ith boating season in the rearview mirror, there’s really no time like the present to plan for next season. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably eager to get back on a boat at the earliest possible opportunity.

Well, what if I told you that with a simple upgrade to your pontoon, you could get back on the water even faster come springtime? That’s where pontoon enclosures come in. These nifty upgrades can give you the protection you need to start boating even when weather hasn’t hit its ideal stride for the season.

hen it comes to keeping a secret, Sea-Doo might just be the best at it. With four years of development and testing, the number one personal watercraft brand in North America (for 20 straight years) managed to somehow keep quiet that its Sea-Doo Switch pontoon was coming for the 2022 model year.

“A pontoon boat with the heart of a Sea-Doo PWC,” was a line that stuck with me after first hearing the news, but what exactly did that mean? Despite 20 plus years in the pontoon industry and easily testing over 1,000 boats during my career, I hadn’t seen anything like it and I had nothing even to compare it to.

The hype was building with a buzz in the boating industry like nothing I’ve seen in quite some time. Like many of you, I had a lot of questions and I knew I needed to test it out myself.

f we have learned anything from the ongoing pandemic, it’s the value of quality family time. For years my wife and I contemplated taking a Florida vacation with our kids, but time, bills and other roadblocks seemed to get it our way. Months of quarantine finally jolted our priorities and last December we decided to go “all in” and take a once-in-a-lifetime vacation that we’ve been dreaming of for years. Our trip of course included a budget-breaking week in Orlando to see a magical mouse, but I wanted our vacation to be more than just spending our hard-earned time off at Disney.

Crystal River, Fla., which is about an hour and a half drive from the Disney World resort, is best known for its manatee sightings. Florida manatees move into warmer waters when the water temperature drops below about 68 degrees Fahrenheit and this  coastal city in western Florida shelters manatees year-round.

f you think your local largemouth bass fishing season is over just because the leaves are off the trees, think again. Once water temperatures drop below 52 degrees, you can have a ball—and often have the water to yourself—by jerking deep-running crankbaits across and over shallow shelves near steep breaks into deeper water from the bow of your deck or pontoon boat.

“Those fish were back in really flat stuff feeding throughout the fall, but in early winter they’ll head to stuff that’s going to be real steep,” says Ott DeFoe, a five-time Bassmaster tournament champion who uses deep-running crankbaits such as the Shadow Rap Deep, which will run up to 9 feet deep when cast on 10-pound-test mono.