Path finder boat1/7/2023 The running bottom of the 2200, at the time the brand’s largest model, was born of the longest Maverick and Hewes models, but with a roomier, deeper cockpit for fishing in rougher water. Pathfinder aimed specifically for anglers along the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts who fished shallow areas but needed to run bigger water part of the time. (The company also acquired the Cobia brand in the 2000s). #Path finder boat full#It’s the full package, a hardcore fishing boat suited to nearly every Chesapeake fishery, and a safe, comfortable family day boat as well.Īs a brand, Pathfinder evolved out of the Maverick Boat Company’s original Florida “flats-and-backcountry skiff” brands, Hewes and Maverick, in the 1990s. Brad Herndon’s “fun boat”, the 2600 TRS (Third Row Seating), includes all of the above, designed using the experiences of Pathfinder’s design team (all serious anglers), dealers, guides, and customers. More recently, builders have added serious family features, including low-profile side rails that offer safety without creating windage or snagging lines, snap-on sun pads for bow decks, removable cockpit tables, large consoles for changing rooms with toilets, a pair of lift-up seat backs that turn the bow deck into matching lounges port/starboard, seating for up to ten people, and a twin-stepped hull that contributes the speed with agility. More recent additions have been powerful bow-mount electric motors with remote control, T-tops, transom jackplates for shallow running, electric shallow-water anchors, and even a tower (second, elevated steering station) for sight-fishing red drum and cobia.īay boat anglers have found plenty of family uses for their skiffs, whether towing skis, boards, and tubes, or taking trips to favored beaches. The bay boat formula has always called for a center console, fore-and-aft casting decks, the aforementioned seaworthy hull form with self-bailing cockpit, trim tabs for taking full advantage of the hull shape, plenty of storage, ample rod racks, and livewells for carrying baitfish. That’s not a bad way to fish rockfish, speckled trout, red drum, cobia, and almost any other species between the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and the Susquehanna Flats. It allows light tackle and fly anglers to fish all but the shallowest water, while still running out into open water safely on all but the nastiest days. The point of the bay boat design is to put an able hull with moderate deadrise for shallow draft under a cockpit built for anglers. Upper Bay anglers should take note as well. This is our first Pathfinder, and we’re glad to find the brand finally beginning to take hold in the lower Chesapeake. The boat? A Pathfinder 2200.Ĭhesapeake Bay Magazine has reviewed several capable bay boats in the past few years: Boston Whaler’s 270 Dauntless, Regulator’s 26XO and 24XO, and Robalo’s Cayman 246. No spray came aboard, but if it had, it would have flowed overboard through the self-bailing cockpit. Running at slow planing speeds, the boat simply rose to crest the waves, slid down their backs, and rose again to the next ones. One of my first experiences with them, more than 20 years ago, involved navigating short, breaking 5- to 6-foot seas at the mouths of inlets in Florida. Low-freeboard bay boats aren’t safe in the Chesapeake, are they? Well, odds are that no one who says so has ever run one. Trust Pathfinder, the bay boat division of the Maverick Boat Group, to meet high standards in each of those categories, all in the same model.īut wait. That’s an interesting choice of words for a hardcore fish boat designed also to serve families comfortably. “It’s a fun boat to run,” said Brad Herndon, Sales Manager at Gloucester’s Oyster Cove Boatworks, as we eased the blue Pathfinder 2600 TRS up the Ware River to Warehouse Landing on a chilly, end-of-winter day.
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