Six Inches from Manhood: Kayak Fishing for Muskie

Stories

Photos this page: Scott MacGregor — Six Inches from Manhood: Kayak Fishing for Muskie

I stumped upon a photo of Vic Van Wie and his kayak-fishing world-record 256-pound thresher shark while making some final online arrangements for my first kayak-fishing trip.

Here’s a guy in a T-shirt, surf trunks and sandals kneeling beside a 12-foot kayak and an 11-foot fish. Below the photo he recounts the catch: “The thresher shark hit about 20 minutes after I started soaking a live mackerel. He ripped off all 80 yards of mono top-shot and was into the Spectra backing within a few seconds. Even with my bait buck- et in the water [used as a sea anchor] I was still getting pulled at a pretty good clip. After about an hour and a half it turned into a standoff with him about 20–30 feet below the kayak. For another half an hour we played tug of war.”

When he finally landed the shark a kayak-fishing buddy named Rhino grabbed the leader and then “beat it upside the head” until it stopped thrashing.

I don’t even like putting a worm on my hook, let alone dragging a 256- pound shark across my kayak.

I’d committed to this article on kayak fishing and after reading about the monsters being caught off the coast of California I knew I couldn’t just spend a day filling a pail with panfry sunfish if it was going to be a good story.

The biggest, meanest fish I’d be able to find in the freshwater waterways of Ontario—the one closest to Vic’s thresher shark—is the muskellunge, or muskie. If you’re a serious muskie hunter (you apparently hunt, not fish, for muskie) you just call them ‘skies, as in, “Hey, wanna go on a three-day whitewater kayak-fishing trip in November down a class III–IV river hunting for ‘skies?”

It was the perfect combination of all things you never consider doing. So much so that every man I baited with the idea was immediately hooked, and every wife of those men thought we were nuts.

Good kayaking friends who’d never mentioned fishing before came out of their gear closets with Old Pal tackle boxes, dusty bamboo rods and reels spewing nests of 20-year-old line. And real fishermen, guys who’d usually motor not paddle, like my dad who doesn’t kayak and can’t swim, also wanted to go on the trip.

It’s this mass appeal that has the kayak-fishing segment of the paddlesports industry growing faster than a fisherman’s tale after a couple of Coors. And the kayak manufacturers are not letting this one get way.

The ability to draw from the massive pool of fishers and paddlers is the reason fishing kayaks are the current leader of kayak industry sales. Leisure Trends, a market research group in Colorado, states that more than 81 million people in the U.S. fished at least once in the last three years. Toss in the 3.9 million who tried kayaking… and kayak fishing is poised to land some trophy fish and net huge sales revenues.

The only pictures of kayak fishing I had ever seen were much like the picture of Vic Van Wie—a shining sun and a guy in surf shorts with flip-flopped feet dan- gling over the kayak in clear blue salt water. This wasn’t the fishing I knew. The fishermen looked more worried about heat stroke than hypothermia; they were wearing sun hats, not tuques (woolly Canadian fishing headgear). Kayak fishing above the 46th parallel in November was going to be different.

I’d never heard of anyone running class IV whitewater and fishing the sections between the rapids in sit-on- top fishing kayaks. Nor had anyone I knew considered doing a multi-day trip with sit-on-tops. But that’s what we had to do to fish the Petawawa River, one of Canada’s classic canoe tripping routes (and a famous muskie hunting grounds). Besides, I’ve come to realize things that wives think are crazy are usually what make for a good fishing story.

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The fall is the time to hunt muskie. As the lakes and rivers around the Great Lakes cool, the muskies’ internal alarm goes off and they move from their deep summer hangouts to shallow waters where they start chowing down on whatever they can find in order to store reserves for the long, cold winter ahead. As the water cools and the leaves change colour during the latter part of September and early October the muskie lurk in one to two feet of water amid the lily pads and rushes, along- side logs and stumps. Research indi- cates that 4 to10 degrees is the optimum water temperature (for the feeding muskie, not sit-on-top kayak fisher- men).

Dangling your toes over the edge of your kayak looks very appealing in photographs but doing so in muskie territory is not only chilly, but can be risky.

Muskie are known to grow to almost 70 pounds and up to five feet long and sometimes eat mice, ducklings and muskrats; they’ve been known to order take-out that’s up to 45 per cent of their own length and sometimes die trying— muskie have been found dead with their last meal lodged down their throats. A true case of one’s eyes being bigger than his stomach.

