Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Hello everyone, This is my first post on a forum. I am still learning the basics of everything.

I just recently bought my first pontoon (20' Parti Kraft) and I have a few questions:

1.) Is it safe to anchor below tailwater dams?
I have fished my whole life out of a Jon boat below dams and never had a problem out of one. Didn't know about pontoons.

2.) Why don't you see many pontoons below dams fishing?
They seem stable and more room to move around.

3.) Are pontoons hard to trailer in current?

I bought a pontoon for my growing family so they can get out on the water with me.

I can't answer your first question directly as I have never tried it, but I'll give it a shot for the others.

Pontoons are big boats, light weight, and catch a lot of wind. Therefore it doesn't take much to move them around. While trolling motors work well with them, they are slower to respond than traditional fishing boats. Not only that, but they can't necessarily turn on a dime even with the big motor. I imagine you can have quite a bit of current ripping through those rivers. A lot in my area are very rocky too, so you could probably have a disaster of you were struggling with boat control at all. Loading them on the trailer would suck pretty bad too, but there are others on here that boat on rivers so they can speak better to that.

I found it pretty easy to load in a 3 mph river current but there was a dock. I just tied up to the dock on the downriver side and backed my trailer in lined up with the boat and pulled it right up onto the trailer, no problem all by myself. When there is no current I use the down wind side.

Welcome to the club.