How does a builder come to design and construct boats that can not only plane in reverse but also account for hundreds of world-record saltwater catches, particularly in the light-tackle-angling field? Well, start with a mid-life crisis, naturally. At least that’s how Buddy Gentry, half of the team that is Freeport, Florida’s G&S Boats, did it. (Steve Sauer, Gentry’s partner and an engineer by trade, is the other half.)

Gentry started off as a charter boat captain out of Destin, Florida, but sometime in the early 1970’s he had an epiphany of sorts. He thought it would be great to earn a living by building boats. So he took a job with a local company constructing fiberglass 38-footers during the winter. “I worked for minimum wage to learn,” Gentry says.

By 1973, the fisherman-turned-part-time boatbuilder decided to give this new business a full-time effort. He and Sauer started by building molds for a 30-footer. Gentry admits that while the experience helped the duo hone their skills, they didn’t get a lot of satisfaction out of building production boats.