No, a rafter is not a new style of flies. It's those tubes, rafts, and anything else that can inflate...

There I was, quietly fishing with my youngest son, testing out couple of new flies on the river, occasionally stepping aside as a few wayward rafters go through, vainly trying to control their floatation...standing quietly, up to my knees, in some calm water half-way below a section of rough water...making sure my son doesn't slip on a mossy rock...

When suddenly something hits me hard in the back on my knees. Down I go in the deep water, trying to hold my favorite rod up in the air, swimming upstream/to the shore with one hand, glancing over and seeing a flurry of yellow right behind me.

My son was yelling something--hard to hear across the water as we know--me just saying, "I'm fine!" to keep him from doing something insane.

To make a long story short: a small K-Mart style tube split, someone either lost it or abandoned it, and it hit me in the legs, knocking me into the water. The rod is fine, my clothes are drying, and son is telling his dad about the way I swim.

We WERE planning on getting couple trout for dinner tomorrow... (Oh well, maybe early tomorrow morning.)
I hate cheap tubes....

You can say this is another case of fishing going down the tube.