S2, Ep 121: John St. John of Hog Island Boat Works

Marvin Cash: Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by John St. John, founder and owner of Hog Island Boat Works. John shares his fishing journey, and we take a deep dive into all things Hog Island.

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Well, John, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

John St. John: Thank you very much for having me.

Marvin Cash: Well, I'm really looking forward to our chat this evening. And we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. We always ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

John St. John: Yeah, I think we're going to talk about fishing tonight. That's cool.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely.

John St. John: Right on. It was a small pond named Lucas Pond that my grandmother took me to in southern Arkansas. It had alligators in it.

Marvin Cash: And so what was that like, you know, fishing when you were a kid and you had to worry about making sure you didn't accidentally find an alligator?

John St. John: It was awesome. I'd spend my summers down there and had a whole collection of cane poles. We had a special cane pole holder on the side of her car. She might have driven a Buick or something.

And she'd park me down there, then go walk and keep an eye on me. But the gators would roar. It was awesome. I was catching a lot of bream and I was trying to catch catfish on that old chicken blood bait called Charlie. Charlie bait. Those coagulated chicken blood. Catching more bream under a bobber with worms. We had a worm farm.

Marvin Cash: Super cool. So when did you get drawn to the dark side of fly fishing?

John St. John: In high school up in Tennessee. Seeing people catch bream again on poppers.

Marvin Cash: Gotcha. Where was that? In Tennessee?

John St. John: Outside of Chattanooga. Around the Tennessee River and little ponds off the Tennessee River.

Marvin Cash: Got it. And so, you know, you've been fly fishing for a while. And who are some of the folks that mentored you on your fly fishing journey?

John St. John: Man, I got lucky. Ten days after I got out of high school in 1982, I was in Hoback Junction, Wyoming, and I had a combo Berkeley spin fly rod because I wanted to be able to do everything, and that did nothing well.

And so Jack Dennis's father, Jack Dennis Senior I think he'd call him, had a little shop on the town square there in Jackson. And about a week into it, he hooked me up with a castable, functional Fenwick that I got out in South Park and a little bit of the Snake River. The Snake River. I didn't know how to fish very well early, but smaller stuff. So running around there.

And then there was a lot of people that fished a lot better than me, that fly fished early than me that are still around. But I knew nothing about fly fishing compared to guys like Jeff Currier, Scott Sanchez, or a guy that we call who's probably one of the fishiest guys we ever know. And I don't know where he is. I laugh with Jeff Currier about it all the time. If I see him at a show or something is Gary Edgemont. Wedgemont, we called him the Edge.

And those guys fish like crazy. I like to ski and worked in hunting camps and whitewater. So the fishing was always fun, but those guys definitely had the fever.

Marvin Cash: Super cool, super cool. And do you have a favorite species to chase on the fly?

John St. John: You know, whatever they'll eat. Right now, living in Steamboat, the last month, it's like whatever you've done last. I guess the last four weeks I've been going up north about an hour chasing cutthroats and brookies in little tiny creeks.

And that's really lit me up. Being able to walk around in cold water, you know, 8,500, 9,000 feet and catch these little fully developed mature fish that are 8, 10, 12 inches long. And it's all been on dry flies. It's been fun. So that's one of the ones that keep me going right now thinking about those little creeks for sure.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And I also heard you have a little bit of a pike addiction.

John St. John: Man, I love some pike. We chased them a couple of times. I got a good one in the spring walking around what we call Lac de la Farge. We've relocated some pike out of the Yampa River into a reclaimed gravel pit, Lac de la Farge or the pike pond, and caught a healthy one in there.

I hadn't caught any healthy ones yet in the river, but I'll be looking here in another couple of weeks. We get more weather. It's fun. When you see a really big one, it's a mess. You want to catch it? Sometimes it takes a day or two.

Marvin Cash: Do you also have the carp bug?

