Wish I had the skills, the time…and space in the garage…this would be a fun project!

It's been many moons since I ran this boat, but I still have that good ol' Honda kicker!

I’m getting a 17×54 willie drift boat. Any opinions out there on outboard motors. I will be on the lower Sacramento River mostly. Do you think an 8 HP Merc 4-stroke would be good? A ny help would be appreciated. Thanks, Vince

Vince, I have owned ‘em all and have had zero trouble with Yamaha and Honda. They’re both so stinkin’ reliable it’s stupid! What size you get all depends on what you want to do with it…

For the Sac, you’re probably just going to use it to motor through flat water, I’d guess…though I use mine there to side-drift as well sometimes. If you just need transportation from spot to spot, go small and light like a 4 HP…your back will thank you when you have to schlep the thing on and off the boat and in and out of the truck each day. Also, go with one that has an internal gas tank (but with a connection for a jerry jug as well). A little 4-stroke 4HP can put all day (all week sometimes) on the internal tank…which is nice because you don’t have a red jug and hose laying around.

It's all good when you get to this point...whichever motor you use!

Sled are great...when they're running properly!

Intake Grates

With an outboard jet, most of your bottom strikes are going to occur right on the grates on the underside of the shoe. Once good “thunk” on the bottom can bend several of your grates. And it’s pretty simple – the more bent up those things are, the more the motor has to suck to get water up inside. Luckily, it’s not to big of a job to tap out the two pins that hold the grates in place and then either replace them with new ones or pound them straight again.

Grind a knife edge into your grates and the jet will suck more water

Regardless of whether you straighten out the old grates or buy new ones, a cool trick is to sharpen the edges of each one. With a bench grinder, sharpen the leading edges of each one to a triangular point.

Wear Ring

You’ll also loose plenty of power if your wear ring (sleeve) is worn or grooved. An outboard jet works best when the outside edges of the impeller blades are as close to the inside edge of the wear ring as possible without rubbing.

This isn't helping!

Probably the best way to ensure that you maintain your highest level of propulsion is to purchase and install a new wear ring (about $50).

The old and the new...big difference, huh?

Impeller

If you use your boat at all, you’re going to eventually suck up sand or gravel. Hard, rocky material running over the blades of your impeller will result in dings, divots and a general dulling of the leading edges.

The impact zone

Just like new again!

Winter’s here and if you’re one of the many folks who don’t use your boat through the cold months, it’s important to properly winterize it before storing it. Take a little time now to care for your rig so that you’re not that guy who’s stuck on the ramp on opening day next spring, with the cowling off and nowhere to go.

Here’s a step by step look at how to do it:

OUTBOARD MOTOR

Okay, to make sure your motor kicks over next season, there are several things you should do to it now. The first step is to change the oil in your outboard (if you have a four-stroke) and also change the lube in your lower unit.


“You don’t want any sludge to settle in and sit there all winter,” says Jerry Herota, a Jedi master-type wrench man at Buck’s Outboard in Sacramento. “So keep it fresh. Also, hit all the zerk fittings with grease and lube the prop shaft.”


Since gasoline can go bad over time, it’s also a very good idea to run the fuel out of your four-stroke engine before you store it. With a two-stroke motor, however, it’s better to add a fuel conditioner to your tank and run it through the engine. In a two-stroke, the lubrication (oil) is mixed in with the fuel, so running one out of gas causes metal parts to grind on one-another without any protection (bad idea!). Several companies make fuel additives and Herota likes the one made by Yamaha.

If you’re really feeling ambitious, Herota says, you can also pull the spark plugs and spray some storage seal into your cylinders. Also, before putting the cowling back on, it doesn’t hurt to spray the entire engine with silicone spray to displace moisture.

It’s also a good idea to store it in the upright position.”

“You also want to make sure your battery is full,” he says. “Once you’re done running the engine, disconnect the wires and then leave your motor in its vertical upright running position to keep water from collecting in it. Also, don’t wrap your motor with plastic because it will sweat when it gets warm outside and you’ll have a rain forest under the cowling by spring. Cover it instead with canvas and then let it air out from time to time on the nice days.”



