Special Report: Tampa Boat Show

(Normally I wont be posting on weekends but I had to because when the muse calls you just have to go with it.)

Well, couldn't go fishing because the schedule was too hectic, so I figured I could squeeze in an hour or so at the boat show downtown. I can do these things pretty quickly because I am usually looking for something in particular and don't even bother to waste time drooling over the high dollar crap I know I will never be able to afford unless I win the lotto...two or three times...

So being the inshore/flats guy that I am I was pretty much concentrating on the flats boats. I kinda want something that will allow me to go to the same areas as the Hotrod but allow me to take two or three anglers instead of just one and still fit in the garage.
Of course I expected the pickins to be a little slim since that is a fairly small niche in the fishing segment but I found a couple. Of course Family Boating was there with there Mavericks and Hewes lines. I liked the HPX but it wasn't the one I wanted to see. It was a 17' and I wanted to see the 15'. My favorite boat in that area was the Hewes 16' Redfisher. Looked like a decent deal too. Of course I would have had to add a few things and then it wouldn't have been much of a deal anymore...lol

I'll tell you though there was another boat that I had not seen before except for in pictures and the pictures don't do it any justice at all. It wont fit in my garage so I wont even consider it but the Maverick Master Angler 21' was a very nice looking boat.

Shearwater had 4 nice boats there. 2 flats boats that pretty much made me drool even though they were way to big for my garage...and a pair of bay boats that were super nice too. Price? If you have to ask, then you cant afford it.

I finally got to see all the ranger boats. They have 4 boats that meet all my criteria too. The Banshee, Ghost and Phantom. The Banshee they had on display at the show had some kind of midget half tower looking thing on it. I didn't really like the look of it but I'm no fool, I'll take functionality over looks any day, so I wont comment negatively on it until I try it. The Ghost and Phantom boats were very nice looking boats. Much more 'finished' than the Banshee which looked much more like a working boat. If I had one of them I would be way to anal retentive about keeping them nice and shiny to actually enjoy them I think. But that pretty much goes for any new boat that costs upwards of $25K. And believe me $25K is not even chump change when looking at the cost of new boats.

There were a few other boats that I saw that might have fit my parameters but they didn't do much for me either visually or from their reputations so although I did look, I didn't spend much time on them.
I did see one boat though that caught my fancy. It was a 16' boat it had almost a 7ft beam, it looked like it would run fairly skinny and my wife even liked it because it was yellow and had seat cushions...
It was the 1600 Fly Caster by Famous Craft. It was a nice looking little boat, with plenty of room for 3 people. I would definitely like to give it another look. Supposedly it drafts 7 - 9 inches and had a 90hp Yamaha with a manual jack plate. It was just begging me to take it home and with a show price of less than $16K I almost fell for it...Of course the trailer wasn't included and that would have been another $1800 and I could tell right off the bat that I would have to add some trim tabs, and a push pole to go with the poling platform. I am so glad I left my credit card at home...