River Ridge Custom Canoes

[beetle spin]

Does anyone own a River Ridge Customs canoe?

If so, what do you think?

[uffdapete]

Yes - I've owned one for about 7 years. They're very stable, very maneuvable, well set up for fishing. I know several people who have one and one who fly fishes standing up in it. The streams here in SE MN have a lot of limestone which really tear up a canoe. A few good hits on an aluminum canoe and you're repairing a rip. A River Ridge will eventually need to be repaired, but the fiberglass construction lends itself well to that. I haven't repaired mine yet.

They're a little on the heavy side (approx. 85 lbs) so it isn't something most people would want to portage in this day and age of 35-45 lb canoes.

They're designed to use either an electric motor or small outboard. You can paddle them but they work best with the motor.

[sami0115]

are you looking at buying a canoe? if so have you looked into We-No-Nah brand canoes? they are made locally in Winona, Minnesota.

[92python]

I did a float trip a few weeks ago on a small shallow river with my dad. He just picked one of these canoes up after talking about how cool they were for a couple years. They do look really cool in the ads and I like the concept but......

I saw how small it was and wondered about the capacity on these boats. The coast guard had them at around 750 lbs capacity.

He has a Minnkota 55 with an Optima and solar charger on his rig. I imagine the max for that stuff plus the gear we had was 100 lbs. We each weigh 250 so we were around 600lbs.

The first time we flipped the canoe I thought it was poor driving on his part as we ended up sideways and got wet. We saved all of the gear, dumped the boat out and started up again with me driving in the back.

The first thing I noticed once I moved to tha back of the boat is we had about 2 to 4 inches of room before water would be comeing over the side. We were sitting much lower in the water than I had thought. The second thing I noticed is that it was very hard to reach behind you and steer the motor. Unless you can sit sideways somehow it is very hard to steer with a standard handle on a tiller trolling motor.

By the time we finished we had gotten wet 3 times. I was wishing for my old 15' Grumman squareback. We never get wet in that thing. Used it hundreds of times fishing and hunting with a 90lb lab who was the polar opposite of gun shy.

I question the Coast Guard capacity on the River Ridge canoe. Is that 750 lbs placed right in the middle before water comes over the edge?

We both need to go on the South Beach diet and get outriggers before trying that boat again.