Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How Common are These Boats in Tennessee?

Dale Calhoun
Calhoun Boats Works "Stumpjumper"
Tiptonville, TN

Specifically interested in coming up with what a 15ft NON-Motorized version might be valued at.









Skipping through the following video I can see there seems to have been a lot of them around.

They are pretty much relegated to Reelfoot Lake.

I’ve never seen one!

As soon as I saw it I thought, "Reelfoot". Before I even saw the vid. I first learned about Reelfoot when I was a kid and joined BASS. One of my first Bassmaster magazines in 1974 or so had an article in it about Reelfoot Lake. Those boats are a lot like Pirogues used down in the swampy areas like Louisiana and all up and down the southern reaches of the Mississippi for fishing and market hunting of ducks.

The video on Reelfoot was very enjoyable. Thanks for sharing it.

Pretty sure the first bassboat, a Skeeter, was designed from these.

Most of Reelfoot Lake is extremely shallow, with Cypress tree stumps just below the surface of the water. A "stump jumper' boat is designed to roll off a hidden stump instead of getting snagged on it. The motorized ones have a tunnel built into the hull with a shielded prop, and a Briggs & Stratton air cooled engine driving the prop with a belt mounted near the middle of the boat. The non-motorized ones have those oddball articulated oars so the rower can face in the direction of travel. Conventional outboard motors are virtually useless on Reelfoot- - - - -a propeller won't last very long. Horseshoe Lake near Cairo Illinois is also a shallow Cypress lined lake - - - -"Goose Capitol of the World", it's called.
Jerry

Dang nice boats. I would love to see them rowing.

Really tuff trying to get a price on one.
Don't know if they just aren't marketable due to lack of interest or if there are too few around be be common.

Seems as if there were enough of them made that I should be able to find some lingering online listing for one...Just not having any luck...

The boats forward facing oar lock system was patented and make it rather unique.

They were built in this Tennessee shop...


By this guy..

Well truthfully, I have one squirreled away :-)

It's a fish catchin' SOB, real stealthy....


I'm just thinking about selling it and haven't a clue how to price it.
I know they may be common around the Reelfoot area but there is also one in the Smithsonian.
I've used it plenty, I'd say on a scale of 1 to 10 it's a 7.
Kinda had a crappy varnish job done on the wood at one time but have been warned about refinishing and loss of value so I have left it as/is, everyone seems to like the "patina" it has.
It'd really shine if it were sanded and refinished...

It paddles like a dream and it's stable enough that you can walk around in it.
I've been long on houses over the years and it has had a parking spot in the living room of one of them. The house has a double entry door and it was easy to get it in there plus it is right on the water where I fish often.
I'm selling that home and will be pressed for proper storage for it..It'd be a sin to start abusing it.

This one is mine... It's what was referred to as a standard 15 1/2 foot boat





I've accumulated quite a bit of provenance on the boat over the years.

Calhoun's great-grandfather, Joseph, a farmer, bricklayer and blacksmith, started building boats in his spare time around 1910.

His son, Boone, took up the craft and passed it along to his son, William, Calhoun's father.

Many Reelfoot residents built boats, including stumpjumpers, over the years, but the Calhouns stuck with it longer than anyone else.

Now, Calhoun's boats are more than just functional watercraft. They're works of art.

Using cypress planks and oak strips for framing, he makes his boats on order, one at a time.

He sells to fishermen, hunters and "people who understand this is important Americana," Cogswell said. "They're willing to buy a boat just so they can own a stumpjumper, and it may end up on a lake in Nevada or somewhere."

Powered by engine

The boats are generally 15 to 17 feet long, with flat bottoms and rounded sides. They're pointed at both ends much like a canoe.

Now, they're usually powered by 3- to 8-horse-power inboard engines. Handmade, straight-backed chairs provide seating.

A small lever works the throttle, and a long tiller operates a flat, iron rudder.

In the old days, the stumpjumpers had no engines, just an unusual oar mechanism that let a boater to face forward while pulling back on the oars -- all the better to look out for stumps.

Cool boat, Jeff, never seen one before.

Must be a different boat you are thinking of.
The Calhoun boats have a direct drive shaft bolted right to the motor, you start it, you're moving.
They mostly run Honda's, most popular were 8hp and they mount them in the back of the boat.
Before they were turning out a motorized version for sale, they mounted all sorts of motors in them, even Maytag washing machine motors, but that was all after market jazz.


They only had one hull design, no tunnel hulls, the motor was fitted into the standard flat bottom row boat.

The prop protection is a flat plate mounted on the bottom of the boat.

Are those fish ‘drum’ ?

Yeah, Red Drum. The limit here is two and the slot is 18 to 27 inches.
Two of us were in the boat, that's our limit of slots.... We were making some Red Fish stew that night...

Most of what we see around here are over slot, gotta catch quite a few to get 4 that small.

Maybe I’m missing out

We toss those out into the weeds. Also rag each other in who catches the first one or the most, they buy the beer next time.



lol

Red drum. Not much difference.

reds are good eating.

Nobody ever use to eat them.
They were said to be wormy.

In the mid 80's some big name east coast chef introduced Blackened Redfish to the restaurant world and all hell broke loose. It was a crazy for years until they just fished them out. They were not managed as a game fish so there was no limits or anything.
Now they are considered Game fish and strict limits have worked for a fair recovery.
There is no commercial value that I am aware of but everyone eats them.

The meat looks fine when you clean them and I have never seen anything crawlin' around in them...

If you are thinking of selling, where are you located?

The boat is in Ozello Florida, just come down Ozello Trail, I'm on the right.

Goo.

Gaspagew.

Made beer and gas money in college selling Goo to a Vietnamese fish market. No telling what they sold the as.. didn’t care. They paid cash money.

Not bad eating. Have a bloodline like redfish.