John St. John: You know, I haven't as much now. No, I haven't been able to dive into that very deep. Not currently. Not in the last 10 years.

Marvin Cash: Well, there you go. So, you know, not all anglers are boaters. How did boating become a part of your outdoor life, John?

John St. John: You know, when I got out of high school, I drove to Wyoming with a kayak on top and dove into the whitewater world. I was whitewater guiding in the early 80s, mid 80s and that mutated into fish guiding in the mid 80s, late 80s out of Hoback down the Snake River.

So it was a nice way to be able to ride out the Snake River and as it cleared, you know, mutate into fish guiding. So that kind of led me in debt. Still like a lot of whitewater and still like a lot of multi-day trips.

Marvin Cash: Got it. And so were you, did you have other roles in the outdoor industry kind of between that and when you founded Hog Island?

John St. John: You know, I left guiding and had another life for 10 years in the 90s from '91 to 2001 in the furniture industry, chasing furniture collections, you know, in North America and beyond.

And so had another life I guess back in the... Getting me back into the outdoor industry started really with I had a real sweet tooth for duck hunting for a long time and I developed a zippered wader with YKK and some other folks.

And it was right about the time that neoprene in the late 90s, '98, '99, neoprene was evolving to a more softer, Gore-Tex materials for waders and made some prototypes and didn't chase that one very far. The zippered wader thing.

And then developed a grill in the late 90s that I love called the Barbecue Briefcase that folds for... I was looking for a way to dive back into the passion. I was living out west now in Colorado and the boat project, you know, came down the pike that took over the Barbecue Briefcase and dreams of zippered waders.

Marvin Cash: Got it. So it was the early 2000s you founded Hog Island.

John St. John: It is a project. The story I tell is my stepbrother that's like a brother had called and he was in rotomolding. He was working for a rotomolder that had a number of factories across the south and they were making parts for marine manufacturers. He was handling the marine industry and I had a passion for the marine industry as well from whitewater and things.

And we were talking about different rotomolded shapes over the years that we could do together if it was dry boxes or catamaran tube type shapes. And then his company did a project for Disney and they used this skin, foam, skin technology. He sent me a cross section of it and said they're curious if they thought it'd make good material for a drift boat.

And that's a day that I remember. So by the end of the day I had the president of the company on the phone and I was convinced that would be it. You know, we were going to chase that. I was going to chase that pretty hard.

So that started it. So they put me in touch with the people that helped them with the Disney project that designed it. And one of the guys had coincidentally founded... was one of the founders of another rotomolded... not rotomolded boat company called Logic that changed its name to Triumph. It was owned by Irwin Jacobs of Genmar, the world's largest boat guy. Irwin's a famous guy in the bass world, had started one of the bass tours.

So that guy was great. He was able to explain to me what I needed to know to make a drift boat out of plastic. And off we went.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, super cool. And to kind of help people know. Can you kind of briefly explain what rotomolding is and you know, what that cross section of material looked like? Because in my mind's eye I think of it as maybe like a cross section of a Yeti cooler.

John St. John: It is, you know. Alvin Dedaux, outfitter and guide down in Texas had released a video yesterday that really summed it up that it's a Yeti in a boat shape.

The difference between us and a Yeti or another rotomolded cooler is that our interior is a polyurethane or, excuse me, a polyethylene foam versus a polyurethane foam. The cooler folks will squirt in a polyurethane foam. And other boat people like Boston Whaler and other companies when they're creating flotation, will use a polyurethane foam that expands. It has an R value for insulation, and it also expands.

Our big deal is that we use a polyethylene foam that bonds to our skin. And polyethylene is a fancy way for me to say plastic. So our cross section is like a Yeti or a rotomolded cooler in that it's a skin, foam, skin, and ours is skin, foam, skin along the sidewalls of our boat down into the transom and the boat bottom.

