FAQ6: Retrieval Boats and Methods.

Long ago I established three inviolable rules for float Flying:

1. You need a boat.
2. Really.
3. No Kidding.  

If you are float flying you WILL have a situation arise occasionally where you will need to go out into the water and retrieve your plane, or fragments threreof.  
There are other ways to retrieve planes. When they work: super.  These methods include:

1. Boathook.  Most any stick with a hook on the end will grab a plane and pull it toward you as long as it is nearer the shore than the length of the stick.  
2. A tennis ball on a string.  Can be effective but it's hard to keep tangles out of the string.  Throw the ball over  the plane, retrieve it gently, and if you're lucky the string will get caught in the a/c so you can drag it back.  
3. Fishing tackle.  Extension of the tennis ball trick.  You can cast a weighted, streamlined styrofoam float a LONG ways.  If you get the line in the airplane's workings you caan drag it back gently.  The reel is better at avoiding tangles than the wad of string on the ground you get with the tennis ball.
4. Radio-control boat.  These are the darlings of the internet where someone designs some fastastically complicated radio-controlled retrieval boat/forklift.  The best radio-control retrieval boat design I have seen is an unmodified boat dragging a fishing line out and around the airplane.  Longer range and more precision than the fishing tackle trick.  
5. Ok so your plane is down,  out of  range.  Farther away than the amount of  line on the fishing reel.  It hit hard, and there are pieces detached.  Whaddaya do?  
   You get into a BOAT!. You physically go where the plane is, and use your fabulous dexterity to retrieve all the pieces and untangle the briars.  

  

The Red boat was actually very successful because the covered bow gave a good platform both for retrieving planes and for standing if we had to reach into the shore trees.  
Rubber boats or "Improvised Expedionary Devices" (IEDs) may not be as effective, but still better than watching your OS.91 four-stroke drift away forever.  
I have always been curious: the one with the pink floats is considered "Motorized" by the state of Alabama and therefore must be registered.  Just another infraction...