Poling Skiffs - Changing the Game

As a fisherman, one of the best attributes you can have is the ability to adapt to change. Growing up on the Texas coast as I did, wade fishing was the norm, and for lots of folks it still is. I have stomped many a mile in wading boots and caught tons of fish this way, but as the years went on fishing pressure increased and it seemed to be not as productive as it once was. Combine this with my love of sight-fishing and wade fishing was becoming increasingly difficult. For a while my strategy was to simply drift a flats boat while standing on top of the console for a better vantage point. While this is effective at times, it requires large areas of clean water and a fair amount of wind. Sure, you can use a trolling motor at times, but they can be noisy especially when trying to use them in 2 feet of water or less, where fish are their spookiest. My solution to all of these issues was to buy a poling skiff. I bought my first true poling skiff in 2015 and haven’t looked back.

A flat bottom poling skiff is perhaps the most versatile vessel for inshore fishing on the Texas coast. This type of boat allows you to fish upwind or downwind, shallow or deep, muddy or hard bottom. And, if all else fails, you can still get out and wade, but as you learn the abilities of this style of boat you’ll likely find yourself clambering over the gunwales less and less frequently. So, what makes a boat a poling skiff, you might ask. Sure, you can throw a poling tower on any flats boat or even a jon boat, but it’s a far cry from an actual poling skiff. To me, a true poling skiff is a small v-hull boat that can be quietly propelled by a push pole in shallow water with very little or no hull slap.

My first true poling skiff was a 2003 Maverick HPX-T. It was in fairly rough shape and had around 900 hours on the Yamaha 70 2-stroke outboard motor when I bought it, but I was proud as could be. I pushed that boat many miles around Port O’ Connor and Galveston areas, and it built my shoulders up quickly. But after a couple years the engine gave out and I had to repower with a newer 4-stroke. Stupidly, I added a large jackplate which compounded the weight gain on the transom for a total sum of an additional 70 pounds. This may not sound like much but in the world of poling skiffs weight is everything, especially on the transom.

These boats are carefully engineered to displace certain amounts of weight in specific areas on the boat to give the desired amount of draft. So, my shallow floating skiff wasn’t quite as shallow as when I first got it. This is a common issue with skiffs that were designed during the 2-stroke outboard era. They simply don’t displace enough weight at the transom, and with the weight of a 4-stroke engine and jackplate your draft is definitely compromised. Which, here in Texas, we often like to fish extremely shallow to get away from the crowd, so this is not good.

It was around this same time when I started guiding and one day after receiving some photos a client made of me poling my boat for my website, I realized how much the stern of my skiff was squatting. I then began a journey to find a better-suited poling skiff for my home waters. The biggest single thing on my shopping list was shallow draft. My shoulders were begging for relief of pushing that Maverick around, rubbing the bottom.

Then one night at a fly fishing film tour event in Houston I met Brian Little. Who at the time had already been operating Sabine Skiffs for a few years and was producing some pretty darn good looking boats. He was debuting the Sabine Micro at this event, and after some conversation back and forth we set up a time and place for a demo.

Right off the bat I was surprised how well a fully flat bottom skiff rode across chop, as compared to mine, and was dry-riding to boot. But the true selling point for me was when we went into the back of Greens Lake in Galveston and I got to pole the boat. I pushed into a cove where I was constantly bottoming out my skiff and headed straight for a known mud bar. When I pushed up to the bar covered by a few inches of water you could feel the boat start to bottom out. But that wasn’t enough for me, I then leaned into the push pole like I would have on my boat and to my amazement, the boat kept going and there seemed to be nothing but wet mud behind the transom as we continued going forward.

Wow, I was grinning from ear to ear knowing I had found what I was after. I have been a Sabine customer and family member ever since.

Fast forward seven years and I’m on my second Sabine Skiff, and getting ready to receive my third. Previously my Sabines were of 100% aluminum construction and what these aluminum skiffs can do performance wise is extremely impressive. But I’m not one to settle, and thankfully neither is Mr. Little. The last several years he has been perfecting a skiff constructed of a certain material that is all the buzz in the world of boat building – carbon fiber.

Why carbon fiber you may ask? Well, on a scale of strength to weight ratio for materials to laminate a boat, it’s at the top of the list. What this has allowed him to do is build a poling skiff in a very desirable size that poles very shallow with less strain on your shoulders. This boat also has enough extra displacement for a 24volt trolling motor and battery without sacrificing draft! For me this is a true game changer, as it allows me and my customers the ability to go shallow and pole for backing redfish in the morning and then shoot out to deeper water for things like jacks and bull redfish all in the same day – without having to change boats.

Poling skiffs are a changing face of shallow water fishing in Texas, with more and more showing up every year. I believe people are starting to discover the capabilities of these boats in our waters. If you’re curious about what these boats can do, I would encourage you to book a local guide that’s running one for a day. Don’t be surprised if it changes your entire outlook on how to fish our coast.