Wow it's been a while.

I made two of them in the early 90's and the lasted about 8 years of use on the Yakima R. there were two others on the river at that time as well. Other than that there were two water otters and a King Fisher, the rest of the boats on the river were driftboats and rafts.

I don't seem to have any shots of the first one I made stored on my computer but here's the second one. (also still one of my favorite fishing pictures)


As I understand it Pat Oglesby in Gunnison (or a friend of his) bought the what was left of the"company" that started them originally. The original name was Water Skater I think, with a guy in Hamilton MT. They are mentioned in one of the early articles on kickboats in Fly Fisherman (I think springtime of 92 or 93) You could buy a completed boat or $15 for plans...the plans were mostly to get the information on the glue coating that wouldn't eat the styrenes.

I watched kickboating skyrocket on the Yakima sitting on these things. Early on Bank anglers and boaters would stop and ask, "did you make that?", my reply was always "you think I'd pay for something this ugly?" The problem with them was although fairly abrasion resistant the coating could puncture easily on sharp rocks and limbs and then the foam would soak up water before being patched and over time gain a fair amount of weight. Nonetheless there are some definite performance characteristics of the slab design that are outstanding. They turn effortlessly and draw almost nothing due to the much greater displacement of the slab. Super stable on a smaller platform than boats with comparable stability.

My 3rd generation was built on fiberglassed polyurethane pontoons (I wanted a rowing frame) but by this time there was no savings in home made (except I got the foam for free) and I wasn't good enough at fiberglassing to keep the weight down where I wanted it.