This past week I attended the Toronto Boat Show. This is my third year in a row going, and has become a nice event I look forward too. The winter is tough for me, the cold weather, the lack of light, and of course no open water fishing mean I look for events to get me through. I’ll be at the Fishing and Boating Show, the Sportsman Show as well, and have a few other weekend excursions planned to get me through to the Spring.
It was two years ago that I purchased my current boat, a Princecraft Resorter DLX BT, and it’s been great. It fits in my garage (a must), is a tiller (my preference), and the 40 hp Mercury allows me to fish, cruise, and even pull the kids on a tube! Eventually, our family will outgrow this boat, but my garage won’t be getting any bigger, so I was intrigued when I came across a new boat from Princecraft, the Amarok DLX BT.
This boat is only 6 inches longer that the current one, but is almost a foot wider, and allows for fishing on the stern if you want. It also has more “fishing” features, including storage for 8 rods. It also has some work needed though. It is lacking in storage in my opinion, as the road storage on both sides mean there is no side storage. There is also a flaw in the design where the motor is pretty far back, and you can’t max out the turning radius, even with the model I was in having the Big Tiller. The engineers will get feedback though, and I expect next year the tweaks will be in place. This is the first year for the Amarok and I’m in no hurry to upgrade my boat.
There were of course no shortage of boats in every price point (including several million). 
There was a beauty from Princecraft (in picture), called the Platinum SE that was show for just over 100K :). Everywhere you turned there were amazing boats, but the prices of some were out of this world! I did notice a real trend though to have combo boats, designed for pulling skis, fishing, cruising, you name it. I imaging the idea of the specialty boat is less appealing as people diversify there interests.
I went with my buddy Scott, and we enjoyed walking around and not only looking at the boats, but also checking out the accesories such as life jackets, electronics, docking systems, electronics, you name it. There was a vendor for pretty much anything you can image. There was even a three booth spread on 1st Aid Supplies!
Finally we decided to head out and grab some dinner and talk about what we saw. We filled out ballots for our chance to win a boat, and of course shook on a “we’ll split it” deal if either of us one. We went on a quiet Thursday night so we had no crowd pressure, and the vendors were getting worn out as the 10 day event was coming to a close, so even the sales pressure was low. If you are thinking of a boat, I really do encourage you to look at the Princecraft line up, and if you are in south western Ontario, be sure to talk to Ryan at Trailerworld industries in Brantford, you won’t be disappointed.
And of course, I had to sit in the giant chair on my way out….