Wooden Drift Boats

If you wanted to be a float fishing guide in the Southeast in the early nineties you had a problem..there were no driftboats in the South. Sure you could get yourself a whitewater raft and fashion some sort of fishing frame but they were the same uncomfortable line snaggers they are now. There were some manufacturers making driftboats out of aluminum or fiberglass, Clackacraft, Lavro,and Willys to name a few, but having them shipped here was almost as expensive as buying the boat in the first place.

While pondering this dilemma I heard about an outfitter on the Hiwassee river whCpt.Gary and his boat today..20 years old and over 1400 trips later. A testament to the durability of a finely crafted wood boat!!o built his own drift boat out of marine plywood, Gary Taylor of Dry Flyer Outfitters, so I drove up there to take a look. Gary was on his way out to run a trip but I got my first look at a wood McKenzie boat and it was love at first sight! It was a killer shade of green with natural finished wood on the inside and it looked like you could catch fish out of it all damn day! Gary did of course, which was why he was the guy everybody was chasing in those days, but I digress. I found an ad in the back of Fly Fisherman magazine for wooden drift boat kits, practically sold a kidney to come up with the cash, placed my order and I was off to the races! All these years later I've owned half a dozen rafts, two Hydes, two Clackacrafts, and a Yellowstone drifter, but I've never forgotten that feeling of climbing into that old wood boat to begin a days fishing. The smell of the varnish, the absolutely right feeling of wood on water, and the quiet way it glided down the river.

Wooden drift boats like fly fishing, have come a long way since those days. There are some very innovative folks out there building wood boats with plastic core and kevlar bottoms, better epoxys and coatings are making them more durable than ever, and more beautiful. One of the leaders in that area is a guy named Jason Cajune, his company Montana boat builders turned out some of the finest custom driftboats ever to hit the water. I never could come up with the funds to buy one outright but I used to go to his site and just ogle the pictures. He's on his own now, a retiree from the rat race it seems, but you owe it to yourself to check out his site if you are interested in wooden boats. Cajune boats. There is also another great site by a guy named Sandy Pittendrigh with some very good "how to" information on building your own wood boat, Montana riverboats. Both these guys sell plans and use the stitch and glue method of building which is the most durable and leak proof method.

I recently rowed this boat built by Win Winegar of Nashville on a Jason Cajune design.These days fiberglass boats dominate the market, for good reason. They are durable, reasonably quiet, and easily shipped on a semi truck for a modest cost. If you go to any trout river in the Southeast you will see one, probably several, they have become common place, and you almost never get stopped at grocery stores or gas stations to answer questions about them anymore. No one comes over to stare at them at boat ramps or rolls down the window on the interstate to ask what kind of boat that is. But you will with a wood boat, and that's the point, just like when the first one rolled out of the saw mills on the McKenzie river in Oregon, all the way back to the banks dorys they were patterned after, wood drift boats draw a crowd, and they always will.