Dan Droessler was dangling a leg over his canoe in Iowa County, Wisconsin, when a 36- inch muskie decided it looked pretty tasty. When he yanked his foot out of the water the muskie let go and fell into Dan’s canoe. According to Randy Rosslin, a local park war- den, Droessler and the fish both went to the emergency room where he (not the fish)

received 60 stitches. Rosslin took possession of the muskie, explaining, “It’s not a legal size for one thing, and it’s not a legal way to catch fish—with your foot.” Droessler wasn’t charged for illegal fishing but failed to see any humour in the ordeal. “I don’t think it’s funny at all,” he later told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Muskie experts, both fishermen and biologists, agree that when one consid- ers the amount of time humans and muskies share the same water, such attacks are very rare. One report even points out that being chomped by a muskie is even less common, and cer- tainly less consequential, than being struck by lightning. Maybe so, however, I think dragging an angry 30-pound lightning bolt across my lap might be bringing up the otherwise low chances.

Paddling the Lake Tavers to McManus Lake section of the Petawawa River typically fills the better part of three days paddling and two nights camping. To fish this stretch of river in the same length of time we were constantly on the move, trolling mostly with our rods stuffed in the holders. We were paddling at what we hoped was the speed that would entice lurking muskellunge to ambush our trailing lures.

It was close to freezing during the nights and in the mornings we danced around drinking coffee, trying to avoid crawling back into our drysuits.

Being so late in the fall, dawn didn’t arrive until after seven, so we weren’t on the water until mid-morning. We needed to make time to reach our next campsite before dark.

The Algonquin Park map told me we were just below Little Thompson rapids and my Lowrance X67e sonar indicated that I was in about 15 feet of water but that I had just passed a grassy shoal that rose to only four feet below the surface. The edges of the river were filled with grasses and lily pads that grew out toward the centre. The water was dark and looked cold. It was raining, again.

When my rod bent double and my reel began dumping line I swore out loud for no one to hear. Everyone else was almost out of sight in the misty fog downstream. The kayak spun backward like it had yesterday each time I’d hooked a rocky shoal, reed bed or sunken log. Too lazy to paddle back upriver I tightened my drag, hauled on the 25-pound test line and pulled against the snag, dragging my fully loaded kayak back upriver, against the sleepy current.

When the line was taut directly below me, my colour LCD screen indicated 10 feet of water—I knew my floating blue jointed Rapala must have missed the shoal and hooked a submerged tree instead. I slowly dragged the log to the surface, reeling in the slack I created with each haul. Frustrated by being left behind, I glanced downstream and didn’t notice the log coming to the surface.

Six inches from my leg was my Rapala, trapped inside a mouth full of daggers, and one dark eye.

“JESUS…”

My startled yell set him off and he was gone deep below the boat. My rod bent completely around under the boat, and the same tension on my reel that I used to drag the kayak upstream was now spooling off line like dental floss in the hands of a savage hygienist.

I kept trying to get my rod on the same side as the fish, but no sooner would I get it around the bow than he’d change direction below me and spin the boat again.

“FISH ON, GET THE NET!” I screamed into the fog.

Now completely spooked, the muskie wasn’t at all interested in getting near the surface or my mango kayak. I finally tightened the drag a few more clicks and was able to put some line back on the reel and slowly bring him to the edge of the boat.

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We had figured out a technique with the three ‘skies we’d landed yesterday that was much the same as the one Vic and Rhino used to land the shark, without beating it upside the head. Landing a muskie in fishing kayaks is a two-person job. The assistant floats up beside the fisher with the net or just a spare set of hands and scoops the fish out of the water.

With my fish now at the surface and my helpers paddling like mad, but still hundreds of metres away, I was faced with landing this monster myself.

I’d read that muskie teeth aren’t like those of sharks or piranhas, the purpose of which is shearing flesh. Muskie teeth are extremely sharp and numerous but used only for holding on to their slippery prey. Knowing this didn’t make me any more enthusiastic about grabbing the leader and dragging the meanest of all freshwater fish onto my lap.

I had him to the surface beside the kayak a couple of times. He was easily the length of my legs, which I figured I’d use to pin him to the deck. Grabbing the leader I lifted his flat ugly head out of the water.

Staring into his dark, evil muskie eyes I considered my options.

