• 
• 
• Press Releases

Weird Ways to Use your Boat

Day 1: Sleeping Boat
 
Editor’s Note: War Eagle boat owners use these very-versatile boats in many different and sometimes unusual ways.
 
“We’ll have the best duck hole on Malmaison,” Tom Mathews, president of Avery Outdoors, told me my first time I went to in Malmaison, a public waterfowl-hunting area in north Mississippi. “I’ve got some boys who have gone out to this duck hole and set it up for us to hunt in the mornings. They’ll be sleeping in the boat all night to make sure no one takes our spots before daylight.” “They’re doing what in those boats?” I asked in disbelief. “They’re sleeping in the boats so they can guard our hunting spots.” The next morning when we left before daylight to navigate our way through standing timber in the dark to a remote pothole, I couldn’t believe my eyes when two young men stuck their heads out of the blind and said, “Okay, Tom, y’all are ready to hunt. We’ll take your boat back home to go to bed.”
 
Camping out in your boat on public-hunting land to ensure your hunting spot the next morning may seem an extreme act. But in many sections of the country you must claim the spot you want before you can go hunting. Although a War Eagle boat isn’t designed for camping, it’s roomy enough for your decoys, sleeping bag, groceries and a tarp if you decide to convert your War Eagle duck boat into a floating camping site. Some War Eagles come fitted for an Avery Pop-Up Blind. You can put-up your blind and sleep until legal shooting time for waterfowl. Everyone knows the camouflaged War Eagle boats make excellent floating waterfowl blinds. But what everyone doesn’t know is that if you sleep in your boat in a public-waterfowl area the night before you plan to hunt, you can find and guarantee the best spot in your hunting area and already be in-place when the quacks start dropping in to the hunting region. Check with state and federal regulations about your ability to sleep in the boat the morning before hunt date. If permitted, you can’t find a better boat to sleep in and duck hunt out of than a War Eagle with an Avery Avery Pop-Up Blind.
 
To learn more about War Eagle’s top-quality boats, click here.
 
Tomorrow: Dive Boat
 
Day 2: Dive Boat
 
Editor’s Note: War Eagle boat owners use these very-versatile boats in many different and sometimes unusual ways.
 
When you think about scuba diving, you probably imagine big offshore boats and salt water. However, if you’re a member of the scuba-diving fraternity, you know there are far more freshwater regions than salt water for scuba diving. To test the mettle of any boat, load it with scuba tanks, weight belts and enthusiastic divers. That’s where you’ll find out how well-built any boat is. The War Eagle shines in this venue. It can tote the load, get you where you want to go and not be damaged by scuba divers lugging tanks in and out of the boat.
 
But why do you scuba dive in freshwater rivers and lakes?
* There often are numerous artifacts on the bottoms of lakes. Many river systems once ran beside Indian villages and mounds, Civil War battlefields and old homes and settlements. When scuba diving, you may find these artifacts and see old ruins.
* There’s no better way to find fishing hot spots than donning a scuba tank and finding where all the brush and structure is located if you’re a bass or crappie fisherman. Look for cutbacks and caves where bass and crappie may hold up around sheer rock bluffs.
* You can build brush piles and place them on the bottom, while wearing tanks. Your brush piles and structure are far-more attractive to bass and crappie, and you can position them where you want them on sides and drop-offs and ledges in open water.
* Your War Eagle boat is the ultimate tool for building better fishing by providing you a way to carry more brush and heavier anchors to locations where you’ll sink brush to create fish attractors, even if you don’t scuba dive. Although the War Eagle boat is a fishing and hunting boat, it’s also a work boat. If you’ve ever built and sunk brush piles, you’ll know artificial freshwater-reef construction requires a big, strong boat tough enough to carry anchors and reef material to the places where you’ll sink them.
 
To learn more about War Eagle’s top-quality boats, click here.
 
Tomorrow: Hunt Turkeys with War Eagle
 
Day 3: Hunt Turkeys with War Eagle
 
Editor’s Note: War Eagle boat owners use these very-versatile boats in many different and sometimes unusual ways.
 
Thanks to various states’ Departments of Conservation and the National Wild Turkey Federation, more turkeys are available for turkey hunters to hunt than ever previously. The only problem is there are also more people hunting turkeys than ever before. However, if you own a War Eagle boat, you can use your boat to find and take more turkeys and combine a morning of turkey hunting and an afternoon of crappie fishing. Many state wildlife management areas, national parks, U.S. Army Corps of Engineer lands and other public-hunting sites are bordered by water. Most turkey hunters don’t take boats turkey hunting. So the last place a turkey expects to see a hunter is the water. By using your War Eagle boat and your trolling motor to ease down the waterways of public-hunting areas, you can hear the turkeys gobble before daylight and go to those turkeys from a direction the gobblers never have experienced. Often, as hunting pressure builds up, turkeys will move closer to the river’s edge knowing all they must do to escape danger is fly across the river. So, when you use your War Eagle boat to scout for turkeys, especially in highly-pressured areas, your chances of finding birds on the edges of rivers and major creeks may be higher than being able to locate them by walking to them from an access road. Once you’ve taken your gobbler or given up the hunt for the day, you can take out your bass rod or crappie poles and spend the rest of the day fishing. Using this strategy, your War Eagle boat can double as a hunting and a fishing boat.
 
