In this first installment of my ongoing blog series about our Beastmaster Snubby 500, I look at the decision-making process that went into our selection of this bespoke, custom-built boat: Choosing a boat is always a massive decision. Like most keen anglers who’ve been pursuing their passion for a considerable period of time, I’ve owned a bunch of different vessels. I kicked off with a second-hand fibreglass canoe in my teens, went on to a car-topper aluminium punt, then a Webster Twinfisher alloy cat. That brings us through to an era when I first met shipwright and boat builder, Tyson Dethridge, and fell head over heels for his customised Full Boar fibreglass sportfishers, running first a 5 metre version, then a 5.5. Next, I spent a year or two in a fully imported Scout flats boat from the U.S. That was followed by a neat little 4.1 metre tiller-steer Cross Country (again built by Tyson) before I graduated into one of his larger, centre-console 4.75 metre Cross Country rigs. That 4.75 Cross Country (called “Evil Minnow” after one of the deadliest Squidgies soft plastic colours) was part of our family for well over six years, and we absolutely loved it. I’d have to say it was my favourite boat up until that point. With its light-but-strong foam-core sandwich fibreglass construction and powered by a class-leading F70A Yamaha 4-stroke motor, this was quite a radical craft, especially in Darwin, where we lived at the time. I reckon it opened a few alloy-blinkered Top End eyes to the validity and surprising durability of good glass. Our 4.75 Cross Country was the prototype of that hull and it had a few “rough edges” internally, but it served us exceptionally well. We dragged it over some bloody awful...