The BOATSTIX Is a Marriage Saver

I used to say that before a couple gets married they should go on a multi-day wilderness canoe camping trip together.  Especially, during unseasonably wet and cold weather and with a minimum of gear.  If they can endure long soggy days in a tent together, they can survive anything the future will throw at them.

More recently, however, I’ve changed my way of thinking.  Now, I am of the opinion that the couple should spend at least one summer launching a boat together, at the most popular boat launch on the lake, on sweltering hot muggy weekends with a long line up of tow vehicles impatiently waiting their turn.

Trust me, you can’t make up the stuff you see and hear when folks are backing the boat into the water.  Which is my way of introducing buddy Clyde Holscher’s new BOATSTIX.

Clyde The Guide, lives in Topeka, Kansas and is one of the top multispecies anglers on the American Great Plains.  He fishes reservoirs that are smack dab in the middle of Tornado Alley, so most days Clyde is fighting the wind.  It is the same when he is launching and pulling out his boat.

Given the persistent blustery prairie weather he has to contend with daily, Clyde was the perfect person to invent the BOATSTIX.  It was necessity meeting invention.

“Back in the 90’s I needed something to keep my boat secured, without using the trolling motor, while I was long-poling for early spring crappies in shallow timber,” Clyde told me when I met up with him recently.   “Then I realized how valuable the BOATSTIX also is when you’re pulling into a launch site or meeting up with another boat out on the water.”

So many of Holscher’s guests were impressed with the tool when they saw him using it, that he was repeatedly pestered with requests to make it available to the general public.  Then he was invited to present a “Boat Towing and Trailering” seminar for the National Marine Manufacturers Association at the Kansas City Boat and Sport-Show.

“The BOATSTIX is the best first mate a boater can have,” Holscher says with a chuckle. “I call it a marriage saver.  It keeps your boat away from the dock – especially in heavy wind and swift current – when you’re launching and tying up.”

Better yet, with a BOATSTIX in hand, you can safely secure your boat without anyone having to jump out and onto the dock.   Alternatively, you can attach the BOATSTIX to the bow cleat while your companion stands on the dock and holds the rope end of the tool as the boat slides off the trailer.

It’s a simple, inexpensive, almost indestructible aid and having used one all of this season, I can tell you that it works.  I especially like it when I meet up with friends out on the water and we transferred anglers from one boat to another.

Clyde recommends the 15-inch BOATSTIX for low-profile bass-style boats, while he says that the 30-inch model is best for vessels up to 23 feet long with high sides.

If you’d like to talk to Clyde about the BOATSTIX or order one, simply CLICK HERE.  And if you’d like to see the BOATSTIX in action, watch the following short video.