Pedal Drive Shootout Native Titan VS Hobie PA VS Jackson Coosa FD

Matt, you've been Hobie Curious for a while, haven't you? I have. I don't know anybody else that can rock that life jacket. Rotate around. That thing maneuvers super nice. So crazy and weird. What do you guys say we give it an old speed test? Look at that Hobie take off. Got weeds. You got weeds? Hey, guys. What's going on? It's Dan from Headwaters Kayak Shop. And today, we've got a hot one for you. We've got top three fishing pedal drives on the market. We've got the Hobie Pro Angler, the Jackson Kusa FD, and the Native Watercraft Titan 12. And we're going to be getting them all head to head and doing a pedal drive shootout, because you guys asked for it. Here we are. We're out at our demo facility right here at Lodi Lake in Lodi, California. And we've got our top three pedal drives. At least the top three we could get our hands on. So what I did is I had the idea of like, hey, I want to test a few pedal drives. I put it out in our local kayak fishing club. And immediately, somebody messaged me back saying, hey, I got a Kusa FD. You're welcome to try it. We already have the Titan 12. And one of our other friends gave us a Pro Angler 14. We wanted to get a 12 to kind of do an accurate comparison, but we weren't able to. But we did end up getting this Hobie Pro Angler 14 with the Mirage 180 drive. So kind of their most up-to-date system. The Titan 12 is brand new for this year. And the Kusa FD is brand new for this year. We're going to be looking at speed. We're going to be checking out maneuverability, stability, layout, fishability, ergonomics, and the overall fit and finish. We're going to paddle them all. We're going to trade off. We're going to do a little bit of fishing. And then at the end, we're going to get all three together. And myself, Bam, and Matt are going to share our thoughts. Thing real quick. I thought I'd just give you guys a shot of the boat. They're very different crafts. The Hobie Pro Angler 14 is a massive platform. Just absolutely huge. Ton of deck space, ton of open layout. The Titan is similar that way. It carries its width all the way into the back. Huge tank well. Nice open deck layout. The Kusa FD is still wide, still stable, but more of a traditional cockpit fit. So it looks more like a fishing kayak. Smaller tank well with the rear access hatch. So a little bit different schools of thought, but all really good looking boats. I know, Matt, you've been Hobie Curious for a while, haven't you? I have. I've been in one for probably less than five minutes. I want to see how the drive works. All right. Why don't you take the Hobie? How about you, Bam? You got a preference? Let me ride the Jackson. I'm kind of from the Jackson era. That's true. You were the OG. When we were like the biggest Jackson dealer around, you were the man. Yeah, let's see what's going on with their newest crafts. All right. Sounds good. I'll take the Titan 12. Let's get into it. It's the smallest boat of the three, but still has a pretty good grunt factor. How much do you think that thing weighs, you guys? Like a hundred pounds? I'd say so. All right. As always, you guys, I'll leave the stats down in the description below, but we'll start by saying it. It ain't light for sure. That Kusa FD packs some weight. On the Titan, we almost always do a boondocks landing gear standard. This one, we didn't have it just because this was a brand new boat we opened up today. I've also seen landing gear on Pro Angler 14s and Pro Angler 12s. This particular one had the scupper cart. We're not using it. We're just carrying it. And I talked to one of the Jackson team guys, and he was actually saying that the boondocks landing gear on his kayak actually warped it a little bit. So he didn't recommend it. So I guess you just have to use the standard cart, but that's a heavy kayak to move around. All right. What's the grunt factor on that? That one seems about the same. You'd say same, huh? The handles in the back are better, but I tell you what, that front handle on this boat, whoever designed it never picked it up because that front handle's terrible on the Titan. All right. How about that one? All right. They're saying about the same, you guys. So just be aware, you guys, these pedal drives are heavy, heavy kayaks. No matter which way you go, it's not a light endeavor. They do make lighter pedal drives, but when we're talking these big, stable, stand-up bass fishing platforms, we're talking some serious weight. It doesn't look stable at all, Matt. Now this is just like hanging out with an old friend. I spent a lot of time in this boat this year, reviewing it, demoing it. At our shop, this has been the hottest boat of the season, the Titan 12. You look like a monkey trying to get into a coconut. I'm not gonna lie. I got four. So, okay. That's a good question. To go backwards, there's a couple levers there. The red lever makes it go backwards. The green lever makes it go forward. So you gotta pop it. There you go. Now you're backing up. What do you think, Bammer? Yeah, that's one thing that I talked to the Jackson guys about and they said it is gonna be a little bit different, a little bit less intuitive. But the nice thing is you've got steering on both your left and your right side, which is cool. I think also on the Hobie, you've got a steering lever left and right. On the native, you just have it on your left. So I could see if you fish a lot with your left hand, that might get a little annoying. How's the drive feel? First thing I noticed is it's kind of shaky in there. Oh, it's got a little bit of wobble? Yeah, quite a bit. Let's make sure it's locked in. Is it locked in there? I think so, yeah. It's interesting. I don't feel like I quite have it tuned correctly to me yet. Oh, we'll get it figured. Bam, that drive doesn't make any noise, man. It looks so quiet. Did you figure yours