Input Wanted for New Boat

R

Ron Cook

New member
Our company (Bonefish Boatworks) has just produced a prototype intended as an all season, multi-purpose boat (Rocky Creek T18'). It's a tunnel hull fiberglass boat designed for fresh water fishing, saltwater fishing, bow fishing, gigging, shrimping, bully netting and hunting. The only problem is, we know a fair amount about most of these topics...but not as much about duck hunting (There's only a handful of duck hunters here in Tampa Bay). We would sincerely appreciate input from forum members on how we can improve upon this boat. This is a link to photographs of the boat: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.499374150110245.1073741827.207465879301075&type=3, and this is a link showing the boat running in ankle deep water: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=392931610804200#!/photo.php?v=392931610804200.
The interior of the boat is roomy and coated in truck bed liner for durability and sound deadening. It has a poling platform, an elevated driving station (to cut through glare on the water) and five LED lights around the bow rail for gigging, bully netting and bow fishing at night. The boat uses push poles in "Hold My Pole" anchor sleeves both front and rear to stake out/anchor. Rope can be run between the two push poles when anchored to support a hunting blind covering the entire boat. Your input and critical comments are sincerely welcomed. Thank you.
View attachment 2013-02-27 15.39.03 (10%).jpg
 
I like the wide-open interior. But the helm and poling station would be way to high to hide when it comes to duck hunting. A tiller or standard low helm version would be better for duck hunting.
 
Thanks guys. We really appreciate the input. We made a similar post on several other forum sites. The consenus is that, if used for duck hunting, the boat is best suited for navigable bodies of water (canals, lakes, rivers and bays). While the boat can take stump jumping, that's probably best left to metal boats.
 
Funny...now that I move back north someone puts out a boat in the right colors!...;-) By the way when I lived in Tampa and was looking, I checked out your boats. I was very impressed. Unforunatley I just wasn't in the new boat market. It would be really cool to have the poling platform pinned for easy removal when using as a duck boat. The elevated steering would also hamper using the boat with a duck blind but I'll bet some guys would love it hunting around the mangroves in shallow water.

There are more duck hunters in the Tampa area than you might expect. If you haven't you should post on the United Waterfowlers of Florida site and ask your questions. John Hitchcock is the president over there as well as a member here. You might PM him and ask. I'm sure those guys can help with some answers for your region.
 
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