Great Bass Boat Search 2020-21 - Bass Cat Puma Hybrid (Champion style Hull) Part 2

Guys a couple of things I realized as I worked on the next video which is the Charger 210 Elite that I'm editing now. First off, yes I know I misspelled "brakes"....sorry this stuff takes a long time to do and sometimes I get a little punchy and don't catch stuff!

Second two things I didn't mention that I should have in the scoring, although this would not have changed the overall scores, You can only flush mount a 10" unit in the dash, since we've had 12" + units for some time now that seems something that should have been resolved. Last thing the boat plug doesn't have a remote, meaning you have to get down under the boat to put the plug in or out, again small thing but after having a remote plug switch in the splash well of my last couple of boats it just seems an add that should be easy for a boat this nice and well built. Last thing a Puma owner reached out and let me know that you can get a prop under the passenger seat which is super handy.

Great review Ken

Very well done, thanks for sharing. Looking forward to watching every one of these videos.

Ken, Caymas has a usb charger in a box next to the steering wheel.

I know for sure Skeeter ZXR boats have a USB inside the glove box...not sure how a Skeeter would work for you, being Mercury sponsored....keep the videos coming!!

Good job Ken, looking forward to more video's. Would you rate the seats too ? I own a Ranger and hate the sit down seat. I kept the sit down seat from my old ProGator because it was so much more comfortable. Thanks again...!

Ken,

Great video! I have to say you are great on the camera and are a natural. Biggest thing.... you don’t talk with your hands. I can’t describe how distracting someone who constantly moves, waves, and points is for me! I look forward to the rest!

Cephus

Great review of the Cat. Had a 2012 Cat and your review is spot on. Looking forward to more reviews of different Rigs, Am very impressed with the level to determine stability!! Am around a lot of different rigs, anxious to see how your reviews stack up.

Great review Ken. This is going to get really interesting. Looking for a new boat as we speak. A little disappointing about the top end speed of the hybrid. BC is high on my list and I was hoping it would have that "Champ" ride with BC speed.

Great video and lots of helpful knowledge. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to more boat reviews.

Rick from BassCat has been talking down the hybrid since they’ve released it. I’d sure like to see a comparison lake run of a regular Cougar running vs a Hybrid.

All you would see from the Hybrid if the rooster tail and back end of the Cougar way out in front of it

No, he’s not talking it down, though they want to be sure people don’t expect the 75-80 MPH rig other BCB models are. The weights are still heavy and materials are top end. They just don’t want people buying it with expectations of more performance than they should expect from this style hull.

Ken, not sure if you have it on your list to test, but I’d be interested to see how a Ballistic .223 or .204 would stack up, I believe there’s at least 1 TFF member her that might let you borrow his...

I am the only person on TFF classified as “careful old dude”

That is not true. His point is dont buy thinking its going to be as fast as the regular versions of the Cougar and Puma. Its a rough water intended boat not a speed demon.

I’m not arguing, but the way his post have read, it’s never a positive tone with the boat. Now if it’s not really any better riding, fishing & slower than a regular Cougar I can see why he’s not thrilled with it. I know he made it to cater to a few of the Champion faithful, but even those guys say he should have gone with a 202, instead of the 203. I guess the 203 is more recent to most people though & easier to get ahold of one to splash.

I was on the fence about the hybrid, but I do believe Ken summed it up perfectly. If you’re gonna pay for a premium boat, why wouldn’t you just go ahead and get the faster model (the regular Cougar/Puma). Makes sense, especially if the hybrid really isn’t better at anything in particular.

Me personally, I’d rather see a test done with the Caracal, who wants skinny boats these days.

I run a Caracal and SHO its a great boat ton of storage handles rough water really well and dry ride. There isnt a boat thats more solid than a Basscat the boats are tanks. You hit waves most boats sounds hollow and feel it when you hit. Basscat is solid no hollow sounding thud or resonated vibrations sent through the boat when you hit just a solid built boat. Yes there is some quirks not many mine is they are a little slower out the hole. I just run my plate up and drop it as it breaks over and its fine. I have owned Skeeters and Phoenix and now Basscat and have ridin in all the other big name brands and I really over all like the Basscat.

