No doubt it was going to be a Bar Crusher

Steve: Hi, my name’s Steve Cerra; from Melbourne. I picked up my 670HT last week and we’re away on our annual fishing trip up at Bermagui.

This is my second Bar Crusher… I had a 615C before that for two years.

I enjoy fishing and get out every weekend, or every second weekend. Me and my partner are part for a fishing club, so we normally fish together, which is good.

The process when I was looking at buying a Bar Crusher… we were probably looking around for about three or four months. We checked a lot of other makes and models. They [Bar Crusher] took us out for a test ride and were very helpful with what you want out of your boat. You can customise it, you can do what you want. You can add things to suit the way you fish.

We do a lot of overnighters as well, so that’s why we selected to go the hard top boat and a few little extras like a lined cabin and privacy curtain, a fridge and everything like that.

There was no doubt it was going to be a Bar Crusher! I had to do a bit of modifications at home to fit the hard top in, but it was definitely worth it.

Plans for the 670HT… definitely going to be keeping this one for a while. Today we went out fairly wide and it was 20kt winds with a 3m swell, and we were probably 30-40 kilometers out, but it was good. It definitely handled the seas well.

Another one of my favourite fishing locations is fishing down at Portland; every year between May and August,  chasing Southern bluefin tuna.

“We got up here last night about 8 o’clock, so we’re heading out this morning, it’s about 7:30am now. We’re heading out east towards Julia Island, chasing some Southern bluefin, so hopefully we can get a few today.”

I’ve got a regular crew of about three. When we come down you need to have experienced people with you.

“When the fish are around too, you only want to really run three to four rods. Getting smoked a little bit here! As you can see Ben’s on a fish here, and these clip-on rod holders are great; you can just move them right out of the way, and it frees-up Ben from bashing his shins on the side of the rod holders.”

You can do 200km in a day and it’s great on fuel… and I guess that’s the reason why you see so many Bar Crushers down at Portland and other offshore locations when people are chasing gamefish.

My partner loves the boat, she absolutely loves it. I went down and done to the Bar Crusher factory when we were building this one spoke to Phil and I put a list together of what I wanted and a few little things, and took my missus down the next time and she added a few things that she wanted too. She enjoys her fishing, enjoys driving the boat too, so she wanted the 200hp on the back.

Another reason why we upgraded to the 670HT was in the near future we’re planning to have kids. My partner is pregnant at the moment, so we thought now is a good time to upgrade. In the near future we’re going to be taking the kids out with us fishing, so in the hard top, in the little bit bigger boat, there’s more room, it’s little bit more comfy and the kids can enjoy it as well and tag along.

There’s a lot of technology that goes into building these boats. They’re always trying to improve things as well, so from model to model they change, but the main thing I love about any Bar Crusher, even my last one, is the way it landed and the way it cut rough chop. It was really smooth. Even when it lands, you can feel when you land you’ve got something solid below you, and that’s probably the main thing that I really like about the boat.

There’s a list of other things as well, but the list could go on forever!