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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, April 3 Today I left Florida's panhandle and the heavy tourist infestation of Fort Walton Beach and Pensacola driving west on I-10. It took me a while to figure out why so many teenagers were buzzing around but then I realized that this was one of those places where Easter break is seriously celebrated and today was the first day of that week.
I called ahead to Greg Arnold in New Orleans who I visited briefly on the way down. He said to come on in, that he'd love to fish tomorrow. I arrived around 3:00 in the afternoon which gave us plenty of time to talk boats and flies. Here you can see just a few of the many boats that Greg has collected for his fishing trips throughout the south.
The River King stern is visible at the far right.
Greg and his lady, Carol, are both real southerners. Carol grew up in the country in Alabama but is really enjoying her job as business manager for a large antique store in the big city. We had a great dinner at "Crazy Jean's" place someplace in New Orleans.
The next morning Greg knocked on my van at about 4:00 AM. We headed out with one of his boats behind his pickup as well as the River King behind my van and we stopped to pick up Bertrand (bear-trond'). Greg seems to know many of the fly fishing fanatics in New Orleans and Bertrand fits right in. Bertrand is from France though he speaks very good English. He works for one of New Orleans' more prestigious hotels when he is not chasing redfish.
Unfortunately, Barret Brown, who owns Southern Safaris Fly Shop in town, who I'd also met earlier, was not able to fish with us today due to family commitments. However, I'd highly recommend contacting him if you have plans to flyfish anywhere in the Louisiana area. As an aside, Louisianna's license plate motto, "Sportsmen's Paradise" is very accurate. The whole bottom half of Louisiana is a wetlands, most of it under water some of the time. The area abounds with waterfowl and fish.
After the traditional southern stop for donuts where Bertrand showed us his latest redfish fly creation made from the yellow and green nylon strands of a feather duster, we drove south from New Orleans a surprisingly short distance to a huge recreation area comprising several thousand acres. This public area was teeming with redfish and nutria, a large South American rodent that has taken residence in Louisiana.
We launched our boats and headed out into the vast shallow waters. Here's a shot of Greg and Bertrand in Greg's flats skiff.
Greg wanted to take us to an area he wanted to explore but was too shallow for his bigger boat. We ran side by side for a while. Although my boat could not run as fast as his, it did OK.
About a mile from the launch Greg had to shut his motor down and tilt it up out of the water which had shallowed to about a foot and a half. I then towed him and Bertrand for a while behind the River King. The River King struggled to pull the fiberglass skiff and I could see why those heavy boats needed big 90 to 150 hp motors. Eventually he anchored his boat and they both stepped onto the River King with their fishing gear. The three of us made the last half mile or so of shallowest water in the River King.
This was a good illustration of how the lighter inflatable River King draws considerably less water than a typical flats skiff. Here's a shot of me in the River King taken from Greg's boat that same morning and you can see the difference.
The tails of my hulls are only drawing about eight inches of water, the motor shaft and prop another six inches. This allows me a little over one foot depth for normal motor operation with this setup. Greg's boat, above was drawing about two feet with the V hull. When I tilt my motor up partially I can run slowly in as little as eight inches of water.
So far I had only once fished with another person in the fifteen foot River King, Charles Carey, the Brit that I met in Flamingo. This time, including me, there were three fairly heavy guys on board. This would be a real test - not only how well the River King floated the load but whether three guys could actually flyfish from the boat.
Here's a fisheye of the three of us standing on the decks. You can only see part of Greg at the far right.
This shot also shows the type of cover we were fishing which goes on for many miles. We hardly saw anyone else there except the two fish and game officers who came by to check us out. We had to move out into a channel to show our licenses as their boat could not get to us where we were - the water was very shallow, only about eight inches. We scraped bottom continuously which made me a little nervous but we had no problems with the dreaded oyster (pronounced oh-ster) beds. We took turns using Greg's push pole to maneuver across the flats.
Greg was impressed with the performance of the River King, mainly with the boat's ability to take us into the very shallow waters that his boat could not get to. Several times he pointed out that there was really no reason for me to take the River King back to Idaho where it would likely just sit in a snowbank for several months - and that he would be happy to continue the testing process for me, in the redfish rich waters of Louisiana.
We spotted many redfish swirls, some redfish fins and we cast to a lot of fish. However, these fish are not easy. I had one on that raced toward me much faster than I could strip in the line. He threw the fly in a spalsh of water and a cloud of mud a few feet from the boat as I held my rod high over my head, helpless. We had several hits and almost as many misses but we did catch a few. I caught no reds myself but I did land a flounder that hit my fly. It would have been good eating had I planned to cook that night. Finally, after seeing and casting to several tailing redfish in their home habitat, I became convinced that with a little more practice I could learn to catch these guys on purpose once in a while.
I had my share of windy stormy weather on this trip and today was no exception. Before we left at about noon, with the wind howling across the flats, Bertrand took the honors for the best redfish landed that morning.
Although it can be done, as these photos show, I'd say that three people on the fifteen foot River King are too many for this type of stealthy fishing in very shallow water. I would prefer one person on the push pole and one person sight casting. But that's how it's normally done anyway when fly fishing a shallow flat.
With three on board, the boat was generally stable although when all of us occasionally clustered together at one end, that end did take on a few more inches of water. Surprisingly, the wind was not too much of a problem for the boat as long as it was floating free of the bottom. The wind was more of a problem for two guys casting at the same time and more than once a fly landed in someone's shirt or cap.
It was difficult to pole the boat carrying that heavy load, against the wind, when it was scraping bottom. But the inflatable hulls are slippery and you can do it.
We returned to Greg's compound near downtown "Nawlins" where I washed the boat and trailer down, flushed the motor with fresh water, took a shower, and reorganized my gear. That's when I discovered that my 12 volt air pump and some tools had been lost at the launch ramp while recovering the boat. The ramp was steep and the dry cooler where I stored those items slid off the trailer deck as I pulled out, dumping the contents into six feet of murky water. Oh well, another expensive lesson.
I said my good-byes to Greg and Carol and pulled out from "the compound" in the evening heading west to Texas. As the sun set along the Louisiana bayous, I realized that today I had learned a lot about this boat that I had worked on all winter.
It is big enough to carry three guys and their gear, yet because of the very shallow draft, when you get there you have many more acres of water to fish than with most other flats boats that I've seen. This is pretty significant as these shallowest acres are where the redfish seem to be.
Although I was concerned that the light weight would be a problem in the wind, that does not seem to be the case. The boat is heavy enough and has a low enough profile that it is not blown around too easily. But it is quite a bit easier to push with the pole than the heavier boats. Guides would appreciate that.
The one area where the River King doesn't compare as well is high speed running in deeper water. While the V hull skiffs can pound through big waves and chop at high speed, I am limited to about twelve knots or so - but I do eventually get there.
Another consideration, also important, is that the River King with a fifteen hp, four cycle motor like mine, costs a good deal less than just the motor for a typical, bigger and heavier flats skiff. It also gains other benefits from its light weight: it gets by with a lighter, less expensive trailer, it burns less gas, the smaller motor is quieter, one person can easily launch and recover it, etc.
Changes I would make:
At the end of this segment of my trip my assessment is that this little River King is
quite a boat.
Click here to forward to Chapter 9, Bass Paradise in Texas
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River King Catarafts
Port Ludlow, WA
Telephone: 360.316.1170
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