That’s all opinion on what we should have selected. Actually, we selected the 203 hull on advice of one of the former most noted R&D tooling staff from MH Champion, his second choice was the 202 hull. He’s one that Pat knows well, and his wife recently retired from our facility, being the only former long term Champion employee we had on Staff. Originally his (R&D tooler) comment was why would you want to do that with the way your hulls run. Quite Honestly, we told him, Because there’s still a Champion following that feel they’ve been left at the altar.

The hull we picked up came from Salt Lake City Utah, in late 2000’s pre-recession and was a bank repo, with a then current 250 XS on it. It was always a dry desert boat that had been repossessed. We only needed the bottom below water line and it was a MH 203, we also still have the boat. We cleaned up the bottom, molded a bottom mold, built a part and stitched that bottom into an existing Puma/Cougar hull. Then a mold was made, which was 2012 era. We shelved the project several times and restarted on it as time allowed. In the early stages we built an entire boat with intent to release in 2014, and we culled it at the time due to hole shot concerns.

Eventually in 2019 we decided to move forward with some urging from Champion owners. We also have several Champion loyalist in our present Bass Cat products who indicated they wouldn’t “go backwards” on the feel they have, speed and their existing drier rides. That was interesting as we asked them for their opinions several times at the TOC events on Table Rock. Which we sponsored the TOC since the Fish Boat Holdings end of production on the Stratos Elite (Champ) brand. The TOC came to a temporary end with CoVid now in 2020. It will only be a small gathering for special friends.

We were fighting with the choice of no hole shot, or no performance and that was our restriction. We picked it up and worked on it four times between the release and inception. Eventually it required hundreds of hours in mold work and tweaking. Even after the original Prototype we built years earlier (Matt’s) was finished, we had to go back again and tweak the second one several times before releasing final production in 2020.

The bow cut had a very dry ride from our hull, and very little of the bow meshes where a BCB hull is. That forward section keeps the water away from the occupants as it does on all of our bass models. We did roll the forward chines some for a drier ride also. The rear hull was where the challenge was as when we thought we could gain speed, we lost the turning and handling, or we lost the hole shot.

Obviously, Bringing older hull designs into today’s equipment weights, larger livewells, bigger trolling motors, more fuel, rear storages, heavier batteries, and more weight overall in boats. Well, it just was a fine tuning we found very difficult and we went back and forth on this hull tweaking areas. We needed to keep that wedge back somehow to retain the cornering, and the outside short turning strake. That outside strake came from our original 1971 Deluxe Tournament model. John Story was upset when dad dropped it on our hulls in 1972/‘73. Which he added to the 1976 16’ 8” Vee series, when he had Hubert Parnell pop a Skeeter Wrangler for that model.

As for the 202 and 203 variances, we left that decision on where to start with a man who should ave known more than all opinion.

As for the review, that’s Ken’s business. He was fair and his reviews will get much better and morph as he grows in experience. We do think three boats in his videos will improve and there are other aspects which will improve his sharing of opinion.

We do wish that we had known of this and we had no knowledge. Even Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge open their new products to Car & Driver, Motor Trend and Automotive reviews and have their staff available for even head to head comparisons. Those are the reviews we all read on vehicles. That would have answered many questions on patterns and things like shocks in torsions axles. You can’t place shocks on torsion axles, the rubber core acts as the shock and is a much higher cost. He would have done a better job with more accurate answers.

Overall we accept the review and appreciate that while it’s his opinion, he certainly stood his ethics shared and didn’t honestly trash anything.

It’s a niche, and we knew that going in. The Charger is registering overall around 25 to 35 bass boats a year, since the 210 was released. They were USA registering that same number of Charger bass boats annually before it was introduced. It’s a niche...

Now you also have more of the truth on the choice of hull we made.

Rick Pierce
BCB

Ken I found you via youtube not the forum but this series is awesome... This honest intense review is rarely done

Guys a couple of things specifically in response to BCB (Rick’s) response. First the comparison to what I am trying to do to Car & Driver or Motor Trend is incredibly flattering, but just to clarify I am far from and kind of structural engineer or hydrodynamics expert, I’m just a guy that’s been driving bass boats for over 35 years reviewing a bunch of boats to see what I like, and what I dislike, about them, 100% my personal opinion. I do not have a boat sponsor, truly “no dog in this fight” and therefore I’m not going to do an advertisement for anybody, nor rip anybody, again I’m judging based upon what I want in a boat and trying to be as objective as I possibly can.