out? Cause yours has a couple positions. So this drive folds up into the boat, right? So right now you have it all the way down. It's got like a dagger board that drops all the way down. And there's a middle position. And you get up here. So this is where I started out. Right. So that's not deployed. It's got a little middle position there. It's that position there. For shallow water. And then it drops all the way down. And fully submerged. And then, yeah, if you hit something, it just automatically pops up out of your way. So let's go find something to ram into. What do you say? Let's do it. Now a math boat, if you just flutter kick it, you can actually get the fins to fold up against the hull and should be able to go in nice shallow water too. Me, I just would hit something. And there is like a little sacrificial piece up here that would break, but it is what it is. Honestly, we don't see that being a huge issue. We sell a lot of these things. It's not a big deal. I don't know anybody else that could rock that life jacket. Especially the life jacket and the hat. But when you catch fish like Matt, it just really doesn't matter. You can wear whatever you want. He's working this big old top water frog today on a fly rod. We've had it in the shop for a while. We said whoever is the first one to catch fish on and gets a 12 pack of beer. This thing, compared to the other pedals that are right in your way, I can stand and fish here. I can use my last card to spin around. When I was casting, the boat was turning, but I'm just turning with it to keep fishing. And then Jackson, you feel like you're a little bit more in a cockpit. Like your feet have a space to stand. Yeah, the walls are kind of, the gunnels of the boat are right alongside you. They're kind of high. It feels like you're kind of sitting down in something. It's really nice when I'm seated and sitting down. It feels like I'm locked in and good to go. Once I stand up, I'm pretty well restricted to facing forward. And on a Titan, you know, you've got that drive right there in your cockpit. So yeah, you don't have as much of a platform to move around. It is stable enough that I can turn and look and do whatever. But you see what Matt's talking about there. He's got that full platform in front of him where you can just rotate around and really not have any issues. So I know stability was one of our criterias on these boats, but to be completely fair with our sizes, we're all anywhere from 160 to 200 pounds. Stability is really a non-issue on any of these boats. I think it comes down more to fishability of how easy is it to maneuver around the boat, stand sideways, et cetera. All three of these boats we could all stand up in, no problem. It's just the Pro Angler gives a little bit more room. This would be the second. And then the Coosa FD is the third as far as ease of standing up and maneuvering. You want to drag race? Let's just go up to those logs up there. See how they do here. So even though it's a bigger boat, it's keeping up pretty well with the Coosa FD. I think that one's got a little bit more speed to it. Neither of these boats are known for being notoriously fast, but I will say at a fairly easy kick, you know, you can do four miles an hour, not too bad. Anything more than that, and you're just limited by the sheer hole design of the boat. All right, so we're back here and we got this real shallow log that sticks out. It's probably a good place to test the different drives. The Hobie drive is pretty fragile for bumping into stuff, but the unique thing is, is you can just flip one flipper up and it goes flush with the hole and just slides right over the top. You only have a few inches of draft underneath the boat. That thing maneuvers super nice. So you don't run into something, you gotta flip, are you gonna hit it? The reverse is not near as intuitive as pedal backwards. That was classic. All right, so now we've got Bam coming up from the Coosa FD and the really unique thing about the FD drive is it actually kicks up. So he's gonna hit the log, but the dagger board will actually, see how it just pops right up there? And then you just lock it back into place. So it's meant for shallow water. If you run into something, it's just gonna fold up into the boat. I thought that switch to the turn is as easy as I was hoping it would. Yeah, I think you really gotta jerk those things. Yeah, you have to pull pretty hard. I'm sure it's something you get used to, but. Yeah, it's just, I've never done it. And I'm gonna ram into this log. I'm gonna purposely just show you guys the advantage of these other two boats, because I hit something in here, but you can see the little plastic clip in the front. It's meant to fail, it just pops up. So no damage to the drive, but it sure doesn't feel good. But the cool thing is, the maneuverability I have, oh, look, it's deeper over here. Spin this thing around, found the obstacle. So next up here, we're gonna run all three of the drives through this weeded section. We got a bunch of weeds under the rodder, as well as tules, and we're gonna paddle around and just kind of try to get the drives gummed up. One thing I'll say with the prop style drive that I've learned from using them a long time, is if I know I'm going into some reeds that are laying across the water, or there's some vegetation under the water, I'll actually pedal, run across it, stop pedaling so my prop's not sucking up those weeds, and then once I'm through, start pedaling again. And if I notice I get a little bit caught on there, I just backpedal and clear it off, and then continue to go forward. We find the Hobie Flippers just seem to really glide and cut through the weeds a lot nicer than the prop style drives. I got weeds! You got weeds? I got weeds! Let's open it up and see what you look like there. So we all just went through the exact same way. Ah man, it just torqued up some