Originally Posted By: The Catcherman
Danno84,

Good post, nice to see some true WW knowledge come to the thread. One problem with Maravia, Hyside, Sotar, Aire is they don't make smaller pontoons, of which the original post was pertaining to. Sotar is the only one even close with their 11 footers that retail for $2275 just for the pontoons, no frame (they do have deals sometimes). Most fishers don't need that quality of pontoon for fishing applications. JPW offers a great US made pontoon that is reasonable and that is why I mentioned it in my earlier post. Not even Saturn offers 9, 10, or 12 foot pontoons so everyone is pretty much stuck with Maxxon or JPW at the smaller size, which is why Skookum, Bad Cat, Water Ready, and yes, even those crazy loons at Catchercraft all use Maxxon or JPW pontoons in the smaller boats.

And just to confirm, I'm not suggesting that NRS frames are junk in anyway...but the fact is we are repairing 3 cross members right now.




It seems to me my boat is riding on a set of Canyon 10'6 cat tubes so there are other options for smaller pontoons that are US made. I have the urethane coated bottom on my tubes and it is about as tough as it comes for fishing applications and they had about 8 color combos and built them to the color I wanted.

I looked into the jacks but they had a terrible shape and were the same old ugly blue color as the maxxon, chafes were extra and they were only 35oz fabric. That blue radiates on the water when the sun hits it.

I run a standard driftboat jam cleat on my cat and have never had a problem, the new thing is scare people into a lee lock, I wonder how many have actually been hurt because of a jam cleat that is basically on every drift boat out there for the last 20 years.