As our customers know, there'll be hollow cavities in our boat, in the decks where the foam doesn't completely fill. We designed the boat so it completely fills on the sidewalls to hold our boat shape and to make her tough, things like that. But we can fill only so much until we have diminishing returns in the weight of the boat and things of that nature. So it's a trade off that we have.

But the rotomolding process is a short name for rotational molding. So what you're having is, for our case, it's a two part mold, which is kind of like me cupping my hands together. Or if you think about a hollow Easter bunny. As I was told the story, the Germans in the early 1800s developed rotomolding to make hollow Easter bunnies out of chocolate.

So you have a two part mold that's like two parts of your hand coming together. A clamshell, if you would. You have a clamshell coming together, you hold it up in space and you turn it while you're tipping it, rotate it to spread the resins out while you're heating it.

And then the resins in our case are polyethylene versus chocolate. Our polyethylene sticks to the sidewalls as it's rotating and heating. And then we cool it. It's easy to heat them. The real trick and the magic is in cooling them.

And what's cool about rotomolding, it's a young industry, in a sense, with plastics. Plastics are really young polyethylene. And what's neat about it is, you know, a guy that has a Ph.D. and has years of technological background will always, you know, admit and defer if he's a good one. I find to someone that's working the oven that has a smell for it.

There's a lot of touch and feel involved in rotomolding and that's been a real neat part of it. You know, I think every one of our boats probably is a little bit different as our customers would say.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, yeah, super neat. And where did the name Hog Island come from?

John St. John: You know that was... I was working in hunting camps in the late 80s, early 90s in Jackson and the Teton and Gros Ventre wilderness. And when I was telling some of the folks I worked with, there was one particular guy who I'd call him a mentor as far as, you know, people that sent me off in a different direction. He was a cowboy named Bob Disney.

And when I tell him I was working out of Jackson and things, they look at me disgusted. You know, that's where you buy two dollar coffee. But if I told him it was Hog Island, they had no idea.

And Hog Island was about 8 miles south of Jackson. Some of my friends felt it made my chaps, some of my friends I fished with were... grew up on Hog Island and always like the name. It's up against Munger Mountain right on the Snake River. But there's Hog Islands everywhere. I'm in my shop now. There's a Hog Island. Somebody sent me a picture from Michigan and Washington state has Hog Island oysters and things. They're everywhere I think.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, that was where I googled it and where I knew where you had lived. I was like well that doesn't quite sound right. So I wanted to ask that question, you know.

So you find this kind of new potential application for rotomolding. You know, what was the potential that you saw for it and kind of that boating problem you were trying to solve with this kind of new approach to boat making?

John St. John: You know our... the kayak I drove out with in 1982, I loved, it was an Old Town Presidente that had a split tennis ball in the front that was duct taped as my bumper. And all the boats at that point were fiberglass for kayaking and rivers.

There was actually in the mid-70s, company Holoform made some rotomolded plastic kayaks. I had never seen one yet. Maybe I've seen one and, but I don't maybe. But then Perception came out with the Mirage I think was their first model. I bought a Mirage in like 1984 I think.

And when I dropped my fiberglass kayak and got the Mirage, I never thought about fiberglass ever again. And I was doing a lot of guiding, whether it's whitewater fishing at a rubber boat and I never thought about fiberglass in a rubber boat.

When I got my first drift boat in like '87 or '88, it was a Yellowstone Drifters beautiful little boat, had wood on the gunwale. It was a 14 foot boat and it was glass. When I hit my first rock I thought I'd done something really bad.

And the fiberglass in the river just always had a different effect and still does to me. And so I thought that plastic would solve a lot of problems as far as durability and things of that nature in the river.

Marvin Cash: Got it. And you know, are there any kind of trade offs between I guess plastic and then aluminum or fiberglass boats?

John St. John: There are, you know the boat, our drift boat we've been making now for 18 years and it's a heavy boat. You know, compared to other 14, 15, 16 foot boats. It weighs 430 pounds. And I think a lot of boats can come in around that are functional around 350.

