1. You can fish more effectively as you drift along. Fishing from a toon isn't easy, especially on fast, rocky rivers. Every time you have to grab the oars, your presentation suffers. Having an oar monkey in a db allows the front-seaters to probe all the water you drift by more effectively.

2. DB's are way easier to pull plugs with. Toons don't like holding a straight line very well, so you're constantly making adjustments with the oars to keep it going down the slot without weaving all over. Only a concern if you pull plugs and/or divers and I usually do neither.

3. DB's don't have tubes that could spring a leak. You can sink a db, or bust one open, but you're not going to have a tube go flat on you because you drug it across something sharp at the put-in.

4. You can take the kitchen sink with you in a db. You have limited storage space on the smaller toons like the Steelheader or Osprey.

But you can't disassemble a db, you can't just toss one off the side of the road in most places, and you depend more on developed access. And they cost more if you look at new/new or used/used.

There's pluses to both and minuses to both. Kind of a hard decision to make, really.