Bass Boat Predictions 1987

Today in Bass Boat Predictions 1987, we’re going to look back at what the industry thought bass boats could possibly look like by 2007.  Some of the predictions were pretty good, even accurate, while others a bit crazy.

This was all brought about by an article in the June/July issue of Bassmaster Magazine.  The article was penned by Frank Sargeant and titled Bass Rigs.  In this article Sargeant interviews some industry stalwarts of the day, asking what they predicted for 20 years in the future, while he himself added his own thoughts.

This issue happened to be the 20^th Anniversary edition of B.A.S.S. and the entire issue was dedicated to the history of bass fishing from the first Ray Scott event in June 1967 through June 1987.  Hence the 20-year timeframe.

Through that first 20 years, bass boats had made some big strides since Holmes Thurmond made the first Skeeter bass boat in the 1940s.  Most of these advances were due to Ray Scott bringing competition to the world of bass fishing. So, the question of what would the next 20 years bring was a valid one.

The opening image of the article is what grabbed me.  It was an illustration done by Mark Maxwell featuring futuristic bass boat and bass angler supposedly in the year 2007.  The boat looks eerily like today’s bass boats, minus the missing outboard, the futuristic trolling motor, and the absence of six screens on the boat.  The angler is donning a helmet and some sort of futuristic rod.  The image alone made me want to read the article.

The piece starts out pretty benign, like most bass articles would start.  It paints an image of an early morning, steam rising from the water’s surface, with herons and cypress knees rising from the water.  Then things turn a bit goofy.

The following is a short list of some gadgets the writer predicts are possible in the next 20 years.

• Kill switch in the driver’s seat
• Trolling motors fit into the hull and lower when the angler stands up
• His helmet is a heads-up display that controls the trolling motor
• Electronics are still mounted on the front deck but display all info an angler would need
• Solar panels continuously charge boat’s batteries

The list goes on.

Some of these predictions still aren’t too far-fetched from happening.  Especially the electronics ideas.  In fact, electronics are more advanced today than what Sargeant and others predicted in this piece.

Solar panels haven’t been utilized to my knowledge but lithium-ion batteries have changed the face of power.  Trolling motors that retract into the hull of the boat will probably never be a reality.  But I bet the author and industry folks never even thought of spot lock.

One comical prediction was that the motors wouldn’t go much past 150 horsepower, because of the horsepower limits in tournaments, namely Bassmaster.

Industry man, Norm Leighty of Minn Kota, said the power requirements for trolling motors probably wouldn’t increase because the motors of the day were already powerful enough to move the biggest boats.  I wonder what he’d say today of the 120-pound thrust motors we have today compared to the 60-pound thrust motors of his time.

He did predict transducers being placed in trolling motor heads as well as all electronic controls instead of cables.

Bill Henderson of MotorGuide predicted remote trolling motors that would deploy at the push of a button as well as heads-up display of all electronics.  The auto-deploying trolling became reality, and it wouldn’t surprise me if heads-up display helmets are in our future.

Sargeant then predicts full-up lake maps on electronics, which came true with the introduction of GPS and chart maps in the early 2000s.

The Bassmaster 2007 was truly a concept boat from the minds of the 1980s.  They even put a price tag on it at the whopping price of $100,000.  Now there’s another prediction that came true.

It’s a fun article to read and reminisce how simple things were just 40 years ago and how we all wanted these technological dreams to become a reality.  I guess the moral here is, beware of what you wish for.

I have included the entire article below for you all to read.  Like I said, it’s a fun piece and really opens your eyes as to how much of this came true, even if not in 2007, or will come true soon.