HULL CARE

You don’t have to do quite as much to your hull to get it ready for winter, but there are a few tricks to follow to ensure she’s in top shape for the 2007 season.

Mike Burns of Smoker Craft Boats in Stayton, OR says that the first thing he does before storing his boat for extended periods is wash it — inside and out — with a mild detergent. Then, he’ll pour some Spic-N-Span into the bilge to neutralize any fishy smell that’s lingering in the bowls of the vessel. 



“The most important thing, however, is to cover it — but you need to allow the boat to breathe,” he says. “Without ventilation, you’re going to have mold. And on sunny days, make sure to take the cover off and let everything dry out.”

Jim Farrand, who works at the Smoker Craft factory, added that a good wax job will help protect the boat and keep it looking good. A little buffing isn’t a bad idea, either, he notes, if you’ve got an aluminum boat. “Take some light steel wool and go with the grain,” he says. “In other words, buff on a horizontal path — not a vertical one. Scotch Brite pads with flat boards work really nice.”



Perhaps the easiest thing to do to winterize your vessel is to make sure it doesn’t become a catch basin for rain.

“It may be obvious,” Herota says, “but it’s extremely important to make sure the drain plug is pulled.

I don’t care how many tarps and covers you have on the boat, water’s going to get down in there. I once had a customer who forgot to pull the plug and when they pulled the cover off in the spring, the boat was full to the gunwales. No wonder the tires were so flat on the trailer!”

ELECTRICAL SYSTEM

Here’s where a little effort now will go a long way in sparing you that embarrassing moment on the boat ramp next spring.
 Sunny Lampe of Sunny’s Electric Marine in Sacramento says that one of the most important things you can do before storing your boat for the winter is take batteries out and then make sure to recharge them every 30 days. Also, you should keep them indoors where they won’t be subjected to any freezing temperatures.

“Be sure to take all your electronics off — fish finders, radios, GPS units, etc.,” he says. “And hit all your electrical connections with Corrosion X, which will keep them waterproof and protect them from corrosion.

Also, clean the dirt out of your pull-out light connections and hit them with Corrosion X as well. Right now is also a good time to dig out your bilge pump and clean it.”


TRAILER

Trailers are pretty durable, but they can always use a little TLC as well. If you can, take the boat off the trailer and thoroughly douse it with a pressure washer. Then, tighten up everything that’s loose and replace the bunks or carpet as necessary. It’s not a bad idea, either, to check all your lighting and wiring as well.

“If you have a small boat, say something like a 12 or 14 footer, it will help prolong the life of your tires by getting the trailer up on blocks to keep the weight off the wheels,” says Herota. “With bigger boats, this isn’t very practical, so just try to roll the tires a little each month. And one last thing — give the Bearing Buddies on your hubs a shot of grease. That should force any moisture out so it doesn’t sit there all winter.”

By following these simple suggestions, you should have no trouble with your boat when it’s time to start fishing next year.

“Fear No Rock” is Clackacraft’s motto. I recently took a 16SSG (Salmon & Steelhead Guide Model) on a grueling three week test ride during salmon season in a boat-eating stretch of river to see if I would end up a believer…or would I come home with an extreme case of Rockophobia?

Specs

• Centerline Length: 16 feet+
• Bottom Width: 57 inches
• Beam: 83 inches
• Side Height: 23 inches
• Max Capacity: 4 Adults
• Weight: Approx 500 lbs.

Features

• GulfStream® bottom
• Tunnel Hull Technology
• Rolled gunwale edge
• Adjustable front bench passenger seat
• Two Swivel Fold Down Padded Seats
• Molded-In rod storage
• Three sets of raised oarlock positions
• Oarsman’s adjustable rowing bench seat with comfortable tractor seat
• Storage under both benches
• Level floors front and Rear

Test Run

Before we get into the nitty gritty of what this boat has to offer, let’s take a look at it in action through a bit of rough water…

Interior

My first ever-guide boat was a 1998 Salmon-Steelhead model from Clacka, so I was pretty familiar with the series though I’ve had about a 9-year hiatus while I rowed aluminum. It seems they’ve kept all the cool features and then added some nice new ones. The flat, level floors fore and aft are a big upgrade from my old boat…

Back in the day, they didn’t have the split bench, which is also a nice touch…so you don’t have to get up to grab something out of the storage box below the rower’s seat.

