Bow Rails

If the prize money is $250K, you do not want any thing to possibly touch that line and weaken it. A serious fisher will have flush mount cleats, etc as well

Hello, interesting topic and many opinions and comments, my questions would be why or what for?

Thank you in advance.

59 is OK, 61 is not? You drink you don't get to go on deck underway. Mom, yes. So that's why they're staying on. And we wear a life vest when on deck underway, or during (un)docking operations.

Agreed. Apart from Marlin which will really run, this is not a concern for Tuna fishing as any decent captain of a sport fish should be able to maneuver the boat without a line getting near the bow.

You are dead on about flush mount cleats and anything to prevent a line from snapping. About eight years ago in the Tri-State tournament,
We had a massive bigeye which would have won us a good deal of money. The angler on deck decided to bend over the transom to look for color instead of listening and the line hitter bottom of the transom and snapped off. Took a while to calm the crew down from that one, but we did win the Homeport Calcutta.

Pretty close to swordfish In flavor and texture as well. Once I was having a family dinner and my grandmother asked for swordfish. I didn’t have any but I had just caught a nice Mako. I cooked it really nice for her but she was a little more astute than I thought she would be. Needless to say, she questions everything now...

Lotta mako steaks available on LI. Try one, med rare. You might not go back to salmon or tuna

In the morning when you put your snout into a bait field for net casting or jigging, its nice to have a nice clean platform to work from.

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If you had to manually deploy an anchor or a sea anchor in rough seas you would not take the bow railing off.

Common on pilot boats?

When I rebuilt my Hatt53c, I built a pulpit for a plow and installed all chain rode and a windlass. Anchoring was never a problem, and no rail was never an issue. I'd often secure the bow lines to the spring cleats if solo as to not need to run all the way forward for docking, but I always knew I could go add rails if needed or wanted.

In the course of selling the boat, honestly, the issue never once came up with any potential buyer. As well, any buyer knew that the cost of adding rails was nominal in the big scheme of things.

If sloppy out, I typically would use the starboard side knowing the davit would be on my outboard as I went forward.

No doubt, I agree with that for bait casting so you don’t have to clear the rails. Probably why you see all the big southern sporties all built that way. Just need taller crew members

We were tied up behind another sf boat in a tournament at night that was on a sea anchor. A really bad squall came blazing through, we had to reach out the bow hatch to cut the line. Our boat had a low profile bow rail which was useless while taking water over the bow. You never know when those rails might be necessary.

Tied up behind? How were you tied - with a line traveling to their cockpit? Why couldn't they release? Just askin' Curious, why you would be tied that way unless you were visiting. They sure couldn't be fishing with you tied off their transom. Maybe I have the whole mental image incorrect.

When we fished two-day overnight tournaments boats would tie up to a buddy's boats that had deployed a sea anchor. They would tie our line to their stern cleats with a bridle. In the squall the line was too tight to untie, so we cut it and they retrieved it, it was safer to separate the boats, the seas were 10 t0 12 ft. Sometimes there would be multiple boats daisy-chained. Kept you from rolling in the trough all night. We did not get on the other boat, just squared the gear, cleaned up, and cooked supper.