I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a raft since my Avon Redshank was new in 1980.
I would love to do several multi-day fishing trips from my home in Anchorage. If the intention is to use the raft as a fishing/camping tool do you ignore the height and sizing recommendations. I want to be comfortable in the raft and on shore.
If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. I haven’t bought one yet, but I still have my dividend from last fall.
Not fished from a raft, although we use them on our backcountry fishing trips to NZ for getting back downstream at the end of a day’s flyfishing, or out from the river at the end of the trip. Depends a bit on what sort of fishing you are planning to do. I suggest you keep to the size recommendations - it’s nice to have your feet against the bow, so you can push yourself back onto the seat, as you tend to slip forwards a bit off the seat in use. Can’t see any purpose in having a bigger boat myself. You’d want to be pretty careful not to stick a big hook in it though! They are extremely robust high quality boats, worth every cent.
Vaughn – I float and fish the Upper Kenai in my Dory every now and then. It’s a good little fishing boat but you feel like you’re in a smart car on a freeway of SUVs with all the giant catarafts all around you. You can’t stop in the middle of the river and fish like you can with a drift boat but it’s easy enough to pull off and fish all the normal spots. Being able to throw the boat in a pack and hitchhike back to the Russian Ferry without having to deal with a shuttle and big raft is nice. The Dory is a tad larger and heavier than the other boats – but if you’re just floating Class I - II ripples it’s fine and the extra room for gear makes it fairly roomy.
What approach do you use when you are fishing a river and hook a large fish while in the raft? If you just concentrate on fighting the fish, you might get drifted into a strainer or hole. If you lower a bag with a rock in it for an anchor, you might get swamped. If you jam your fishing rod into your PFD and paddle to shore, you might loose the fish. It appears to me that there is no ideal solution, but I would like some input on what would be the better solution.
Hi. I am ordering a dory this weekend and I wondering about the possibilety to mount a fishingrod holder? In this picture: http://www.alpackaraft.com/gallery/index.cfm?fa=gallery-detail&photo=167&categoryid=12 It looks like a rod holder on the blue boat behind the seat? Since my usage of the boat will be mostly trolling on pretty still water, I am also thinking of extending the alu frame, somthing like a “U” from the alu frame thats goes across the boat to the back to rest on the boat? Does somebody think somthing about this? Maybe this is a idea for Alpacka? Since it is a lot og things, like fishfinders, navigation, rodholders and downriggers that is easy to attach to rails. Since I haven’t tested the boat yet, it may be a dumb suggestion, since the rod’s may be out of reach.
I have done a fair amount of ocean, lake, and river fishing with my Alpacka. Bigger fish in a lake or ocean aren’t a problem, as long as they don’t have big spines… I know that Hig and Erin have punched more than one rockfish spine hole in their boats. One of the issues that I have is the lack of keel while spinfishing, as you retrieve your line the boat spins in circles. I haven’t found a solution to this, and am curious if anyone has.