GOT BOATS?

 

"How many fishermen are boat owners, vs. fishing exclusively from shore?"

    This question was recently asked by friend Johnny Wilkins, head man behind The Chicago Fishing School. Being the former captain of the U.S. Match Angling Team, you could say that Johnny has something of a vested interest in shore fishing.
    He goes straight for the jugular on this point, too, and contends that most anglers fish from shore. He nods knowingly at the claim that most fishermen never go out in boats.

        "Most fishermen DON”T own a boat," he claims, "and they don’t own high-tech sonar." His chief complaint is with TV and YouTube on this matter, because they lead you to think that every angler is fishing from a big-money boat... or that he or -she needs to be.

    In his view, money-driven media content skews our perceptions about this, and I agree with him…

    As evidence, he also points to the “pumped-up” demand for “military grade” sonar upgrades and the constant carousel of “hot” gear, and especially lures, on the market. All this is driven by a $44 BILLION dollar recreational fishing industry that thrives on these "wants", something I've observed in articles like this one, linked here:

The Unstoppable Flatfish, Part 2

Lets Check It Out
    With this in mind, I thank Johnny for inspiring me to do dig into this.
However, my eagerness was soon tempered when I hit a wall.

    It seems that data specifically addressing the number of shore anglers vs. boat anglers is in short supply. It may exist, but if so, I did not find it in that form.
    Another thing that challenged my resolve for answers was that solely specific data about fishermen-as-boat owners was likewise scarce. 
    But all is not lost. There is a huge volume of data about boat ownership, and fishing, so I pushed on. In the end, I based my conclusions on data surrounding total number of registered boats owned, total number of licensed fishermen, etc.

For those who want to stop here...

SUMMARY: All this digging across boating and fishing data strongly suggests that about 20-25% of anglers own, or have access to, a boat of some sort, in 2023.
I will err on the conservative side and call it 1 in 5.

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    But this number includes everything from float tubes* to cabin cruisers, and everything in between. There are also some undefined data sets that simply fall through the cracks by default.
* some states require that float tubes be registered as a “vessel.”

More To Know
Some of the interesting data points I encountered in my quest:

1. 13-15% of households own a boat.
The high side of this percentage is accepted in post-Covid 2023

2. There are 26M total boats owned, with 1.8 boats owned by each household.

3. There are 52M people that claim to go fishing.

4. About half the anglers said they purchase a license.

5. Co-ownership and sharing of boats has increased, particularly among millennials. A small number of the total, it is essentially undefinable.

6. Boating industry statistics estimate that 100 million people went boating in 2013-2018. In the post-Covid lockdown period, that number has increased significantly.
Among those on boats, it’s safe to assume that a great many were fishing. But how many? This is another intangible thrown into the mix.

7. Freshwater fishing boats, specifically (147,000 units average), accounted for 50% of all boat sales, years 2021-2022.
This does not take into account the transfer of used boats.

    Looking over these info-bites, the difficulty in putting absolute numbers on fishermen-as-boat owners is obvious.

    I feel fairly confident that one in five anglers (20%) either owns some form of boat with which to get offshore, or has used one for this purpose. Of course, it may be less, maybe one in seven, or even one in ten. Again it’s hard to say.

    But I do beg to differ when hearing that it is, "almost none." This is 2023, after all, the Age of The Good Living Middle Class Consumer. There are more affordable ways to float away from shore and fish than EVER. And from what I see, huge numbers of people are jumping on to the opportunity.

 

    So, what do you think? How many anglers go fishing exclusively from shore, and never go near a boat? Leave comment. 

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Thanks so much for reading, and...

Tight Lines,

Dave Hutton

© All rights reserved, David Hutton/Palmetto Fly N Fish 2023 Thanks for reading. I hope you liked it and maybe learned something. Maybe you have some thoughts/ Comments and a share are appreciated.

Tight Lines,

David
Palmetto Fly N Fish
© David Hutton, 2023, all and any rights reserved.