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River King . . . the world's finest fishing and working catarafts |
The Cataraft Chronicles The following is a chapter from my running journal of the six month effort to redesign the rowing frame on our Kingfisher catarafts. Here you will find an almost daily update of my current sea trials / shakedown / vacation trip to the Gulf Coast to try the new design in several different types of fishing water.
You can find the other chapters here: Cataraft
Chronicles, Table of Contents
Saturday, May 15, 1999 As you can see by the above date, I've been back for a few weeks but I'm only now getting around to this wrap up chapter. That's because it's taken that long for my thoughts to coalesce. I've reached some conclusions that are quite different from where I started. I'll try to summarize those thoughts for you here.
I've now spent lots of time, probably over 300 hours, launching, retrieving, running and fishing from this new boat. Just as important, I've had several weeks to mull all this over. When I left on this trip I was of the mind that I had designed a family of personal fishing craft that could take an angler everywhere from bass ponds to steelhead rivers to bonefish flats. That was my hope anyway and I think I did accomplish that. The same boat that I fished the Missouri River last fall, with tarnsoms added and extra decking, performed very well in the saltwater and shallow flats of the Gulf coast.
However, when I look at this project from an angler's perspective I'm not sure any more that the goal was correct. While I know it is an advantage to have a boat that can handle many different types of water, I now believe that flats fishing is such a unique challenge, that a boat designed for that purpose should have no comprimises - it should be a flats boat, period.
Also, some of the changes that I made to the river craft to accomodate saltwater fishing needs esp. motor mounts and the strength of some frame components, did not enhance the performance in rivers but did add to the cost. By keeping the two models separate the river craft can be sold at a lower cost than otherwise.
I believe that the boat I took on this trip worked very well on the flats - in almost every situation I put it in. I plan to distill this design, make some changes and sometime in the future I hope to reincarnate this craft as a true flats flyfishing boat. I believe that the new design will be remarkable and will be competitve with any flats craft available.
But right now that leaves me free to take the best of what I learned over these last few months, both in the fresh as well as salt water, and put those ideas back into a new line of PFC for the trout angler - a new version of the Day Tripper and All Around.
These craft will be similar to but not the same as the boats that have been advertised on these pages since the first of the year. Photos and full details and pricing will be available soon.
In addition, this has caused me to rethink my longstanding attachment to direct sales
of Kingfisher PFCs rather than through dealers. The following news item is reprinted here:
f you have more questions, you can reach us at:
Mail and shipping:
River King Catarafts
Port Ludlow, WA
Telephone: 360.316.1170
Or, send us E-mail: info@cataraft.com
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