A couple of questions for you boating experts....

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

We are fishing more out of boats now than ever.

We started using small pram back in the 1970s for fly fishing in lakes and the 'tide water' of our coastal rivers.

I use to sell the old 'TP&L' fiberglass tri-hulls.



Many others used the Valco aluminum prams.



This is the type of pram that Carl and Ed use which are very nicely made and will last forever.



These small prams are usually 8' to 12' long. They are very exciting to fisdh out of and open up lots of water that you otherwise could not fish from the bank.



I have lots of found memories of fishing from a pram.

[FRSam]

Bill that last shot sure reminds me of Hosmer up in Oregon. What a beautiful little lake with Mount Bachelor in the back ground it was hard to beat. I spent a lot of time fishing it first for the Atlantic Salmon and then moved onto the huge Brookies. Back in the seventies you were still able to have a motor on your pram.

I agree prams are a great way to cover a small to mid sized lake - but I've got to admit I've been on water where to borrow a movie phrase "I wish I had a bigger boat."

Pete

[pgw]

In the late 70's and 80's a TPL 8' pram was "uniform of the day" for a boat on Fall River, Baum Lake, and even at the mouth of the Smith.

I still have the image of Mike Monroe landing a fish from his TPL with less than an inch of freeboard in my mind (talk about needing a bigger boat)!

While the TPL was good and my great (read: roomy) 10' Valco was better (until it was stolen), my current craft, a Redwood Welding 8' aluminum drifter has been the best for (calmer) rivers and lakes because of it's speed and manuverability.

Paul

[FRSam]

Hey Paul,

I've got a 10 ft Spring Creek Pram that's been great for the smaller lakes in this area. It's got a fairly high freeboard. I've fished it over at Lake Davis quite a bit and for the most part haven't run into any problems - although there have been those days when things kick up I'm asking myself were those last couple of casts really necessary - of course they were...

I'd love to hear the story behind the Valco - how in the world did someone pull that off?

When ever a discussion of prams came up Valco was always one of the first names to surface. I tried to find one when I was looking and just happened to bump into the Spring Creek.

Sorry to hear about your boat...what are you running off the back of your drifter?

Pete

[pgw]

The valco pram was a great boat...problem is I used it for duck hunting too and the 2nd week of the season in 1982, some !@#$%^&* decided to take it out of the pond I leased. the guy had to take it out of a locked boat-house shelter and cut through a chain and a cable to get it...

The Redwood Welding Drifter goes everywhere I want with oars...real speedy on Baum and Manzanita and except for Fall River (where you need to go upstream sometimes) when I use my 20+ year old MinKota 26 lb thrust electric which still works well enough to get me up river when I need to...the oars control the drift just fine coming back down...I'm on the 4th battery though.

Paul

[FRSam]

It's hard to believe what some people will do...to bad you weren't there to greet him with your shot gun.

I had some SOB clean out my rig, all my flyfishing equipment, while I was out mountain biking around some remote lake in Central Oregon - I sure wish I'd been there to greet him with my shotgun.

But life goes on...

Pete