But you know, I think they're more susceptible to rocks. I think our boat will last longer. Where our boat, its disadvantage would be definitely its weight. You know that where it is, what you have to do with it, on the size of it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, got it. And you know we've talked a couple times before this interview. Can you kind of walk folks through your production process because it's kind of cool because your ovens are half a country away and then you're putting the boats together in Colorado.

So when people look on like Big Frank's website and see a boat, why don't you give them a little bit of a feel for what it took to get that boat to Big Frank's?

John St. John: That's right. So we were rotomolding... the drift boat and the skiff are the two world's largest skin, foam, skin parts. We're in North America's largest... There's only a couple of ovens available for this for what we do, making these boats.

And we've been now for eight years out in California, just north of Fresno, and North America's largest oven. We rotomold our hulls there. We were assembling there in California until this summer with COVID. One of our main guys out there got COVID and one thing or another led us to move the assembly back to Steamboat.

So right now what happens when Big Frank receives boats is a boat's made in California rotomolded, just like a chocolate Easter bunny. And it's shipped to us with our boat haulers. We assemble it here in Steamboat, turn it into a boat, and then we ship it to a Big Frank or Action Marine in Austin or Portside down in Orlando, where customers come here and pick them up.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, super cool. Yeah, I've got, you know, not necessarily with Hog Island Boats, but have several buddies that have done the run to the Rockies to pick up a drift boat before.

John St. John: Yeah, yeah. I get everyone that comes to town. It's fun. A night at the Rabbit Ears. We get to go fishing if it's the right time of year type thing.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, super cool. So how many boats do you guys make a year?

John St. John: You know, around 50. 50 to 55. This year we might do a little bit more, but around there.

Marvin Cash: Very cool. And you mentioned having to kind of bring things back to Colorado to put them together. Any other impacts of COVID on kind of your production process?

John St. John: You know, it's been touch and go. The first couple of months, I think, were a lot different than they are now. It was really hard. The first couple of months we were getting sputtering production, if you would. You know, the folks in California were challenged for sure with the shutdowns and whatnot.

But now, you know, I think it's just a little bit more open. There's still some weirdness. You know, we've had a driving team. You know, everybody knows someone that has COVID now. And we've had this family that hauls for the Coast Guard and the Navy boats. And then they've been able to backhaul for us, they call it, from California back east. And it's worked out great. We've got a good relationship with them. It's three brothers, and one of the brothers had COVID about a month ago.

So there's still some wrinkles. You know, we think we're going to ship one week and it might be pushed back two weeks with different things. And then the hurricane, we had the hurricane down in Louisiana that messed up our shipping there for a bit. But trying to get boats from... They had to haul boats out of Louisiana to the Coast Guard and then pick up our boats. But there's always something.

Marvin Cash: Keeps life interesting. And so you know, for folks that aren't super familiar with Hog Island, you make a 16 foot drift boat and a 16 foot skiff. And I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about each boat.

John St. John: Now the drift boat like I was saying earlier, it's a heavier boat to be fair in the marketplace. Now it's an 18 year old design that I designed. Thinking about the Snake River and it's a boat that's really good in class two, class three water, fishing as a fishing platform and as a multi-day boat.

And it's a good boat to be able to go to a lot of different rivers if you would. It's a true 16 foot boat down the center line with a 54 inch bottom and an 81 inch beam. And my trick was leaving it wider going back to the transom and it created more footprint on the bottom of the boat and it created more deck space in the top.

Because a lot of times in the back seat of the boat of a skiff or a drift boat that's like the penalty box you call it where the guy that didn't buy the trip is sitting or the brother in law or the person that's maybe not very fishy, you know.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, the one with the spinning rod.

John St. John: Yeah, exactly. So our rear we think is you know a pretty fair seat, nice big deck and that created a bigger footprint for us. It's a stable boat. But like when I have guys if you were calling me from Casper tonight, it wouldn't be a boat that you'd want on the North Platte River for 150 days guiding up at the Gray Reef where it blows like crazy.

