From The Helm: Stur-Dee Boat Amesbury Dory

“Pick your days” is the motto that all small boaters live by. But here in the Northeast, the way home is often north by northwest, right into the path of oncoming weather. This means that even the most cautious weather watcher will eventually have to go back through what they did not go out in.

While rough water between the angler and the boat launch might make for an inconvenient and uncomfortable ride in a large craft, the same situation in a smaller vessel can put the angler in real danger. That is why as a small boater who is serious about fishing, I choose to ply the waters of in the Welcome Mat, my 16-foot Stur-Dee Boat Amesbury Dory, which is truly an inshore-fishing platform with an offshore pedigree.

Born in a day before NOAA weather updates, radar, or GPS, the Amesbury Dory was designed to be launched from a mothership and fished out on the Grand Banks, where a 3- to 5-foot swell was just another day at the office. Its incredibly deep hull design, high-sweeping bow and ability to dance on the waves like a leaf gave rise to the Coast Guard saying, “You may get scared to death in a dory, but you’ll never drown.”

But safety is not the only reason I choose to fish from a Stur-Dee boat. When matched with a four-stroke 20 or 25 horsepower engine, it is also the most versatile and efficient boat I have ever used for inshore bottom fishing.

Because of its flat-bottom design, an Amesbury Dory literally glides up to speed and requires very little horsepower or fuel to make her go. On a typical 6-hour fishing trip, I burn 1.5 gallons of gas, while on an all-day effort I will use a little over 3 gallons. Most of these trips are with my dad or two cousins also in the boat, each of us over 6 feet tall and weighing at least 200 pounds. These are not trips spent swinging on anchor all day either, but with the engine running, drifting or trolling for fluke. Because of this incredible fuel efficiency, on most days I simply use the stock 3-gallon tank that came with my Honda 20-horse and only break out my 6-gallon tank if I am making a special trip across Long Island Sound or out off Rhode Island fishing wrecks for sea bass. At every boat launch I frequent, I have a place marked about 500 yards from the launch where I detach the fuel line on my way back in so I don’t have to wait 20 minutes for my engine to run dry when I get back to the dock!

The marriage of a silky-smooth 4-stroke with the Amesbury design has another great advantage for bottom fishing, mainly boat control. When I am fishing an inshore location for fluke such as Howards Ledge south of Two Tree Island in Niantic and lose the tide, I simply start back trolling. The high transom of the Stur-Dee Boat makes a perfect match for this method and presentation. I can then creep along specific bottom contours or weave between lobster pot fields, pulling broad-shouldered fluke out from places boats with large outboards fear to go. Two anglers can sit side by side on the bench seats, each bouncing a bucktail or working a drift rig while the captain controls the boat with the tiller and fishes a third rod just off center.

Many times in the fall I will plan a combination trip, fishing for tautog in shallow on the running tide then running out to a wreck or deep rockpile for a mix of tautog and sea bass on the slack tide. Once again, the Stur-Dee boat allows me to hover over a wreck, catching blackfish by putting my engine in gear at idle and pointing it into the tide or wind, eliminating the need to even anchor under certain conditions.

When it is time to set the hook, rest assured, the Amesbury Dory is a cinch to position and hold on anchor. I use a homemade grapple when on wrecks or rocky bottom and a Navy anchor when fishing sand or other soft bottom. In the early spring there are times when I will even drag a window sash weight to slow drift for winter flounder, attaching it to the brass eye rings on the transom. This ease of boat positioning should not be undervalued; I have fished on some larger boats where it is so difficult to get the boat on anchor that the tendency is to try to make do with a less than perfect anchor shot or wait out a bite that should be abandoned just because the boat is such a pain in the neck to reposition. With my Stur-Dee boat, I always carry 200 feet of anchor line, which allows me to carefully work an area by playing up or down the line. Those who target blackfish know this can sometimes make all the difference.

Like all open boat platforms, the Amesbury Dory lends itself well to customizations. While many can be ordered right from the company, like waterproof storage lockers or bow cleats, others can be performed by the owner, such as mounting a fishfinder or oar-lock rod holders. The oar-lock rod holders are an especially nice touch when drifting for fluke. I have added extra brass oar sockets up along the length of one rail so I can really “mow the lawn” when I have located a nice concentration of summer flounder.

When mounting my transducer and speed/temperature gauge, I chose to use a quality adhesive, like 3M 5200, to eliminate the need to drill any holes in the hull.  Since space is a premium on all small boats, I have also used this product to attach rod holders along the side shelf, which is perfectly made for this purpose.

The Stur-Dee Boat Co. shop is family run by the mother-daughter team of Heidi Reid and her daughter Mackenzie, who faithfully carry on the boat-building tradition of Heidi’s father, the late Ernie Gavin, in their Tiverton, Rhode Island boatbuilding shop.

Mackenzie and Heidi hand-lay the fiberglass in the original molds made by Gavin and mill all of their own wood on site. Even the finish work, such as painting the boats, is done on site to assure top quality with no short cuts and a boat built to last for generations. Furniture-quality mahogany and oak, handcrafted with graceful yet rugged fiberglass, assures the Stur-Dee Boat is not just the most seaworthy small vessel you can own – it’s also the prettiest boat in the fleet.