Sorry to be the bearer of “possible” bad news, but you may be affected by this.

Last year, in preparation for hitting the Bay of Quinte and Lake Ontario in this cold, open-water Walleye bite, I was telling a buddy, Jeremy Foote, to get his boat all readied up because an old fishing bud and l are hitting the water tomorrow and we could all hit the water with two rigs, sharing info.

In his scurrying around and mentioning it to his wife, she somehow… and thank god she did, remembered their boat insurance policy. As she looked into it, she told Jer that their boat was not insured on the open water, during the winter months. I thought to myself, “what a crock, that’s gotta be wrong”.

So, I wrote up a quick email to my boat insurance company thinking full well that Jer and Meg must have a totally different type of coverage, and guess what, the response to me was exactly the same. It read:

“Your boat is not covered for the water from Dec 1st to March 31st. So no coverage in winter. Sorry”

This was a total shock to me so I reached out to a bunch of buddies and, low and behold, EVERYONE has the same policy rules.

In my investigation I’ve been hearing about fishing guides getting extended insurance, obviously, they knew this hiccup existed and took care of it.

So, for you diehards venturing out to the big water for the remainder of this season, I suggest you look into your boat insurance policy to ensure you’re covered. That 25, 50, 75 or even 100 thousand-dollar rig could cause you a ton of grief.