Or for that matter on the Madison River. We only have a couple of boats on the Madison River. Our drift boat, probably only a couple in that valley. A couple of our skiffs for sure. But a couple of drift boats in the valley and those guys will be able to take their boat anywhere they can multi-day on the Smith River with it. They can definitely bang down to Madison River all day long. But the wind can be a challenge.

I think our customers are happiest when they can go, you know, downhill with our boat and not worry about it, you know.

And then the skiff is a boat. I grew up with a couple of them and my last one had a flat bottom john boat for a bit. And then a boat that had a tiny little V in the front and had a lot of that shape where it's tucked in at the transom. I was able to tuck the transom in a little bit.

And when we were modeling it, I built both the mold first or built both the boat shapes in wood first before the mold and modeling it before I built it in wood, we could see that making versus the drift boat. Making it wider behind the rower seat to give it more footprint and more speed where it stalls out. You know, the skiff made it wider going forward and gave it more displacement up on the front deck.

And then with a greater beam going forward and the boat bottom pitching up into a V, it created a ton of sidewall. And it looks a lot like a boat. It's a hybrid of a boat of two boats. I grew up with a flat bottom and one that had a shallow V. And the shallow V, to be fair, is just a little chop cutter.

You know, the two thirds of our skiff is a flat bottom boat with raised ribs for displacement and wanted a boat that would boat stupid skinny and it with the boat, that skiff. The skiff weighs like 480 pounds and that has a 400 pound displacement. So it's wild to see a picture with, you know, a guy that has a motor on the back that might weigh 100 and something pounds. And he's on the front and the thing's, you know, barely throwing three inches. You know, it floats really skinny.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. Super interesting. And I thought one of the coolest things too is to hear that like you literally, I guess, sell these repair kits where you can literally iron more plastic onto the boats to fix them.

John St. John: Yeah, we give them away for sure. I mailed out several today. They're really easy. It's, you know, the plastic welding is really just melting plastic. I had a little experience with it in the ski shops, for sure. We do base welds using a plastic welder in P-tex.

So if you're familiar with P-tex or melting straws or army bend together when you were younger, you know, just melt two straws and stick them together. And that's pretty much the same theory. What we're using is a linear polyethylene resin. And linear refers to the molecular structure where the plastic. When new plastic and old plastic are introduced, their molecules line up and join and make a chemical bond.

So it's been really neat. That's been our saving grace. So when guys hit a rock and crack the drift boat in the early days, which they do, or, you know, it falls off a trailer, anything happens to it of that nature, scratches and things. You can literally just iron plastic back into plastic using a soldering tip that you buy at the hardware store. That costs about $25.

Marvin Cash: Well, it's pretty cool, though. I mean, you know, my understanding is you can't sink your boats. And I've seen YouTube videos of you dropping them off of cranes. I mean, it seems like they're pretty bulletproof.

John St. John: They always shoot them with shotguns. The shotgun won't penetrate it if you're, like, 30 feet away. But we've shot them with .45s and maybe some 9 millimeters. The rifle rounds and pistol rounds go right through them pretty quick. But the shotgun will hold up in it, and it takes a ton of abuse.

When we... One of the first videos we saw, a friend made up in Montana showed a panel of our boat being shot with a 12 gauge at like, 10 feet. And the panel looked like the Terminator. It folded on itself and then snapped back. And that's what the industry, or what the plastics folks, the technicians, call resistance to failure.

And this is a neat point. I forgot that fiberglass and aluminum are very tensile strength. They have a lot of stiffness versus plastic, which is very, you know, you can almost push your thumb into it at times. You know, it feels like. Or definitely when you're walking on our decks, you can feel them, you know, flex. And that's the characteristics of it. Resistance to failure on impact, you know, versus cracking or things of that nature.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And really interesting. And you mentioned that there was kind of a preference, as people that prefer your drift boat are looking kind of for not windy and kind of a downhill float. Can you, you know, maybe get a little bit more specific and kind of talk about, you know, who each of those boats are made for and kind of where they do incredibly well compared to their competitors?