Landing the largest fish out of the Petawawa River, maybe even Ontario, would certainly increase my macho angling status in tackle shops around the world and doing so solo in a fishing kayak would certainly add to the lore. I’d be famous. I’d never have to buy drinks in marina bars; I’d have my own TV show and people would read about me online, like I had read about Vic Van Wie and his world-record thresher shark.

On the other hand, I thought of poor Dan Droessler and his leg with 60 stitches. His muskie hangs in the hospital ER reception area in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, with a sign under it that says, “Man-eating fish.” I realized that being admitted to the hospital with a pissed off muskel-lunge latched to my genitals would also make me famous but do nothing for my angling (or manly) reputation.

I gently lowered my muskie back into the water and opened the bail on my reel giving him all the line he wanted. About 30 feet away he hit the surface, shook the hook at me and was gone.

When the guys finally arrived with the net, I was reeling in the last few feet of line and my scarred blue Rapala. They asked what happened.

“Just snagged on a log,” I explained.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Photography Skills: Shooting the Breeze

Photo: Rick Matthews — Photography Skills: Shooting the Breeze

It’s the sixth day of my Newfoundland search for icebergs. Six days of horizontal rain, two-degree temperatures, 60-kilometre winds and thundering surf. In six days I have yet to unload a boat or camera.

The locals call it capelin weather; I call it hell.

Yet as I drive into the town Twillingate, I realize the spirit and warmth of the people in this small town are seeping bones. I’m absorbing their accepting “see what tomorrow will bring” attitude—something totally out of character for me.

My serenity also stems from the knowledge that my local sanctuary, the Internet café, had opened at 7 a.m. and my apple pie and hot coffee were waiting.

I had come to meet the locals while drying out cameras and body day after day here. They shared their stories with me, stories about depleted fish stocks and how the young people were still leaving, but also about how things were looking better for tourism with the whale watching and birds and so on.

Over various cups of tea I was told the history of the area: about the heyday of the fishery when 100 schooners would crowd the tiny harbour to unload countless tons of cod; about the colourful house on the hill that was towed across the frozen bay by several hundred townsfolk, and of the polar bear who drifted into the harbour on the winter ice and wouldn’t leave.

Unable to paddle, I had to be creative. My routine changed. I’d get up before sunrise and drive around the back bays and fishing villages searching for icebergs and scenic backdrops. I set up boats and cameras and took shots around lobster pots, fishing stages, and boats—images that were not so much about kayaks and paddling but about weather, landscape and life on the Rock. Then I’d retreat to the café to dry out and download and edit images.

I finally abandoned my leaky tent and rented a small cabin on the water’s edge in Little Harbour.

It was one evening at dusk just before the fog rolled in when, through my binoculars, I spotted an iceberg, miles out to sea on the horizon. When seconds later it had evaporated in the fog, I ques- tioned if it really was there or if seven days of eyestrain in the fog was playing tricks on me.

The next morning, after a late evening of sampling the local rum with new friends, I pulled back the curtain and there it was, like a Hollywood prop sitting right there in the harbour. And yet another miracle, the sun was shining. I ran outside barefoot and shirtless with my camera firing away as if a thousand tonnes of ice were going to disappear in minutes.

A sense of urgency set in. I drove quickly into town to look for volunteers to paddle boats. A few local “lads” enlisted and we set out toward the grounded berg.

I soon realized that the main berg was still too exposed to the open seas to approach it with inexperi- enced paddlers. However, there were plenty of house-sized chunks of iceberg drifting in the bay.

What quickly became more interesting than the ice was the joy and curiosity on the faces of the paddlers.

Men that had grown up and worked on and around the sea all their lives became excited young children discovering a new toy. I stopped shooting and simply watched as they circled the ice and spontaneously dashed off in mad sprints and chases. Looks of astonishment took hold as they realized how fast they could go under their own power.

When I asked what they thought of the boats the answers came as if in a chorus, “It’s so quiet.”

All their lives on the water had been spent with the constant drone of a labouring motor. They hadn’t experienced the quiet and solitude of kayaking or sensed the power and independence of being self-propelled.

I didn’t take a lot of photos that first day on the water, I spent more of my time soaking up the fun that these guys were having.

I recalled the renowned photographer Freeman Patterson saying good photography is applying the “art of seeing.” But I realized photography is equally a process of learning the “art of connecting” with the landscape, and more importantly, the people within that landscape.

