River King 2009 ~ Outfitter Cataraft Series ~ Ultimate Rowing Frames

Company History

I've been manufacturing these specialized watercraft (first under the Kingfisher name, now River King) and evolving this design since the fall of 1990. At that time there was only one other company producing anything like these unique boats. That company was Water Otter, owned by a very nice guy, Darryl Osborne, in Hamilton, Montana - who I credit with that first major advance in personal fishing craft (PFC's) beyond the float tube. They are still producing a one-person kick boat style watercraft under that name and are still in Hamilton, although under different ownership.

This first six footer did not have oars or an anchor. A friend who lived down the street from me in Sandpoint, Idaho had purchased one and when I saw it leaning up against his garage out behind his house my brain started clicking. I could suddenly imagine fishing all those long and under-fished stretches of river that were impossible to get to from the road - most of it, water that would have been deadly to attempt in my float tube.

In a burst of creative enthusiasm, I spent the next several evenings after work building my own version - using plywood and foam floatation blocks. I tried it out the next weekend on the Clarks Fork in Montana on the long stretch between St. Regis down to the where the Hwy 135 bridge crosses the river to the south bank. That experimental boat didn't have any oars - I used my float tube fins - but I did bring along the mushroom anchor from my john boat as an afterthought. It got stuck behind a log on that first float. Rather than lose it I carefully removed my waders and most of my clothes while sitting on that small deck, and slid in, pulling myself down the line hand-over-hand against the current to the bottom at about 12 feet - where I un-hooked it and pulled myself back to the boat.

From that experience I decided that the kick boat concept was a good step forward - but for the big rivers I sometimes liked to fish like the Clark Fork, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Kootenai, the Deschutes, etc. I needed a small inflatable fishing boat that would be a little larger than the Water Otter and would have a pair of oars and a real drift boat style anchor setup. That concept became the first "Kingfisher" over the winter of 1990-91. I had seen much larger whitewater catarafts such as those being produced by NRS and Aire and I had done some whitewater rafting. I wanted to combine the features of these two designs into a smaller cataraft, designed specifically for fishing. It would still be kickable but would have oars too. Unlike the whitewater boats mine would have an anchor. It wouldn't be a whitewater cataraft but hopefully it would be capable of handling some serious water.

The first Kingfisher was an 8 ft model with a cedar frame and aluminum pipe cross braces. I bought my first dozen Hypalon tubes from a company in Hungary. They were building RIB "sport boats" - the motorized rafts with a solid floor and cone shaped tail ends on the inflatable tube that wrapped around the bow and ended a foot behind the transom. I just asked them to make an eight foot long by 21 inch diameter inflatable cylinder where each end terminated with that same cone design they were using. So I didn't have to send drawings or anything.

I had to wait three months for them to build the tubes and for the container ship to arrive which I used to work on the rowing frame design. When the tubes arrived I fitted them to the prototype frame I had built and shot the picture for the ad that would appear in the next issue of Flyfisherman magazine. There was a delay of about three or four weeks for the ad to appear which I used to test the frame design on my local waters and work out a few minor bugs. A week after the ad appeared I got a call from a guy in Huckleberry, Montana up by Glacier National Park. He became my first customer.

From the very first I used the same rowing components that the larger whitewater catarafts used - 5/8 inch shaft oarlocks and large diameter whitewater grade oar shafts and blades. That turned out to be a good choice because I soon found that I could run that boat through some pretty big waves and still have the power to control it. Each model year, and the evolutionary changes that came with it, were designed for my own needs rather than for some "market" that I perceived to be out there. As a business enterprise I'm afraid I'm hopelessly stuck with my own visions in that respect. Fortunately, there are a few others who appreciate and share these particular views. I am an avid fly fisherman - and I like to fish for almost any species in any kind of water. I love river drift fishing in the West, I enjoy still-water fishing for big trout or bass in lakes and ponds, and I'm a big fan of skinny water inshore fishing along the Gulf coast. Except for the first one, those are all fishing adventures that can't be done well with a conventional drift boat. And even then, shallow fall water with its exposed rocks, which provides some of the best fishing all year, can be problematic. And of course, drift boats must be trailered in all cases.

For all these wide-ranging needs, I require an inflatable boat with a strong rowing frame; a boat that's easy for me to handle by myself, but big enough to bring along a friend or two. And I need a boat that breaks down to a small size for travel. But mostly I demand a low-profile boat that fishes very well in all types of water. On the pages of this website you can see where this has all led me.

Part of the great pleasure I get from building these boats is refining the design each year as I or my customers get better ideas or as better materials become available. I try to limit my major changes to once a year (on Jan 1) and I try to make any changes backward compatible if I can - but I'll probably never get to the place where I think there are no more improvements to be made.

All together there are about 750 Kingfisher (or River King) catarafts in existence out there some place. About two-thirds of them ended up in the Pacific Northwest but I have sold boats all over the US (the east, the SW, the midwest, the south and Alaska) and Canada and even a few to S. America and Europe. During a couple of years in the mid '90s I had several employees and was building well over 100 boats a year out of my Sandpoint, Idaho shop. Since moving to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state in 1999 I have stopped doing the shows and advertising and I'm basically producing only as many boats as I can by myself - with a little part time help occasionally. My only sales outlet is this website. I'm fishing and traveling more these days - and building boats has become fun again, like it was when I first started out.

Over the years we introduced many of the features that are found on most PFC's these days. Some of these include -

I have gradually migrated my designs into larger boats - in the 14 to 18 foot range now. That's mostly because there seem to be dozens of smaller boats in the 8 to 12 foot range these days and they have pretty much become a dealer market. Even though there are many fine fly-shops and dealers out there, I prefer to sell my boats directly to my customers; I really enjoy that one-to-one contact. Building and selling these larger boats, which often require some customization, allows me to do that. Still, I wouldn't rule out a 12 or 13 footer in the future if some company comes out with a quality tube design in that size range.

It's been a lot of fun. I've had an excuse to "test" my boats every year on some of the finest fishing water in the world. I've met, swapped tales and shared the holes and runs with some really fine folks. If I had to do it all again - I probably wouldn't change a thing.

Thanks for your interest, Ray Pelland