John St. John: Right. You know, I think our customers that are happiest with the drift boat live on rivers that they're hitting rocks in and know they're going to hit a lot of rocks in. And they've had their boat longer than folks that have fiberglass or aluminum boats are able to repair them real well.

My favorite folks that I think of recently, some of my favorite folks for sure is a husband, wife, couple that went from Palmdale to Mexico two falls ago on the Green and the Colorado Rivers. And they were able to modify our drift boat, we'll call it a dory shell at this point. They were able to modify our dory shell with aluminum boxes and live on it for five months floating the length of the Green and Colorado Rivers.

And that lit me up. Just the adventure of that trip. All the different water they saw, flat water, big water, Grand Canyon, all the canyons and whatnot. But for guys that are fishing, float fishing, there's a number of them on the Holston River. The Watauga River and the Hiwassee River, that's a rocky river. There's a number of them in that area, Middle Tennessee, the Great Smoky Mountains area I think are still living and bouncing and folks like you say are able to, you know, weld it shut, plastic weld, keep them going year after year. And that makes me feel good, know that I think they'll live forever, you know, if you're patient.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. And you know there's some pretty well known anglers who fish your boats. I was wondering if you could share with our listeners who some of them are and why they picked a Hog Island over another boat.

John St. John: You know, I think the skiff things, been pretty neat to get those worlds. The fellow I mentioned earlier, Alvin Dedaux down in Austin, Texas, he's been in our boat for a number of years now and I think for him he explained it well yesterday that it's heavier than light, light gauge aluminum, but it's lighter than heavy gauge aluminum. And it rows well you know, and that's where guys in our skiff, if it's Alvin in Austin and the guys that he guides with is his wife Lenae and Greg Willander and folks like that, that are in this world. Blane Burris and then if you move east, there's a crew in Atlanta, Andy Bowen and Garner Reed out of Cohutta and they've been using our boat.

Well on Etowah River and the Chattahoochee River, that's been a neat way for them they can jet it and row it well, and I think that's what I'm able to convey to people, whether they're in Alaska or Georgia, is that, you know, if you're going to want to row a boat in the river and have a jet motor on it, and our size is all right with you. If you don't need a bigger boat, an 18 footer or even a bigger boat than that, then if you like our size and we're going to be a good boat for you versus aluminum or other options.

Marvin Cash: Got it. And then of course, I know you've kind of got the musky mafia in the mid Atlantic, right?

John St. John: Yeah. Yeah. We're building a boat for Blane here in the fall for sure. He's been a real inspiration. I've never seen one of the most busiest people I've ever seen, I think.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, No, I would 100% agree with that. And so if I remember correctly, you have three dealers kind of in the eastern part of the United States. Is that correct?

John St. John: We do. Big Frank's Outdoors in Maryville, Tennessee and he has a second location in Locust Grove, Georgia. Big Frank is been outstanding for Hog Island. He's got a ton of patience to make sure that our mutual customers get what they want. You know, it's been a blessing working with Frank for sure.

And as well as Action Marine down in Austin, Texas, they're a Tohatsu dealer and we really like the Tohatsu jets on our boat. They've been really well. And then we got a new dealer down in the Orlando area in Winter Park, Florida named Portside Marine and they. That'll be a neat boat. That's a good market for us.

We've got a number of guys in the Central Florida region that like our boat in the fresh water and salt water. You know, it's a good hybrid boat for those guys. If they like to fish fresh and salt and don't have to run very far. That's been a good solution for a lot of guys down there versus aluminum. If they're looking at aluminum combo, they don't want to run around the Indian River Lagoon or over on the west side, then they can take our boat with a poling platform and kind of get it all done.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And I guess, you know, I'm not a boat guy, so. Obviously people can come to where you assemble them and pick them up if they're not close to a dealer. Do you ship boats as well?