The weather changed, the seas calmed (slightly) and we got out more and more in the boats. The images that I had envisioned, that I had frantically chased for days unfolded before me. My wonder grew daily as these huge ice cas- tles dripped, broke up and changed shape. They had travelled thousands of kilometres from Greenland on the Labrador Current to die a slow death on the shores of Newfoundland. They formed tall pinnacles and small inner ponds, blue and green veins of ice revealing themselves.

As the weeks passed I ended up getting the shots I had hoped for but I don’t need any photographs to remember that first day on the water. I still feel a certain warmth inside knowing that I had given something back to these new friends who had sheltered and adopted me for several weeks while the capelin weather blew.

Rick Matthews is a retired steelworker and photographer with some time to kill.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Rock the Boat: Safety for Sale, While Supplies Last

Stories

Illustration: Lorenzo Del Bianco — Rock the Boat: Safety for Sale, While Supplies Last

“Which one do you do?

With the sling or without?

Are you on your back, or lying on your belly?

Do you inflate it first or after?”

Initially, it sounds like this might be interesting kinky talk. But no, it’s sea kayak rescues again. Sea kayakers lust after safety. Rescues are the hottest topic of sea kayaking conversation by a nautical mile. The number of different techniques is astounding.

Despite all the safety talk, sea kayakers often have surprisingly modest skills, eschewing an emphasis on judgment, conditioning and strong technique in favour of amassing safety gear and study- ing a near endless litany of rescue manoeuvres.

Safety, apparently, has nothing to do with good judgment or paddling skills. It’s all about rescues and rescue gear.

From the sounds of it, the best way for me to be safe is to cover every inch of my kayak deck with a sea of “international orange” rescue equipment.

Is it me, or does this seem like slamming the aquarium door after the sea horse has already escaped?

I’d rather invest my time practicing the avoidance of calamities rather than perfecting 20 different rescues to deal with disaster after it has occurred. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth 40 pounds of paddle floats.

Flares, floats, slings, signals, radar reflectors, radios, compasses and GPS units don’t, themselves, actually keep us safe. Rescue gear doesn’t save people—people armed with knowledge and forethought save people—often themselves.

Deep down, sea kayakers know this. After all, we are typically intelligent, older, post-secondary-educated pro- fessionals, not 20-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears whitewater punks (who, despite their cockiness, can actually brace and roll in rough conditions).

No, sea kayakers are mature. They live well and reside in desirable neighbourhoods. They drive Volvos and drink mocha-frappuccinos produced by environmentally conscious coffee-roasting companies. Sea kayakers have dinner reservations at Le Jardin and opera tickets for next week. Their lives are good. They should be highly motivated not to die.

But most sea kayakers don’t find the time in their cosmopolitan lives to learn to paddle well. Instead, they try to buy safety. And they are abetted in believing they can do this. There’s a veritable raft of rescue gear out there promising to keep them safe, even if they know nothing about kayaks or the movements of the ocean.

So where did this blind faith in equipment and the false sense of security it instills come from?

Perhaps it’s just part of a wider trend in a society bent on effortless accomplishment: find the most corrosive bathtub cleaner on the mar- ket so you won’t have to scrub, start a diet that starves your body of fuel so you won’t have to be active to burn it off, buy a Volvo (there’s that word again) and be safer on the road without having to slow down or change your driving habits.

Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that the vast majority of paddling instruction is offered by kayak retail businesses. This presents a conflict. It’s great that a store can offer instruction, but don’t expect that there won’t be a mandate to sell gear via the instruc- tional programs.

After all, it’s a lot easier to sell a bit of kit rather than the concept of conservative good judgment. You can’t buy good judgment, you can’t really teach it, and you definitely can’t bottle it for sale. If you could, I’d buy a two-four of it every weekend.

Alex Matthews is the co-producer of the instructional video, The Ultimate Guide to Sea Kayaking.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Occupational Standards: Sea Kayak Guiding

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/vastateparksstaff — Occupational Standards: Sea Kayak Guiding

When clients on a guided sea kayaking trip turn greener than the seaweed below, it’s not always from seasickness, more often it’s from envy.

Envy for a guide’s job is warranted when it’s summer in Johnstone Strait and the sun is shining, warming paddlers as they laze around on cobble beaches or dodge orcas surfacing in glassy waters under the gaze of snow capped peaks.