The rod holder system is much nicer these days, too (the butt holder piece is an optional upgrade).

And you can carry a couple bonus sticks in the new molded-in holders on both the port and starboard trays. I’m not sure how long these things are, but my 9 footers fit in with no trouble. Just take it slow and easy when inserting and extracting — get in a hurry and you’ll jack up some rod eyes like I did one day when we came around a corner and saw kings rolling everywhere!

Both the front and rear seat benches have adjustment sliders to help balance out your weight. The old system, if I recall, was more of a three-hole deadbolt type of deal, so you have finer control with this slider. Simply turn the screw to loosen and put it in place. The one thing that was a bit of a pain was I seemed to always unscrew the bolt too much and then would have to spend a few minutes fumbling to get it back in the hole.

You can get a Clacka outfitted with a few different anchor configurations. This time around, I went with the foot release pedal on the floor system. This little dude allows you to drop the anchor with your foot so you can keep your hands on the oars, which is a nice feature when you’re anchoring in hot water. To pull the pick, simply pull the line straight up between your knees. Overall, I like the system, but may end up changing it because I will add a kicker motor to the boat at some point, which I can’t do at the moment because the anchor bracket is positioned smack in the middle of the transom cutout.

Clackacraft has made the foot brace more adjustable than it used to be, but I wish it were wider. When I get into some ugly water, I typically have my feet spread about shoulder width apart, not close together like this brace forces me to do. Feet together feels kinda dainty instead of powerful…

With the sliding benches and three-position oar locks, the 16SSG should fit rowers of all sizes and shapes.

I also added a third seat so I could run three guys across the front for plug pulling or two up front and one behind for side-drifting…

In my old model, water would collect in the bow storage compartment (mostly from post-fishing wash-downs) and there wasn’t any way for it to drain back into the boat. In those days, I simply drilled a couple holes, but they’d eventually clog with dirt and my gear up front would end up sitting in water. Clacka has fixed that problem with the newer boats with this no-clog scupper that allows water to immediately flow back onto the floor. A nice, smart fix…

Okay, and so on to perhaps my biggest complaint. I guess if this is the worst thing I can come up with, Calackacraft is doing a pretty damn good job, but here we go anyway. When I tilt the boat up to rinse and drain it, the aft storage compartment fills up with water and sand. When the main hull drains, I have to drop the boat back level again so the rear box can drain and then I have to tilt the boat back up on its end again…yet I always end up with a little water on the floor (which the optional floor mats can be very helpful with). My major design change here would be to enclose the back seat box with a watertight hatch door…

Bottom & Sides

Flip a new Clackacraft over and you’ll see what amounts to a pretty unique bottom. Here’s the little blurb about it from their website that describes the features better than I can…

Starting with the dimpled bottom, I guess the basic gist is there’s less friction over a dimpled surface than a smooth one (that’s why golf balls aren’t smooth), so there’s less drag and more lift. I found that the stopping time didn’t seem any better than a normal bottom, but once I got the boat stopped, it took very little effort to hold in place. In fact in some cases, i actually occasionally had to dig the oars into the current to get her to go downstream. I’m not sure how to describe it, but I can feel the water flowing under and past the hull better in this boat than in previous vessels.

Clackacraft says its tunnel hull and side water tracking channels act as reverse keels, which direct the water straight, keeping the boat in line, without the liability of a square chine. I must admit, initially I wasn’t sure if Clacka was blowing a little smoke up my drain ports or what, but this baby tracks as straight as an arrow. On a choppy steelhead flat, I did a little test. With plugs out, I lifted the oars out of the water and counted to ten before the nose would start to turn. And on anchor, there’s absolutely no swing.

The rounded chines are also pretty cool. Boily back eddies coming off steep riffles felt a lot less grabby than in a square chined drifter.

