Mckenzie River Wooden Boat Festival this Saturday

The Mckenzie River Wooden Boat festival is this Saturday at Eagle Rock Lodge.  This is a great chance to get out and see for yourself the history, evolution and present of these nimble, stable, beloved boats.!  This show is a fantastic display of the huge gift that the fishermen of the Mckenzie River gave to the world of flyfishing!

MRDB-poster

At the show you will get to see not only the past but the present of wooden driftboats and how they remain relevant today.  Many of the region’s top-builders will be there including the guys from Ray’s River Dories, Tatman Wooden Boats, Mckenzie River Driftboats, and others.  I believe that the guys from Montana Boat Builders are coming all the way from Big Sky Country.  I think though they’ll probably leave the stich-and-glue boat at home and bring a traditional framed Mckenzie boat.  We’ll see . . . .

The Mckenzie River driftboat evolved for fishing the big waters of the Mckenzie.  In 1925 Guide Veltie Pruitt built the first very light board and batten driftboat that began to resemble the modern driftboat.  Later, Tom Kaarhus was the first to convert to plywood.  These Mckenzies were square sterned boats (the square end was downstream) and the upstream end was pointed.  It was left to Woody Hindman to build the double ender in the winter of 1939-40 that he converted to the final basic design of the modern driftboat we all love with squared of transom and the pointed downstream end in 1946.  For a brief history of the evolution of the craft see Roger Fletcher’s site.

Don’t miss it!  Go and and see some historic boats built by the legendary pioneers in river boat design and celebrate our region’s huge contribution to fly fishing throughout the world! 

Oh, and make sure to sign up for our Sharkskin Fly Line Giveaway through May 1, 2008.

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1 Response to Mckenzie River Wooden Boat Festival this Saturday

  1. Hello,

    We are doing research for a project for Nautica called the OCEAN TO OCEAN TOUR, an online microsite (see link below) celebrating people living near our coastlines who are passionate about the water, our oceans, marine wildlife – all things water and ocean-related. Given the work that you do, we were hoping that you might consider sending in a submission for consideration and/or help us spread the word about this project by forwarding this email to your colleagues, friends and family.

    Thus far the tour has taken us to SAN FRANCISCO, WASHINGTON, MAINE, FLORIDA and the CHESAPEAKE BAY. We now turn to OREGON!

    Click here TO VIEW THE STORIES: http://WWW.ocean2ocean.COM

    We are looking for people living in and around these areas of OREGON:
    ASTORIA to PORTLAND to NEWPORT and everywhere in between

    Those selected will be videotaped and photographed in their hometown and paid $1,000/day as compensation ($500/day for anyone under 18 at time of shoot).
    The production team will be coming out there June 10-15 to interview those selected.

    For more info, feel free to email us at submit@jsmcasting.com with any questions. If you have trouble seeing the documents below, please let me know and I will send in another format.

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