Can an INFLATABLE Boat REALLY Handle Saltwater Fishing?

This entire 16-foot fishing boat can be rolled up, thrown in the back of your vehicle, and taken just about anywhere. But the crazy part is Sea Eagle says this thing can actually perform like a real fishing skiff. This is the Sea Eagle Fish Skiff 16. The whole weighs just 86 pounds, but it's rated to carry up to three people and a massive 1,765 pounds. It's built from high pressure drop stitch material that inflates up to 15 psi with four separate air chambers and an inflatable keel underneath that's designed to help it track and handle more like a traditional boat. You can put up to a 10 horsepower outboard on the back with the Sea Eagle claiming speeds of over 21 miles per hour, which sounds pretty impressive. But I want to know if an inflatable fishing boat can really do all that. So today we're going to unpack this thing, build it completely from scratch, put a motor on it, and then take it out on the water and see just how good or bad the Sea Eagle Fish Skiff 16 actually is. The first test in my eyes was to see if I could easily load and unload this by myself. And I was pleasantly surprised that it was easy to load and unload. And even leaving the transom attached it was still small enough that I could roll it up and pick it up. Super easy to inflate. The next big test in my eyes was setup time. How long it takes to get this out of the truck and on the water. You see this is labeled inflate deflate so you can inflate it and deflate it really quick. So we'll start with the sides here. Each one's labeled 15 psi and some of them are different. So you just go by what each one shows. There you go. Got it locked in. 15 psi. So just turn this on. I actually under inflated a little bit to allow for the pressure rise from heat. Go up to 15. Started pumping it up at 10 20. See how long it takes to set up. We're gonna stop it at 14. There you go. Then this protects it from deflating. Go over and get this side. Here we go. And then I inflated the hole which took the longest to inflate of the four chambers. All right. Now all the main compartments you inflate to 15 psi and this one the keel. It's got a keel underneath that helps you track straight, run steady. That one you inflate to 3.5. So we got to go down. The max is 3.5. We're just going to do three. There we go. Now we got her locked in. Okay. 15 minutes to get that inflated. It's not bad. Get our seat installed. Now the fish skiff comes with two seats but since I was doing this by myself today I just needed the one seat in the back. All right. Easy to drag into the water. Not heavy. So I've got a 9.9 Honda outboard motor to go with this but when I'm fishing by myself that thing's so heavy and clunky I chose to go with the electric motor today. I'll cover this electric motor in a separate video. All right. That's on. Sweet. We are just about ready. Got my life jacket, VHF radio, audible signal. Always want to make sure you're legal. The first thing I noticed was it does not feel like an inflatable boat. There's no give or sag in the middle. It's just completely firm. Should be deep enough. Let's see. Oh wow. This is awesome. Let's see. Speed picks up really quick. I think it may be that inflatable keel that keeps the bow off the water that allows that. See how tight of a circle we can go. All right. We've got plenty of speed. Go chasing schools of redfish. The electric motor is about a 5.5 horsepower equivalent so you can see it's pushing the boat really good and you maintain pretty good speed while you're turning too. Supposed to be no chance of rain right now. Let's go to our avionics and we'll be able to test the speed of this. All right. We're about almost six miles an hour going into the wind and with the wind got well over six miles per hour. In my eyes the biggest test was the stability of the craft. Does it have the stability of an actual fiberglass skiff? All right. So you can see walking all the way out to the end here. Stable. Walking back. Real stable. Go to the edge. See. This is what impressed me the most is being able to walk to the very edge of the craft and the boat barely leaned at all. I think this is going to be a valuable fishing tool. The combination of the Sea Eagle inflatable skiff and the Lightime Argo Seeker is really going to make a difference. Being able to throw everything in the truck. Not have to have a trailer. I can lift everything by myself. Load. Unload everything. Yeah. This is going to be a game changer. Can't wait to get out. Get it all rigged up for fishing. They've got rod holders for it that I got to put on. We'll get it all set up. You can put a cooler right there for your fish. This is going to be a fun little toy. So I hope you guys enjoyed the review for the Sea Eagle skiff. 16 foot. There'll be some videos coming up really soon with it and the lightweight nature of this boat. It's just so easy. Just pull it right up.