Posts: 13688
Location: minocqua, wi. | Champion suffered by poor ownership and back in the day (mid 80's) pushed Ranger hard with the offset Elite and it out handled and out-performed Ranger moving many, many serious bass anglers over. I lived and fished in Memphis, TN at that time and the two most innovative and high-performance games started to really show that the leader better keep their eyes open ... in glass it was Champion and in Aluminum it was XPress. Bass Cat ... well, if you don't know about bass cat on big deck boats then do some research or go try to take a ride. Similar to Tuffy in the south is BassCat in the north ... relatively unknown, but wow what a boat!!
there was another boat back then that brought a lot to the market for a very low price ... one went away for not being "enough" albeit at a low price point (Sprint) while the other had to improve to keep up (Tracker) including a higher price point.
the Champion of the south expanded to deep V just before what i believe was an embezzlement case with the owner (Steve??) if i remember correctly so while they made a crazy good product, the company was struggling. i'd buy a FishHunter in a second!!
i have my own opinion where to place Recon ... but, it's up to the person to decide what is the best product for them. Sprint sold a lot a lot a lot of boats to neighbors of mine down there who wanted a glass boat but couldn't afford a Ranger, Cat or Champion so although not a "bad" boat ... not in the class of the former 3 ...
in the mix always down there were Stratos, Javelin and Skeeter blending in the gap ...
love boat talk. while in Memphis i had a late 80's Champion Elite and it was an outstanding boat!! then i had kids ... and moved north and got a boston whaler LOL |
