Savage Aluminium 470 Jabiru Pro Tracker

It was a shocker of a day... Bitterly cold, clouds scudding across Hobsons Bay from the south-west dumping light showers and I'd left my spray jacket and beanie at home. It was the sort of day in Melbourne when you wished you were a Queenslander... Well, almost.

Let's not get completely carried away in the first paragraph. All the same, Port Phillip Bay spray is bloody cold. (For Queenslanders, Hobsons Bay is a bay within Port Phillip at the top end near the city. Yep, Melbourne. Well done...)

The task was to test a Savage 470 Jabiru Pro Tracker - a tarted-up tinnie with a lot of attitude. Although I must admit, I would have liked the testboat to have had a little more 'tart' than it had.

Our testboat was a factory demo boat, so the personal touches every angler gives his or her boat weren't there.

That little bit extra though is available via the options list. Add-ons like fishfinder, GPS, bait board, etc, complete the package and make boats in this class all the more desirable.

NO BARE-BONER
That said, the Jabiru Pro Tracker is much more than a basic tinnie. Built from 2mm aluminium bottom and 1.6mm topsides, it is still very much a purpose-designed side console fisherman's craft, ideal for lakes, rivers and close inshore work on good days.

I was pleasantly surprised by the ride. For a fairly broad nosed V-design with a flat bottom (7° at the transom) it rode very well at speed across a moderate bay chop, with little of the bang-crash-wallop that you would expect from such a hull.

It seemed to be quick enough too, although instrumentation wasn't accurate on the day.

The console is mounted slightly forward of amidships on the starboard side. A pedestal-mounted, moulded plastic sliding bucket seat with vinyl cushions and aluminium armrests is quite comfortable.

Gauges for speed, hours, trim and rpm were flush mounted on the console dash. The throttle was mounted on the starboard side of the console. A small tinted screen supported by a stainless steel rail kept some of the wind at bay.

Forward of the console is a raised, carpeted casting platform which features a centrally-mounted bucket seat on a removable post.

Around the bow section there is a low-profile painted bowrail. The entire hull, incidentally, except for the bottom, is painted, giving the boat a very smart finish. An anchor rope bow roller is also built into the bow.

There are underfloor storage hatches in front of the console and in the casting deck forward of the seat.

Gunwales are flat and wide and feature four built-in rodholders. There are also three vertical rodholders built into the port side of the console. Side pockets are long and large running both port and starboard. Rear cleats are black plastic.

The cockpit is carpeted with another chair mounted towards the stern on the port side. It's a very good set-up which would allow three fishermen to do their thing without interfering with each other.

The stern features another raised platform under which the battery and 25lt portable fuel tank hide. That should be sufficient fuel, particularly when powered by a fuel-miserly four-stroke - in this case, a 40hp Mercury outboard.

There's a small boarding platform on the starboard side against the transom which has a rubbing strip around the edges.

FISHABILITY-PLUS
In keeping with its design, the Savage Jabiru Pro Tracker is very stable. There is no need to walk around ready to grab anything within reach at the slightest weight shift.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time during the test to do any fishing, however while I'm on this most vital point, let me digress for a moment.

A week or so after this test I pinched Trailer Boat's Savage Mirage 450 project boat for a trip to Lake King and the Tambo River,on the Gippsland Lakes. The Mirage and Jabiru are different boats, but their design concepts are very similar.

This gave us a terrific opportunity to test the fishability of this style of boat and I must say they are far and away a better proposition than a basic tinnie of similar size.

Stability in the Mirage was exceptional too. I found the storage hatches are all in the right places and with the exception of my huge tackle box, nothing was in the way when we were looking for action.

I see no reason why the slightly larger Jabiru would be any different. Fitted with a bow-mounted remote control electric motor it would be a brilliant boat for shallow water operation anywhere in Australia.