I've loved being in the outdoors for as long as I can remember. My grandpa Carter was first to introduce me to fishing, camping, hunting, hiking, and swimming. My grandpa Pratt taught me to cherish the outdoors and care for it. Growing up in New Haven Missouri, I was blessed both to have access to the mighty Missouri River and it's countless tributaries, and to have grandparents who were eager to take me up and down every one of them. Entire summers were spent camped out on muddy, sandy riverbanks with several poles in the water. Or trolling Stockton and Norfolk lakes for white bass. I couldn't count the fish I've caught, or miles of shoreline I've hiked, largely due to the influence of these seasoned outdoorsmen.
While I enjoy almost any activity out in the wood, fishing has always been my passion. In 2012 I spent almost every Saturday from February to November, (and sometimes a few fair weekday evenings), camped out on the tip of a favorable sandbar on the Meramec River at the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area, just outside of town here in Pacific Missouri. I only came back home empty handed once.
Although the fishing was very good last year, I had grown tired of years of bank fishing. So in late December of 2012 I decided I wanted to get a boat. But there were several, serious difficulties. Firstly, I didn't have the money to buy, maintain, or fuel a motorboat. Not even a cheap one. I could afford something simpler, like a canoe or kayak, but then I didn't have a good place to store something that large. I might have been able to store a very small kayak on the porch, but that wouldn't exactly be secure, and I wouldn't be able to take my young daughter with me. And I definitely wanted something I could take her with me on.
I decided a raft would fit my needs. It would be cheap enough for our budget. It would be small enough to store in a closet or the trunk. And it would be large enough to accommodate me, my daughter, and whatever guests and gear I wanted.
But then, which raft? I'll admit that the first place I looked was walmart.com. I wanted to see what my cheapest options were. However, after reading the reviews for everything they had, I realized that the bottom of the line wasn't going to survive what I wanted to do with it. I then googled "buy rafts", "buy rubberized boats", and the like, but the vast majority of results were wildly out of my price range! I realize that many people shoot white water far more demanding than anything I'll ever dare, and they need top of the line stuff that isn't just going to pop in the middle of some rapid and dump them all. But good lord, $2,000 for a raft is just mind boggling to me!
Somewhere along the line I came across the Mariner 4, by Intex. It's was the right size for my needs. It was within my price range. And every single review I read for it was absolutely glowing. People talked about ramming into trees and scraping over rocks and dragging over gravel bars and coming out with barely a scratch. They said the floor insert was stiff and sturdy enough to support any chair or tote, and even stable enough to stand in, as long as there weren't large waves or you didn't ram into a log while flowing down the river, of course. While it's not rated for serious white water, like Class III and up, it's the only reasonably tough, reasonably durable, hard bottom raft you'll ever find for under $300. I found mine on sale from a dealer on amazon.com for $219, and that INCLUDED shipping!
My raft arrived December 28th, 2012. It was quickly unboxed and completely aired up and assembled. I just couldn't help myself! The kids loved the silliness of having a boat inside the house too! But there wasn't much else I could do with it, aside of practicing airing it up and packing it away, which took up our entire living room and my wife despised. We had a relatively cold and snowy winter from 2012 to 2013 here in the Midwest, so at the time it arrived, no matter how enthusiastic I was, there was no way I was going to venture out in it, at least not yet.
So I got to thinking, what was I going to actually use this thing for? The type of fishing that I had spent the past couple of years focusing on didn't exactly lend itself to motorless boating. I had spent the past 5 years fishing on the banks of our local river, the Meramec, which has too strong a current to paddle against. There were a couple of lakes in the next town at the Catawissa Conservation Area where I had a bit of success fishing. And my boat could work just fine there. But there had to be more I could do than spend the entire spring-through-fall putting around a few, muddy lakes.