News flash Mr. corporate executive, Ms. school teacher with a pension plan: it’s not always fun in the sun. Replace that idyllic scene with four days of rain, with wind so strong boats

are beached, when there isn’t so much as a sparrow in sight and clients who have paid thousands of dollars to be sea kayaking are instead cloistered in their tents. At times like these I’d happily trade my job for the prospect of 20 years spent sitting behind an accountant’s desk, having my fresh water come from a cooler at the end of the hall.

Summers spent guiding disappear in a haze of trip after trip on the water. Snoozing in an often damp sleeping bag for 100 or more nights a year is a job requirement. Relationships starve as loved ones seek comfort elsewhere, leaving you with no enduring company except for the foot fungus nestled between your toes. You invariably miss weddings and parties. The novelty of the campfire burns out as quickly as dry cedar, leaving the smell of smoke to linger longer than it’s welcome in matted salty hair.

When it’s six in the morning on the fifth straight day of drizzle, most guides would happily trade glowing campfire embers for a timer on the coffee pot.

Then there are the guests. As a guide you get paid to do what others want to do. It’s about their experience, not yours. That means paddling at a starfish pace or missing that beautiful beach when the weak- er guests won’t make it through the surf break. Guests come in all manner of abilities, and dispositions, and there’s nothing a guide can do but deal with it—happily.

But.

Guides wake from the deepest self-pitying stupor with the first flinch clients make toward their back pockets. There may be no more clarifying moment in a guide’s job than the moment when he gets tipped by the client. There’s nothing like a few crisp bills in hand to make the guide realize the guests are usually great people after all and that guides get paid to do things others spend thousands of dollars to do.

Guides breathe salt air instead of taxi exhaust. They wake up to the sound of the ocean lapping at their tent door instead of the sound of sirens racing by. In the evenings they watch sunsets, not television crime dramas. During the day whales, seals, starfish and dolphins entertain them while city slickers have to make do with pigeons pooping
on statues and dogs barking from behind fences.

When the sun and whales cooperate and the clients are great or when the northern lights dance, phosphorescence swims in the waves and the conversation around the fire is easy, 10 dollars an hour (plus tip) seems like almost enough.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Dragorossi’s Fish

Photo: Rapid Staff — Boat Review: Dragorossi's Fish

Dragorossi, the new Italian kayak company, says it wants to bring something new to each and everything that they do. With the new Fish they wanted to offer the customer what they already expected in a rodeo kayak and at the same time create a design that would encourage paddlers to grow beyond their current ability. Dragorossi says the Fish is no more designed for experts than it is for beginners; in the hands of a paddler who has an open mind and is willing to explore and reach for bigger and greater things, the Fish is a dream come true.

Dragorossi designer Corran Addison was right when he said that he has designed a boat that makes you re-learn how to paddle. The Dragorossi Fish is like no other boat in the lineup and it scared the skirts off half our test paddlers, paddlers who score well in local rodeos. Persuading paddlers that Dragorossi’s new thigh-hook outfitting holds them in place is easy; convincing them it’s safe is going to take a larger campaign.

It takes a special kind of nut to enjoy this boat, and luckily we had a few of them with us. As promised, the Fish is a fast, hard carving wave boat. It’s a boat we’d like to play with in the ocean. Trouble is, no one—not even the nutbars in the group—considered him or herself good enough to really paddle it. They could rip up the face of the wave okay, but aerials and even spinning in this boat are altogether different—there is a different sweet spot. They wanted more time to get the knack of it.

PROS: Fast and razor sharp carves. Different.

CONS: Sketchy outfitting. Steep learning curve.

SPECS: length 6’6” | width 25” | volume 56 US gal weight 30 lbs | price $1699 Cdn/ $1400 US

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Necky’s Orbit Fish

The Orbit Fish is the perfect blend of whitewater and surf, continuing Necky’s legacy of ripping up waves. It is a true carving spud that responds instantly when loading an edge and railing it around. The split tail and stringers shred features both big and small. The Orbit Fish bounces into aerials or carves aggressively into them. And, it’s a surprisingly good river runner.

If surfing makes you feel all nutty, here’s your boat. It feels like a rocket sled with rails on the wave, carving just behind your seat.

