Stay alert on the water

[jlanecr500]

Around 9pm we got to the area we wanted to striper fish on Norris Lake. I had my Lund bass boat and the other group had a pontoon. We no more than let out and caught one. While reeling in, the other group was ran over by a wake boat from the rear. We heard the screams and turned to see the wake boat airborne. We were 75 yards away. The pontoon was trolling 2.7mph and the wake boat hit just right of the engine. It exited near the front on the left side. Only 1 person recieved non life threatening injuries. God was looking over them. The furniture saved them as it had prop slashes in it. While waiting on the TRWA officers' supervisor, I picked his brain about legal lighting. As I thought, while underway, the only legal lights are the all-round anchor light on the rear and navigation lights on the front. With all of the shore lights in the area, the all-round light blended in and I can totally see how the wake boat driver didn't realize a pontoon was ahead. I've decided to build an attention-getting all-round light. I plan to add sequenced white lighting to the all-round light assy. I'll update this thread when it is complete.

 

[Displaced_Vol]

Wow that's a bad deal but thank goodness nobody was hurt worse or killed.

 

[Crow Terminator]

Wow glad nobody was seriously hurt other than having to clean their drawers out!!

I've noticed a lot of boats out there will come really close to you at night. I think some use boats as navigation beacons. That's the only thing I can think of for why they'll come right at you then veer off. TWRA is picky about lights on boats too. They got onto Catfish Dave for having his camera light on while he was night fishing. Some of the regs needs updating... I would really like to legally have running lights on mine or something, just to be able to see things like logs or debris in the water. But that would wash out the red/green running lights.

 

[bluball]

Terrible,glad everyone is ok