To learn more about War Eagle’s top-quality boats, click here.
 
Tomorrow: Go Gravelling with War Eagle
 
Day 4: Go Gravelling with War Eagle
 
Editor’s Note: War Eagle boat owners use these very-versatile boats in many different and sometimes unusual ways.
 
In the summer and late spring, the catfish begin bedding in underwater pipes, holes and rocks, there’s nothing more fun than gravelling for cats. Gravelling is a technique where you take catfish – really-big ones – when they come into these types of underwater holes to spawn. There are several ways to gravel. The easiest and least painful involves using a fiberglass or an aluminum pole with a treble hook on the end of it. Once you’ve located a hole in rocks, a barrel or an underwater pipe where a catfish may build a nest, you simply put the pole with the treble hooks into the hole. You’re not trying to hook the catfish with the treble hook. You only want to move the treble hook around in the hole, so that the catfish will bite the treble hook because it thinks it’s an intruder is breaking into the nest. Then, the war’s on, since you’ve got a big catfish on a flexible pole in waist- or chest-deep water. The best way to land a cat is have a buddy with a net who’ll net the catfish and put it in your War Eagle boat.
 
Another technique is to locate underwater holes and use a leather or a rubber glove, put your hand inside the hole, feel the catfish and grab him by his lower jaw. This way is more thrilling to gravel for catfish, since you catch it up-close and personal. For the first few seconds after grabbing hold of that catfish’s jaw, there’s a period of time where you’ll have to decide whether you have that catfish, or that catfish has you.
 
Yes, there are bareback gravelers. These fishermen want the total experience of grabbing a catfish by the jaw barehanded underwater. Although this may be a more-macho way to gravel for cats, there’s a downside. Inside the mouths of catfish are sandpaper-like teeth. When a catfish clamps down on your hand and starts rolling, twisting and trying to get away, that rough part of its mouth will scrape, scratch and tear your skin off. Personally, this isn’t the way I prefer to gravel for cats, but there are those who enjoy it.
 
Some high-tech catfish gravelers don scuba gear instead of holding their breath for so long. Regardless of the form of graveling you prefer, you can’t beat a War Eagle boat for getting you to a catfish hot spot. It’s big enough to carry a load of 10- to 60-pound catfish and still have room for all your gear equipment and catfish.
 
Catfish gravelling may not have nearly the number of fans as crappie or bass fishing or duck hunting, but this is another way to use your War Eagle boat for fun times on the water.
 
To learn more about War Eagle’s top-quality boats, click here.
 
Tomorrow: Catfishing in Your War Eagle Boat
 
Day 5: Catfishing in Your War Eagle Boat
 
Editor’s Note: War Eagle boat owners use these very-versatile boats in many different and sometimes unusual ways.
 
With spring around the corner, catfishing will be a hot ticket on everyone’s spring and summer fishing calendar. The War Eagle boat is wide, deep, safe and can carry all types of catfishing tackle. Some cat fishermen prefer a jump box – a trotline with a weight and float on either end of it. The baited hooks are wedged between a piece of rubber on the edge of a box, and the line is laid over in the box. As the fisherman motors his boat in the direction he wants to set out his line, the force of the boat moving forward with the anchor end of the line staying causes the baited hooks to jump out of the box and hop into the water down to the depth where the cat fisherman has determined the catfish are holding. When all the hooks are out of the jump box, the fisherman ties the line to a second anchor and float that helps hold the line near the bottom.
 
Using this technique, a fisherman doesn’t have to tie his line to the bank but can set out his jump-box trotline where he believes the cats are concentrating. When he returns to take up his line, he simply pulls up the anchor and buoy. He puts his line in the box and places empty hooks back in the rubber grooves on the edge of the box. With this trotlining method, anglers can put-out and take-in trotlines, moving them faster and easier than lines tied to the bank. Commercial cat fishermen may put out 5 to 20 jump boxes a day. So they need a strong boat like a War Eagle to carry their boxes and the catfish they catch.
 
Another technique especially effective for catching catfish is called jug fishing. By tying a line with a weight and a hook to a plastic or a glass jug, the wind or current will move your jugs around until they find catfish. When a jug begins to dance or bob on the surface, you know you have a catfish on the line. When you motor your boat to the jug to pick it up and bring the catfish to the net, because of the War Eagle boat’s deep sides and plenty of floor space, you’ll have enough room for your baits, jigs and all the fish you catch.
 
These ways are how you can use your War Eagle boat and enjoy it all week long.