Dimples and channels aside, the true value of a glass hull is it’s extremely slippery compared to aluminum. So slick in fact, that when I would pull over on a gravel bar to let the dudes out for a shore break, somebody would always have to be on boat detail to keep it from sliding right down the bank and into the middle of the creek. When you’re in a bony stretch of river, the ability slide off boulders is huge.

You definitely don't want to stick to any rocks in here!

Glass is also quieter than aluminum and cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Additionally, is doesn’t oxidize so the paint job looks new for a lot longer than metal or wood.

So, the $25,000 question (or about $8K retail, actually) is how tough is the bottom? Can you really “Fear No Rock?” Well, yes and no. The boats come with a 100 year guarantee against bottom punctures and leaks, so obviously Clackacraft feels pretty strongly that you’re not going to poke a hole in your boat. And you can see why, when you consider the bottoms are nearly 1/2 inch thick and made of what looks to be about 12 layers of glass. This baby is burly and you’d have to do something pretty spectacular to make her leak.

The downside to a glass bottom is you’re going to scratch up your gel coat eventually. Since I was running a tight, rocky canyon,I put a few chine dings in the thing which, though a little unsightly, are purely cosmetic…and easily fixed. So, there are a couple rocks in the Gorge that I fear, but not in a boat-destroying kind of way. Ouchies like this probably would have dented a metal boat.

The 23-inch side height of the boat makes for a little wetter ride in big water than boats I’ve owned in the past, but the lower profile is a plus in the wind. If you’re going to do a lot of gnarly stuff, Clacka now makes a highside model, which I would consider next time (though it would be harder for the older guys to get in and out of). The rolled gunwales did kick a lot of water back where it belonged, though…

Final Impressions

Well, what really matters when you get a new boat is: does the thing catch fish? I’m happy to report that the 16SSG has yet to skunk (knock on gel coat!).

But seriously, I was quite impressed overall with the boat. Of course, there’s no one perfect boat and as I noted earlier, there are a couple little things here and there that I’d change. But the long and short of it, I think the Clacka is a very user-friendly rig that fishes well, rows like no other and looks very nice. They also apparently have a very high resale value, which is a plus and you can’t beat the Clackacraft customer service.

Bottom line: you don’t stick around the industry for nearly 40 years by building anything but a quality product…the Clacka 16SSG is a damn fine boat that comes highly recommended on this end.

Ah, ain't she pretty?

Quite contrary to what my wife contends, a guy can’t have too many boats! After all, there’s no one perfect vessel. I mean, you’ve got to have the jet for running shallow rivers…then something that can handle a little chop out on the bay. Well, then, of course you’ll need to have some weather protection when you’re running offshore and then…

See what I mean? Anyway, here’s my current list of 5 boats you just can’t live without…

Maritime 23 Voyager

Okay, so the MSkiff Voyager 23 would be the perfect all-around rig for bay halibut, salmon (when they come back), rockfish, close to home tuna… and would even make a good Lake Tahoe jig boat! I also love the fact that you can duck out of the weather…a very nice feature.

Maritime Boats

2410 Bay Ranger

Fishing the big waters of the California Delta, I love the idea of being able to move around to distant spots quickly — like I see the guys in the bass boats do. I also like how much deck space and fishing room bass boats have…However, I don’t want to be anywhere near one of those low-sided affairs when the wind kicks up and the tide starts running against it. Luckily, Ranger has come up with the perfect solution: The Bay Boat!

Ranger Boats

Willie Predator

While all that deep water stuff is great, I still have a tough time finding anything cooler than running up a wild river…going 30 mph in 3 inches of water. And really the only way to do river fishing right is to fish out of a tiller boat like Willie’s 23′ 6″ Predator. It’s nothing but open fishing room!

Willie Boats

FishRite

What’s that you say? You can’t decide if you’d rather have a jet for river running or a prop for the lakes and saltwater? Well, the good news is you don’t have to! FishRite’s 21-foot Explorer Outboard Jet/Pro combo is just the ticket! In an hour’s time you can switch out the lower end and transform this thing from an offshore salmon troller to an in-river side-drifter!