John St. John: We do. It can get complicated then, but we do, yeah.

Marvin Cash: It's just money, right John?

John St. John: It is. There's a great service online with this Internet world we uShip a lot of times and we have a number of drivers that are retired that if it's the right location, they love to do the trip.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very cool. And you know, we didn't even mention this but you know another. In addition to the durability of your boats, you know, compared to kind of other boats in their class, they're very reasonably priced. Can you kind of let our listeners kind of know kind of the difference in kind of what it looks like?

John St. John: Yeah. For the skiff and the drift boat, both the hull, the skiff ready for a motor, lands back east for $6,750. So after that you'll, you know, if you want a poling platform, oarlocks or blade locks or things of that nature to row it or a trolling motor mount, front bow sleeve, front decks, those are add ons after the $6,750 landed back east and then our drift boat's going to land like that too back east for $6,750 after, and that'll be ready for accessories as well.

That's just kind of offering them that way this year. So guys can you know, if they want the oarlocks, you know everything we do on the drift boat, casting braces, things of that nature, add ons but that gives them a nice look at it. Kind of like if you were looking, you know, other boat models and things add on from there.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so just kind of rough idea. By the time you buy a trailer and you kind of accessorize it, what are people kind of looking at?

John St. John: Yeah, with the skiff, you know your motor is going to cost as much as the boat and probably a little bit more if you go the jet route. But the skiff, you know with motor and a couple of accessories in the trailer, you're going to be looking anywhere between 12 to 15 to 16, up to 17. We, there's some center console options with our skiff.

With the drift boat, with everything in all the oars and trailers and everything. You should be you know, south of 9.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very cool. And you know obviously it's been beyond a weird year. But is there anything on the horizon for Hog Island you want to share with our listeners?

John St. John: You know, we're taking it a day at a time, you know.

Marvin Cash: Well, I won't hold you to the new 2021 models then.

John St. John: No, for the zombie apocalypse.

Marvin Cash: Fair enough. Well, the good news is shotgun rounds don't go through the boat, so you're safe.

John St. John: You'll know where you'll find me.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, so, you know, obviously, you know, fly fishing shows in early 2021. You know, I think everyone's hopeful, but, you know, we know that it's not 100% certainty that they're going to happen. Are you guys planning to be on the show circuits or are there going to be places that folks can go in January, February, March?

John St. John: I can't speak to our dealers. We were gonna, the last thing we were gonna do was the end of March, a show in Orlando with our Winter Park dealer, Portside Marine. And that course got canceled like, you know, a week before March 20th or something. They might have canceled it, but our dealers might. I don't know.

Me personally, I'm hoping I'm dreaming of making some cross country tours for some, for some FaceTime, you know, they call it, you know, with some folks and get out and about. But the shows, I don't know, I don't have a good feel for it right now.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, because I guess the way I met you is Big Frank had his boats done in Atlanta at the fly fishing show. And you were there in the booth, right?

John St. John: Yes. Man, I've been enjoying going to Atlanta a couple of days earlier or something and go fishing has been a lot of fun.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, hit the stripers. So, you know, before I let you hop, you know, what's the best way for folks to get in touch with you and kind of keep up with everything?

John St. John: Hog Island, you know, I'm going to say the Internet, you know, probably, hogislandboatworks.com we kind of keep our Instagram thing going a little bit. That's a good place to find us as well. Or for things that other folks are posting of.

Marvin Cash: Cool. Well, I'll drop all that stuff in the show notes.

John St. John: All right. Thank you very much.

Marvin Cash: Oh, it's all good. Well, listen, John, I really appreciate you taking some time to chat with me this evening.

John St. John: My pleasure. Thank you.

Marvin Cash: Absolutely. Take care. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.