BearCreeks have over 20 years of experience in building some of the best bait boats available on the market today. We review the BearCreeks bait boat range in this article.
Over the years they’ve created a great number of models that have been heralded as firm favourites, but today their flagship model stands as the iCatcher Pro. With the bait boat market enjoying a significant boom in recent years, we thought we’d review BearCreeks iCatcher and some of their other models, to see how they stand up to the rest of the industry.
BeerCreeks iCatcher Pro Bait Boat
Let’s start with BearCreeks flagship model, the iCatcher Pro. The sleek and smooth hull of the iCatcher gives the boat an authentic luxury look. The boat features front and rear lights to make night trips a walk in the park. The twin motors feature algae and weed protection to prevent any damage when fishing snaggy and weedy waters, and while this reduces the speed ever so slightly, it’s far better than seeing your bait boat stranded 100m from the bank.
The iCatcher has a phenomenal range of up to 600m, making it an excellent choice for almost any water. The boat has a great customisable feature that allows you to turn a large hopper into two individually operated feeding chambers, which will hold up to 4kg of bait accumulatively. The boat also features an electromagnetic hook release feature to ensure accurate rig placement every time. The powerful lithium batteries keep this boat on the water for up to 3 hours on a full charge.
BearCreeks offers the iCatcher at a varying price ranging from £940 – £1,500, depending on the additional features you’d like to include with your boat. These additional features are:
GPS Auto Pilot – Program up to 21 fishing spots, including your home spot to ensure utterly accurate baiting and rig placement each and every time. This is such an outstanding tool to have if you are fishing on a key feature of the lake like a gravel bar or clear spot beside weed.
BC151 Fish Finder – This coloured echo sounder can be fitted to the boat to allow you to accurately map the lake in an incredibly quick time. It comes complete with a coloured screen to keep on the bank to view a detailed map of the lakebed and the inhabitants that may be beneath the boat. It maps up to 30m in depth, and the distance range is 300m.
BearCreeks iCatcher Features
- GPS Autopilot System
- Coloured BC151 Fishfinder
- 21 Programmable Spots including an Auto Home mode
- 2 powerful motors with algae and weed protection
- 1 electromagnetic release hook at the rear
- 7 extra bright LED (3 of them for battery indication)
- Electromagnetic feed chamber with 4 kg bait capacity and hopper splitting functionality
- Range up to 600 m
- 3 hours running time at maximum speed
- Dimensions: 58.5 cm x 37.8 cm x 26 cm
BearCreeks iCatcher Review
- Price – ****
- Ease of Use – ***
- Features – ***1/2
- Reliability – ****
- Battery Life – ***1/2
Score – 3.6/5
The iCatcher is a fantastic bait boat with a big bait capacity, long runtime and the option to add plenty of features. However, there are a few problems with the iCatcher that prevent it from reaching the upper echelons of the bait boat industry, mainly surrounding its ease of use with the echo sounder and the echo sounder range. Nonetheless, this is a solid bait boat, and you could do far worse.
Carpmate BearCreeks Bait Boat
The Carpmate is almost like the iCatcher’s little brother. It can reach the same range as the iCatcher at 600m, it runs just about as long with its lithium batteries with a 5-hour runtime, the design is notably similar, and it features the same rig release system. However, the hopper holds much less at 1.5kg, and it doesn’t have nearly as many features as the iCatcher. Although, the Carpmate does feature a colourised echo sounder built into the boat with a shoreside interface module, which is genuinely one of the best features of any bait boat, and its inclusion takes this boat to another level.
The Carpmate costs £1,045 with the colour echo sounder, which puts it in the same price category as some of the best bait boats on the market. While the Carpmate is a solid choice, the absence of a GPS or autopilot feature is more than noticeably considering it’s priced almost identically to the Carplounge RT4, which is considered the absolute best bait boat available on the market today.
BearCreeks Carpmate Review
- Price – ***
- Ease of Use – ****
- Features – ***
- Reliability – ****
- Battery Life – ****
Score – 3.6/5
The Carpmate is steady across the board when it comes to operational qualities, but its high price doesn’t really correlate with its available and integrated features. The echo sounder is a wonderful tool to have at your disposal, but for £1,045, you’d expect a GPS function too.
BearCreeks Scavenger Pro Bait Boat
The Scavenger Pro bait boat is the last of BearCreeks range to review, and incidentally, we’ve saved the most expensive until last. In fact, there aren’t many bait boats available on the market that cost more than the Scavenger Pro, coming in at £1,615. Now, the Scavenger Pro is loaded with different tools and features, possessing everything from a 4kg double hopper, powerful twin motors, patented dual rig release systems, 5-hour lithium batteries, an echo sounder and a GPS autopilot system, so it’s certainly had plenty of attention during its development.
The range of the boat is 600m, and the autopilot feature allows you to programme up to 21 spots for your boat to take itself to at the touch of a button. The echo sounder is the same model that is featured throughout each of the other Bear Creek models, and the colourised shoreside interface is a fantastic inclusion.
The Scavenger Pro is certainly an impressive and reliable bait boat, but the price does leave some concerns. There are several boats on the market, including BearCreek’s flagship model, the iCatcher Pro, that provides the same features and functionalities at a far lesser price.
BearCreeks Scavenger Pro Review
- Price – **
- Ease of Use – ****
- Features – ****
- Reliability – ****
- Battery Life – ****
Score – 3.6/5
The Scavenger Pro is undoubtedly an impressive boat, jam-packed with fantastic tools and features that will be priceless on the bank. But, you can buy better boats for less, which will always be the ultimate issue with the Scavenger Pro.
BearCreeks Kincarp Bait Boat
The Kincarp bait boat is the cheapest offering from BearCreeks current range of available boats, but for its price, it fights well above its weight. The design of the boat is simplistic in the best possible way, with front headlights adorning the shiny, jet black ABS shell and rear LED lights for sound visibility even in the worst conditions. There is a decent-sized hopper that will carry all baits from boilies to particles, and strong motors that carry the boat at a fair speed. The boat also features an accurate rig release system to deliver your bait at a spot of your choice. The Kincarp boat utilises lead-based batteries that run for 2 hours. These batteries are reliable but tend to be heavier and run for less time than lithium batteries used in most other boats.
The Kincarp doesn’t benefit from an abundance of additional functionalities like GPS and an echo sounder. Still, it does provide a reliable and operational bait boat at what can be considered a very budget price for a bait boat at just £495.
BearCreeks Kincarp Review
- Price – ****
- Ease of Use – ****
- Features – **
- Reliability – ****
- Battery Life – **
Score – 3.2/5
The Kincarp is a basic boat with basic features, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. So many companies are producing really feature-rich boats that may be revolutionary, but they also come at quite a heavy price, which is something that the Kincarp addresses. This boat is ideal for someone that is having their first foray into the world of bait boat and wants to see the effect it could have on their angling before shelling out for a luxury model.