FishRite Boats

Klamath Swimbait Boat

Then, when I don’t feel like burning a bunch of fuel and just want to get out for a quick and easy day of striper or smallmouth fishing, I’d bust this sweet little number…

Klamath Boats

I know I said these are the 5 boats I can’t live without, but actually, there’s one more that I’d drop ‘em all for…

John St. John loaded the Remington .12-gauge with 3-inch Magnum No. 2’s and, from 20 feet, pumped two rounds into the port side of the driftboat’s aft quarter. The boat’s tough core absorbed the pellets and not a single one passed through.

Not satisfied, St. John then set the shotgun down and went to work on the boat with a chainsaw. In a few moments of determined cutting, he liberated the aft end of the vessel — just behind the rower’s seat – from the bow section. He then loaded the now two-piece boat onto a trailer and drove it down to the river and hopped aboard. Amazingly, it floated high and dry as if nothing had ever happened.

Was this the work of a maniacal sociopath? A random act of violence? Had the owner of the boat stolen St. John’s girlfriend?

Nah, it was all to show off how indestructible St. John’s boats are. You see, he’s the owner, mastermind and all-around Big Enchilada of Hog Island Boat Works in Steamboat Springs, CO. Since he opened the doors of his small company 5 years ago, St. John has turned the driftboat industry on its ear.

Of metal, wood and glass

Drift boats or dories have long been the boats of choice of anglers on the rocky, white-water streams of the West. The earliest models were made of wood and though quiet and aesthetically very pleasing, they required constant maintenance. Then manufactures started producing driftboats made of aluminum and fiberglass. Both styles are incredibly tough and superior to wood in many ways, but not without issues of their own.

Nice lines!

The biggest problem with metal boats is they are super “sticky” or “grabby,” which means they don’t slide well over shallow bars or through boulder gardens — a rear problem if you’re running low water. Aluminum boats are also very noisy – when somebody hits a rock three miles upriver in one, you’re going to hear it. They’re also very hot to the touch in the summer and cold in the winter.

Glass driftboats are quiet, infinitely more slippery, cooler in the summer and warmer in cold weather, but if you use one enough, you’re invariably going to have to bust out the fiberglass cloth and resin and get busy with repairs from time to time.

And then there’s the whole sinking issue. Fill a metal, wood or glass boat full of water and she’s going to the bottom.

Best of all worlds

Drift boat buyers have long thought that it would be great if there was a boat that integrated the best features of all three hull materials into one. It would make picking a boat so much easier. Well, enter St. John’s Hog Island driftboats, which seem to be the perfect hybrids.

Interestingly, St. John’s boat building process doesn’t involve a single nail, weld or layer of glass – instead, he rotational molds his boats, incorporating a two-part process that uses two types of high-density linear polyethylene resin. In the most basic of terms, the end product is a boat hull that has two tough and rigid outer skins with a layer of closed cell foam sandwiched in between.

Cross section of a Hog

As St. John proved, they’re literally bulletproof and will float even if – God forbid – sawed in half. In fact, Hog Island is the only drift boat manufacturer certified by the U.S. Coast Guard for floatation. In 2006, the Coast Guard did a swamp test on the boat, first drilling multiple holes in it and then they submerged it with 5,500 pounds of iron on the deck for 18 hours. At the end of the test, the drifter popped right back up.

Career Change

In a previous life, St. John was a whitewater guide across the West (including the South Fork American at Coloma) and furniture maker. Just prior to starting Hog Island Boat Works, he was going start manufacturing zip-up waders but then a call from his brother changed his career path forever.

“My bother was in the roto-molding business and had been asked by some other drift boat manufacturers to look into producing a boat with this process,” he says. “Luckily, he called me first and I just went for it.”

What’s in a name?

As for the name of St. John’s company, it’s a nod a place near and dear to his heart. Hog Island is a little homestead on the Snake River south of Jackson, Wyoming.

“I guided and fished there for eight years when I was young, dumb and living in a tent,” he says.

You can check out St. John’s handiwork at: Hog Island Boatworks. Or stop by the shop next time you’re in Steamboat Springs. He’s the one with the shotgun and chainsaw…