out to race up and down, but there arent that many floaters. Head to the Meramec near Onandaga on a warm weekend, and its the wall to wall floaters that become the nuisance. Add a couple jets to the mix, and it becomes unbearable. There is plenty of stupidity to spread around.

[Seth]

There's a lot of fish I would be missing on the rivers without my jet boat. It's a vital part of my fishing and I don't think I could live without my jet boat anymore!

I do agree though that the pleasure jet boaters are a pain in the but to deal with, but I can still catch a lot of fish on the Gasconade even with them buzzing by me every few minutes. I don't fish the Maramec, but I do fish the Gasconade quite a bit between Jerome and the Missouri River.

What's scary is when you get the people running there tunnel hulls with big blocks that can run 70+ mph come screaming by and acting like idiots. You know they have been out on the water drinking all day as well. I'm surprised there haven't been more major accidents during the summertime.

[Mitch f]

There is no way that you can go upstream, against the grain so to speak, in a jet boat and not cause riparian damage. It is what it is. If pollution is bad, construction to close is bad, and mining gravel in the stream bed is bad, you can't ignore the waves undercutting the banks by coming from a direction counter to what is normal.

I agree with you on this point, no one can deny that.

[stlfisher]

It seems kinda silly that Jet boats can deystroy the types of water they were designed to run on. Yet many consider them essential pieces of equipment to fish.

IMO if you can safely wade it....you shouldn't be able to use any motor on it (except maybe a little trolling motor on the back of canoe).

.

[moguy1973]

I think the HP limit would be the way to go to limit the amount of damage these boats do to the rivers. Like said above, there are a lot if lakes that have HP limits and no wake areas imposed on them for safety reasons and bank erosion control, why dont these rivers have the same?

A jet boat went flying past us at a pretty good clip yesterday on the Big River. I'm glad we weren't a hundred yards up river from where we were because there was a bend and we would have gotten smoked. He did slow down a bit when he got close to us but we were only in about 2.5' of water and it kicked up big enough waves to toss water over our bows.

[Quillback]

Saw these same discussions when I lived in the Pacific Northwest, jet boats vs. bank fishermen vs. drift boats. At first the jet boats were disturbing but I learned to live with them. Change happens in the fishing world, you have to learn to adapt to it. If you don't you end up complaining about it on message boards and develop an ulcer

[Seth]

Unless a jetter comes to a complete idle, the boat will most likely throw less of a wake going full speed than if it was going half throttle. When a jet boat is on plane, there's only a few inches of the boat int he water.