E-mail of the Week

By Ron Brooks

Each week I receive a lot of mail.  Sometimes it's more mail than I want, but sometimes it's mail that has something to share.  I'll be sharing some of those those e-mails with you over the next few weeks.  One this week comes from Mike, who was buying a boat.  Take a look:

Dear Ron,

I really like your site.  Question.  I am looking to buy a boat and went to your "Boats and Equipment" section.  I am looking for a used cuddy cabin from Mako, Grady White, or Aquasport in the 23 to 28ft range.  It has taken a ton of time looking at classified, asking friends and fellow fishing friends, going to chat sessions, but frankly it has been painful and time consuming.  

Your site has a section called "Boats and Equipment" and I noticed that you list all the boat manufacturers that make fishing boats.  This is great to dig into specs.. There are a couple other sites you may want to list.  One is browncow.com which has a section that has links to all boat manufacturers.  Looks like about 300.  The other site is Mariner1.com.  They have a "browse boat section" that has specs and pictures from a bunch of boats, has 60,000 boat reviews from consumers of boats.  I checked out about 200 consumer reviews on Grady White alone!  They have a ton of other functionality, but the browse boats and boat reviews section really helped me.    Check them out.  It may help people search for boats without going to each individual manufacturer site to get a biased look at the boats.  Mariner1.com seemed unbiased since they just publish what boat owners are saying. Pretty cool.  Sorry for the long email, but I hate to see others go through this kind of time.  I am fairly new to boating and that did not help, but still it should be easier. 

Thanks Ron.  Happy fishing.

Thank you, Mike!  The sites you mentioned are now linked on our Boats and Equipment page for others to be able to use!

Ron Brooks   saltfishing.guide@about.com