The Orbit Fish is fast (maybe not quite as fast as the Seven-O, but it’s three inches shorter) so you can use the whole wave, land tricks and not flush. It’s also fast from edge to edge and fast and loose to spin. How fast to spin? Fast like an amusement park ride with some carnie skid at the controls. In learning to control the Orbit Fish you need to lower the volume on Def Leppard, slow the ride down and get set up. Then, it’s green grinding, blunts, air blunts and so on with absolute ease. However, unlike more symmetrical hulls it back blunts differently and requires re-learning.

If you want to see grown men cry, come to a Rapid freestyle boat test and watch tall guys try to cram into new boats. No tears from the string beans here though. There is plenty of leg and foot room in the Orbit Fish. As for the outfitting, it’s not that it’s uncomfort- able, it’s just that it isn’t really there. Everyone agreed it needs custom foaming on the thigh braces; the seat would need some lift at the front and, as is, the backband wasn’t in the right spot for anyone.

For 170-pound freestylers the Orbit Fish was a snap to throw down in flatwater and eddy lines. The bow never pearls and the hull jumps up on a plane in and out of eddies.

PRO: Good for green grinds, surfing, blunts and aerial blunts.

CON: Minimal outfitting. Might be too loose for beginners. Trippy stern. Unbalanced cartwheels.

SPECS: length 6’6” | width 24” | volume 51 US gal | weight 34 lbs cockpit 16”x34” | price $1529 Cdn/ $1099 US

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: LiquidLogic’s Vision

ORIGINAL LYRICS: The Vision is the culmination of four years’ work by Liquidlogic designer Shane Benedict. He’s taken velocity rails from surfboard design to give the Vision “insane edge-to-edge looseness and drive.” Designed to gain speed on the rail, this feature also gives the boat extra bite when carving. The Vision was designed to have incredible secondary stability and slicey ends to make for easy cartwheeling in the hole or on flats.

WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE A NUT: The Vision feels extremely loose because it is so easy to keep flat to the wave without accidentally engaging an edge. For the same reason it’s a smooth front and back surfer with bow or stern (whichever is upstream) down and charging for the trough, not bouncing all over the place.

This stable platform allows you time to tweak your position and angle to launch the next move.

The Vision will “butt” bounce but the biggest tricks of the test were from an aggressive carve on the new rails. Some testers thought the Vision was the best carver of the bunch and said it felt like a squirt boat (if anyone but Brad Sutton remembers what that feels like).

The Visions are virtually the same lengths as the Crazy 88s, but they seem to whip around a little quicker in holes and in the air.

WHEN YOU DON’T: Why bother changing something if it’s not broken? Look to find the same simple and effective outfitting as last year. Tall paddlers who couldn’t get inside last year’s Big Wheel will be tickled pink (and might try requesting a boat in that colour) now that Liquidlogic seems to have worked out the sizing for the Visions. Still, tall paddlers don’t get the advantage of the bean- bag bulkhead that the rest are realiz- ing is a pretty cushy innovation. When playing around in little holes and on the flats, the Vision is the smoothest end-to-end since the Skip and Pop (short the six inches of extra plastic).

PROS: Short. Light. Ergo outfitting. Stable wave rides.

CONS: Pokey down the river.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Pyranha’s Seven-O

ORIGINAL LYRICS: Pyranha says the new Seven-O delivers a fresh look at what the modern freestyle and play paddler is demanding. It mixes the energy and speed needed for dynamic moves with the control, sta- bility and smoothness of past designs thanks to slicier ends and a more stable volume distribution for reliable end-to-end transitions.

WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE A NUT: The Seven-O really belongs in a class of its own, a boat that may be ahead of the rest, or perhaps nostalgically behind (where the majority of paddlers hang out).

The Seven-O isn’t a spud boat like the rest of this year’s freestyle boats. It’s longer and feels narrower. It’s fun to zoom the Seven-O around on the face working out wide on the shoulder (where the rest flush) and trucking back across for a big blunt. This is a boat for long soul surfs mixed with blunts and spins. It doesn’t boing, boing, boing all over the place; aerial moves require speed and aggressive edge transfers.

Drop into the hole and you realize you are in fact in a longer boat. Cartwheels are slower and more balanced, as Pyranha intended. It will still loop, you just have to get high enough to bring the stern through.

WHEN YOU DON’T: Not paddling like a nut might be exactly what Pyranha had in mind for the Seven-O. They suggest that they are bringing back the “control, stability and smoothness” from the past, making it the best river runner in this year’s freestyle lineup and a boat that is one of the most comfortable for long days on the water.