Second Rick is spot on, having now reviewed 3 boats (second two aren’t published yet) I am learning so much and as he said “morphing”, in what I know, don’t know, want to find out, etc. This is an interesting journey for me personally and is altering how I view boats and what makes for a good boat, or more specifically what set’s boats apart from one another. Which by the way is why I’m going to review several more boats before I review a more traditional Bass Cat hull, actually I’m doing research talking to a bunch of Bass Cat guys (including on the FB Bass Cat owners page) about what I should drive next based upon what I'm looking for. But again, in fairness to BC I want to have several more boats “under my belt” before I do that.

Third part of what I find interesting about what I’m doing are the conversations it’s starting, not the trolling, but the true comments. Along those lines a guy named Trevor Elliott wrote a response (lengthy) on the BC Owners FB page to my video both about the process of how the boats are built, and about the trailers (guys the trailers are a big deal to me as you will see in the Charger video, more and more are farming them out), it’s one of the best thought out and written comments I’ve ever seen, and I learned a bunch reading it and it will have an impact on future reviews.

Bass Cat owners can be somewhat fanatical and to some degree I’ve never understood why, but I have a better sense now of where that comes from. The fact that the owner of a boat company would come out publicly on a forum like this and address things the way he did just blows me away. I understand more now why these guys feel a sense of family owning a Cat, there is definitely something attractive about a company where the ownership is both accessible, and paying attention to what guys like us think about their products. Which leads me to my last comment, and I said this in the video. Kudos again to them for undertaking this endeavor, he says pointedly that they had a group of owners that wanted a hull with these characteristics and they spent some significant time, and money, developing this boat which is so different from anything else they build, and as he said a “niche”. They knew this wasn’t going to move the needle for them from a profits standpoint, they were just willing to think outside the box. Again not creating an advertisement for any boat company, but they “listened” to their owners (and others), remarkable.

Ken,

You could not have said it any better! Thank you for the Videos and taking the time to do a honest fair approach to the boat reviews...

Ken's videos are the best ones out there by far. Always enjoy them.

Ken,

Enjoyed the video and will watch future pieces as well. One thing I enjoy and hope continues is you just reviewing the boat based on what you see and feel. I like the angle of you doing it with an open mind and not getting a ton of info or direction from a manufacturer. It keeps it from sounding like a sales brochure. I hope that continues as its an unique take on it all.

Ken,
Enjoyed the video and looking forward to the rest of them. Just purchased my first bass boat and ended up going with the Bass Cat Pantera II. So far loving the boat but as you mentioned above, I'm learning that BC guys are fanatics for good reason. In addition to all the BC gear sent to me for purchasing a new boat, I received a personal, hand written note from Rick Pierce thanking me for the purchase and wishing me well. That's what I call customer attention and support. Have never owned one from the other major boat guys so not starting a bash, just noting one of the reasons BC guys feel like a family. Thanks for your honest reviews and looking forward to learning some more.

Keep doing what you’re doing, Ken. Nothing else out there like it! Anyone can look up the specs of a boat but your opinions on “fishability” are unique.

Thanks for the reviews I’ve enjoyed them so far. A few things to share with you about Basscat. They will install whatever type of rod strap you’d like whether it be the cord you don’t like, velcro straps or rod buckles. Same goes for motors, graphs and pretty much any accessory you can think of. They’re not married to anyone so to speak. They also have one of if not the best warranties our there. A life time warranty on the hull, deck, stringers and transom and it’s also fully transferable to a buyer and I believe it only cost 200.00 to a buyer. They also have arguably the best costumer service of all brands. I’d like to see you review one of their bigger boats knowing you’re a big boat guy and the puma hybrid had zero chance.

I agree.

This statement is true. Its already out there, a place for your phone and a charging port.

I have a 2004 Cougar with a 2014 ProXS with a 25 pitch Fury and when it is cool out and a little chop on the water I can hit 74 with two people in the boat, live wells empty but a ton of tackle in the boat.

Its becoming more common among the boat brands.