Quote Originally Posted by hairball View Post
It sounds like we may still have a bit of an issue, however. It sounds like they still plan on enforcing the horsepower limit. I understand their reasoning as it was explained to me, but the problem still exists. Apparently they have been getting complaints about big motors washing out the lake bed at the ends of some ramps, which has led to some trailers being damaged. It's not hard to see how this could happen and I sympathize with anyone who has sustained damage to their boat or trailer.

It seems to me that there is a better solution to the problem than ticketing boaters for using their big motors. If they are going to increase the length limit to accommodate all bass boats, they understand that we have as much right to use the water as anyone else. Having said that, I believe that it is the responsibility of the state to maintain the ramps in such a way as to allow us to exercise our rights to use the water of any lake we want to fish. I don't know what that would entail - maybe extending all of the ramps long enough to prevent washout at the ends of them, but increasing the legal boat length without allowing for the use of big motors to load them onto their trailers doesn't really change things much. Let the discussion begin.
In a perfect world, the ramps would be long enough for this to not be a problem. Now, I don't know how far they'd have to be extended, but I have a feeling it would be too expensive to do them all. Maybe they could extend certain ones, then restrict boats with motors over a certain size to those? I don't know, could this be done fairly? Somehow I doubt it. And I don't have a large boat, so this doesn't apply to me, but I do have a question. Is this washout simply a factor of the size of the motor, or is it caused by people accelerating at the last minute to get their boats all the way up on the trailer? I guess what I'm really asking is, is this last-second acceleration necessary? I don't know how many times I've seen young, apparently able-bodied men, who had their boats up on the trailer to where it would seem to be easy to winch it up the rest of the way, yet instead they put it in reverse, back it off, and then hit the gas, apparently so they can get it far enough up on the trailer to where they don't get their feet wet. You large boat owners, please correct me if I'm wrong, and don't take offense, but I've always wondered how much of this is necessary, and how much is just laziness?