Although I had spent countless hours on boats, and canoes, and kayaks in my youth, I had only floated 3 times that I recall. Normally, we got in a boat in order to get to a certain point on a river or lake in order to fish or swim. The only few times I ever floated, just floating mainly for the sake of floating and seeing the river, was with my Uncle Oscar and Aunt Chris on some river down in South West Missouri, when my buddy Jared invited me on the National Honor Society float trip on the Twin River, (if I recall correctly), and once when I borrowed my Father in Law's kayak and floated on the Meramec. All of my other experience paddling or boating was on lakes and rivers while finding a good fishing spot.
But here in Pacific Missouri, the Meramec comes right into town. And I had spent the past few years fishing and hiking it's banks. I knew it was a relatively large, powerful, healthy river, with plenty of beautiful gravel bars, bluffs, caves, forests, and a wide variety of fish. I knew 150 or so miles upstream it all started at a magnificent, deep, milky blue spring. But up to this point I had only ever seen with my own eyes the 11 miles of it that I floated that one time, from Robertsville State Park to the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area. I had extensively hiked the left bank of the river from the boatramp at the Palisades, down to where the bank ends at the end of the Conservation area. But to be honest, realistically, over the past 5 years I had mostly focused on one, solitary tip of a gravel bar where I had found a consistent abundance of hungry fish. The majority of my knowledge of this vast river boiled down to the tip of one gravel bar.
But now that I owned a watercraft capable of traversing such a body, I could change that. Since I couldn't get it outside yet, I took to researching the Meramec River and planning a series of float trips. I read reviews written by those who had already floated it. I located every possible put in and take out site from the river's beginnings at Meramec Spring all the way downstream to where it meanders through our town. Judging by how long it took me to kayak the 11 miles from Robertsville State Park to the Palisades Conservation Area, I decided that 15 miles was a good, long, morning-till-evening float for me. So I looked at all the possible put in and take out points from the Springs to Pacific and divided the river up into 15 mile segments, more or less. This took a good while, because the put in and take out points aren't even close to evenly spaced. So some trips had to be as short as 9 miles, while others had to be as long as 19. But judging by my past experience, even 19 miles was doable, if I started early enough.
Now, although we did have a fairly cold and snowy winter, we were blessed with a precious few warm afternoons. On one of these, on the 4th of February, right after work I grabbed my daughter and threw the raft in the car and headed to the lakes at the Catawissa Conservation Area to get used to paddling this thing. I had plenty of experience paddling canoes and kayaks, but I had never paddled a raft, much less one with dual oarlocks like this one. It was a good thing I took some time to get used to it before taking it out on the actual river, where I would have to deal with the swift current, and obstacles like chutes, fallen trees, and submerged logs and boulders. Here at the lakes I could get used to this new paddling motion without having to deal with any of that.
It was very awkward at first. I was used to that double-handed, one side and then the other, canoe paddling. I tried that at first, but even with this raft's relatively diminutive girth, I was completely unable to get anywhere. I then tried the oarlocks, but that didn't go well either. I kept trying to paddle one, and then the other and the boat would just waddle side to side not going anywhere fast. Finally, clumsily, I began to get the motion down. It's almost like you're punching both fists at the same time. To row the raft forward you've got to push forward very hard on the paddles. Dig deeper into the water to push yourself forward faster. Lots of shoulder work. Just lap at the surface for minute adjustments. Pull back deep and hard for the brakes. Like most rafts, mine doesn't track well at all, so every now and again you'll have to let off paddling one side or the other to let the opposite paddle straighten your course again.
Before long I was zipping from one end of the lake to the other, and turning every which way, however I chose. It was still all a bit stiff, but only time and practice would change that. I was finally ready to go. I had my craft. I knew how to pilot it (basically). I had dozens of float trips planned.
But there was still the issue of the weather. It snowed late into 2013, much later than it had in some years. Back in 2012, I was able to fish whenever I wanted by early February. But looking at the projected weather for 2013, I had no clue when it would be warm enough to get out on the river without freezing to death!
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