PRO: Speed. Good river running. Slow rotating cartwheels.

CON: Lacking the carve of a long and fast boat.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Riot’s Inferno

The Riot Inferno 54 was conceived to perform the next generation of dynamic wave and hole moves. Acceleration and speed make large-scale aerial moves a reality and generous volume helps paddlers stomp their landings. Riot says their unique side-edge design with an extremely high rail improves carving and provides stability and forgiveness.

The Inferno is the first Riot freestyle boat we’ve reviewed that was not designed by Corran Addison. Never before has there been so much eddy banter from our testers about a Riot freestyle boat. Some thought it was the best boat on the river, and it wasn’t the fast-carving crowd saying so.

The Inferno wants to fly and pushes you into big aerial moves. It will even bounce in the trough of the wave. The nasty edges are gone, but so is the crisp acceleration and carving that core Riot paddlers claim to love.

Drop into a hole and the Inferno is alive beneath you. With only one size, cartwheels depend on your body weight and ab strength but expect lots of pop with each end. Fire the bow into the seam and the Inferno launches huge stable loops.

The Inferno offers all-day comfort with enough adjustments to let you change your paddling position to avoid muscle fatigue. Riot pimps out the interior like a Chicano low-rider, swapping drop spindles, air bags and hydraulics in favour of ratchets for the seat, feet and back band. The thigh braces are something new—they rotate and pivot—no more forcing your knees to bend like a flamingo’s under fixed braces.

Between play spots the Inferno is a spud boat through and through (read stable and buoyant). It feels shorter than 6’4”, especially in the stern. You need to work your weight transfers when punching holes to avoid being back-looped. Want out of the hole? The Inferno easily snaps from side surf to blast to exit.

Pros: Built-in bounce. Huge loops. Stable and buoyant. Comfortable outfitting with “revolutionary” pivoting thigh braces.

Cons: Could use more speed for green landings; could use more carve (may also be a pro).

Specs

Length: 6’4”
Width: 25”
Volume: 54 US gal
Weight: 34 lbs
Cockpit: 18.5” x 33”
MSRP: $1,099 USD / $1,499 CAD

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Code Name Rubber Chicken: A Calculated Assault on Cottage Country Creeks

Stories

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Code Name Rubber Chicken: a Calculated Assault on Cottage Country Creeks

If I had met Mark Harris at the top of Hatchery Falls, I wouldn’t have been able to resist letting loose with my very best clucking display. I’d give him the whole routine, wings flapping at my sides, head bobbing and feet scratching up the mud on the riverbank.

“Bock, bock, bock… BOCK-UH-OCK! What are you chicken?” I’d cluck at him.

Why would I cluck at a man I had just met? Hatchery Falls is just one of 200 waterfalls Harris has walked into and one of more than 400 he’s researched. And he hasn’t run one of them. Not one.

One thing he has done is compile what he believes to be the most comprehensive list of waterfalls for the province in his book Waterfalls of Ontario. Harris has done more research than anyone for whitewater paddlers looking for new runs on new rivers. He even created a website with the same name dedicated to waterfalls so that other waterfall junkies could compare notes.

Mark Harris did what he did for the love of waterfalls, not for paddling. But early last spring, with his book on the dashboard as our guide, we picked up where he left off.

It was early; too early for a group of paddlers I was sure. I was standing at the pumps talking to a fella with the name Luke embroidered on his shirt. We compared our daily agendas. He was headed north up Highway 35 to fix a freezer and I had to drive another couple of hours west along Highway 118 to Bracebridge, Ontario, one of cottage country’s most picturesque towns.

I was expecting another day of waiting for people to show up, after which a small caravan of egos would arrive and chase each other’s dusty tailgates around looking for spring runs down the wrong gravel roads. Luke nodded like he’d been there, and went inside to pay for his gas.

As I crossed the iron bridge into the old logging-turned tourist town of Bracebridge, the only vehicles on the downtown street were heaped with creek boats. Everyone was there already, I couldn’t believe it. Muskoka Outfitters owner and local paddler Peter Demos had the coffee on, and the boys were hunched over his sales counter transferring Mark Harris’ directions to a local road map.

Peter had been hounding me to get over his way for years. Cottage country is prime Canadian Shield geology with exposed granite and gneiss, home to classic runs like the Oxtongue River, Sharps Creek and a spring run in every valley—24 waterfalls are listed in the Cottage Country section of Waterfalls of Ontario.

