I just bought a native watercraft ultimate 12 and it apppears to be a keeper for the rivers and lakes that I fish here in southwestern Ohio. It will paddle against a fairly stiff current and tracks well with the skeg down. I am new to the sport so this has nothing to do with good paddling technique. After its maiden voyage I unloaded everything and gave it the shake test while standing up, it took a lot to be able to fall out of the thing and was pretty easy to climb back in once I did. Our dog, which had accompanied me on the test sat on shore with a perplexed look on her face while I did this excercise several times. Overall I think I made a good choice of boats. There is room for enough gear to be able to do overnight float trips and the fact that it moves out far easier than a fully loaded pontoon boat is a great advantage to me. Being able to take the dog along for the family adventures is also very nice as she usually is very disgusted when she has to stay home. This is in fact it is one of the primary reasons for looking at this boat. Overall I am very pleased.

Happy Paddling