The plan for the day was to truck and huck five waterfall descents in eight hours—Kevin had to be back to his cottage at six o’clock for an anniversary dinner with his wife. Our three 4x4s rolled out of Bracebridge, GPS units tracking and mini-VHFs relaying directions from the copy of Harris’ waterfall book in the lead vehicle.

Our assault on the creeks of cottage country wasn’t the first trip Ben Aylsworth had taken with his copy of Harris’ waterfall book as his guide. He, like most paddlers in Ontario, found waterfalls close to home.

Aylsworth remembers the day he got the book: “The book was a birthday present from my Mom and her fiancée. I hit one drop just a ten-minute drive from my mom’s home near Collingwood the very day I got it. It was a first descent called Hoggs Falls—a 25-footer or so into about a foot and a half of water. I really needed to boof. I penciled that bastard. In fact, I slammed it so hard the feeling in my left knee didn’t return until last month.”

I asked Mark Harris what he thought of his book being used as a paddlers’ guide to waterfalls. “Paddlers have been and continue to be a big source of waterfall information for me,” admits Harris. “Waterfalls provide different kinds of fun for different kinds of people. Although you couldn’t pay me enough to paddle over any but the smallest of these.”

When Firefly Books approached Harris about the project he knew it was perfect medium through which to convey the magic of waterfalls to others. “It was as though my strange hobby was immediately justified,” writes Harris. “I wasn’t crazy after all.” The only reason we’d call Harris crazy is that he doesn’t own a creek boat.

Thanks to Mark Harris, what I thought would surely be a circus, turned out to be the most organized assault on five rivers I’d ever experienced. It was clockwork and we’d timed the spring runoff perfectly.

After a warm-up run down McCutcheons and Peterson Falls near Vankoughnet we slipped into stealth mode for what would be our most covert mission: Tretheway Falls, site of an Ontario Power Generation generating station. Chainlink fences and barbed wire surrounded the access, complementing the warning buoys and menacing signs. The only access to the run was through the control side of the dam, a 12-foot vertical dam drop into a munchy pillow and surging undercut followed by a 300-metre class V run. In Harris’ inventory of waterfalls Tretheway is rated as mediocre, Dale Monkman—the only one of us who ran it—thinks otherwise. Even after his first run, the rest of us remained onshore, clucking like contented chickens.

“Unlike some of the other popular falls nearby,” writes Harris, “Hatchery Falls has not been spoiled by any ugly concrete bridges, steel dams, or channelization schemes.” What Harris doesn’t say is that Hatchery is a vertical staircase drop with no pool at the bottom, and on such a low-volume stream boney is as good as this one gets. Hatchery is a real gem, easily accessed from the parking lot of an old fish hatchery complex by a short float down the Skeleton River and a short walk back up on well-worn walking trails along the river. A classic cottage country truck and huck.

For seven years I’d crossed the single-lane wooden-top bridge on the way into my in- laws family cottage at the end of Muskoka Road 3. Every August I had walked the entire 150 metres of Lower Rosseau Falls and watched kids race milk carton boats down the ledgy slide.

In April it is a different story. The run is broken into two sections. The main current of the first drop heads full steam into a very long and ugly undercut. Keeping away from that ugliness is key to a successful arrival at the bottom of the first section. A good set-up for the next section is something you’ll appreciate when you see the river channels into a 6-foot-wide chute carved out of bedrock. You can park so close to Rosseau Falls that you could launch the boats straight from the roof of your ride. The falls spill into the stunning Lake Rosseau where cottages start in the seven figures. The portage trail crosses the summer property of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.

Last on the list, in the face of fading light and a looming anniversary dinner for Kevin, was Bala Falls which is not really a creek boat run, but was close enough that we could paddle it before dark. It’s over these falls in down- town touristy Bala that the Muskoka Lakes pour into the Moon River on the way to Georgian Bay.

While we scouted the first drop and raft-sized holes below the wooden dam a couple of locals excitedly shared their plans to tube it.

Ben Aylsworth and I just smiled. “This is one of the deadliest holes I have ever seen,” he said, watching Dale Monkman who was just then running the third chute in the dam. Then the locals saw the scale of a creek boat against the 50-foot-wide hole. They watched as his creek boat tumbled and surfed the hole’s full width and then popped out the far side. They walked away without a word, perhaps to find bigger tubes.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.