tules. There you go, okay, so it just got wound up in there. Pretty standard, but you're able to kind of flip that thing up, clear them out fairly easily. Clear them out, no problem with that little port they have in the prop. On this one, it's a little bit more complicated. You gotta kind of pull it back and slide it over. And let's see if I got any weeds. I'm gonna, it's always so hard to do this while I'm trying to film with the other hand. So I actually have some weeds on there too. Didn't even notice it, but both props caught up some weeds. One thing that helps is the weed guardians that are available for these natives, but they both, the prop style drives kicked up weeds. The Hobie just sailed right through. Again, you guys, I try to give as unbiased reviews as I can. In all reality, if I was doing this, I wouldn't paddle just through the straight middle of the weeds. You have the control of these boats to kind of go where you wanna go and stay outside the edge of the weed line. Now there are times, especially in the Delta, where you're just weed massive. Sometimes in a Hobie, you could pedal and in a native or a Jackson, you'd have to paddle. So there are pros and cons to each. What do you guys say we give it an old speed test? Are your drives all cleared out? I think we're all lined up, bow to bow to bow. All right, on your marks. Hang on, I've gotta have some music. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. What's the finish line, you guys? Is that a tree? Yeah, let's shoot for that tree. All right, let's do it. Let's see how she goes. Doing the full quarter mile, huh? On your marks. Set. Go. Yeah, I figured that way it's not just a sprint. Because look at that Hobie take off. You get the sprint, but you also get the long range. You have to keep up. This is about as fast as this native wants to go. Look at those guys just pulling away. I know I need to get a GPS for you guys. I don't have one. Any faster than this right here, the boat kind of reaches its whole speed. It doesn't want to go much faster. The Hobie definitely had a huge jump off the line. But honestly, the Jackson keeps up with it really well. I think it's fair to say the Hobie looks like it wins. I don't know what Matt's doing, but the Hobie looks like it wins. The Jackson was a fairly close second. And the native was a distant third. When we're all cruising side by side, it's fairly even. But when you put the power to it, these other boats just pull away. This boat hits its whole speed, and then you just feel like you can't pedal it any further. So Matt's saying he had a drive malfunction. What's going on here, dude? Don't break somebody's borrowed drive. So like I told you guys before, these were all given to us by club members of the Yakabath Club. We put it out there that we wanted to do this, Hannah. And people donated our stuff. So we're trying to not beat it up. So what happened? Oh, it broke it. Did I break it? Yeah, check it out. Shit. I hope I don't, I mean, it looks like we can flip it around. See this little knob in right here? Flip it around. Yeah, it's busted on the other side. Flip it around. See that? Oh, we suck. What does that do? Obviously it does something to keep it straight. It holds it in. When I was pedaling hard, it like slipped forward. All right, well, there you have that. Interesting, and this is one of the new drives. That's a buzzkill. Yeah, we actually have the old drive in the car that James lent us, his turbo drive. So we could break it. So we can test it. At least with somebody on our fishing team, they'll be understanding. We'll have to get in touch with the Headwaters store up in Redding and hopefully it's just a new piece. I don't wanna buy a whole new drive, but you know, you do what you gotta do. You borrow somebody's gear, you gotta return it. You have all these nice parts on it, but what holds it in is cheap plastic. Yeah, that sucks. All right, let's give it a swap, man. Buoyancy for both of us, that's for sure. That was the easiest on-the-water boat swap ever. So much room for activities. Yeah, I didn't even have time to take a video. Armchairs, this is hilarious. You get one of these sweet life jackets, you don't even have a back on them. Yeah, it's actually probably way good. Whoa, that feels so crazy and weird. Yeah, because all I've done is the... Oh, I can't back up. All right, how am I gonna hit you? You know, my camera's up there. Yeah, this is weird. All right, so red goes backwards. Okay, here we go. All right, you guys gotta forgive me. I'm really not a Hobie guy. I've ridden a bicycle for 34 years, almost every day of my life. So when I get in one of these, I just feel like I'm a stair-stepper. Oh, yeah. I can definitely get what Matt was saying about the drive feeling a little wonky, a little flexible in the water. I shouldn't say wonky, but it definitely has, you feel like it has some flex. But man, you get it going. It's really, this is not a lot of effort. Again, I'm used to that bicycle motion because I pedal a bike. I feel like there's a part of my stroke missing. But that's just my bias. Honestly, it glides across the water. Oh, the maneuverability feels great. Lots of room in the deck. It's got these big handlebars on both sides, so you can steer from one side, you can steer from the other, you can use both. I love this. Like, your standing platform in front of you is huge. Like, you got all this room. Stability is huge. Kind of everything you'd expect from a pro angler, man. This thing is definitely good. Really, my only one gripe is just the pedals themselves. They're powerful, but you lose a lot of control and dexterity. Like, that ability, like I'm going forwards. If I wanted to stop and fish this spot, I gotta reach down here and consciously pull a lever and back, and it's not, it's not super intuitive. What's going on? You really gotta give it a good tug. Okay, there we go. You really gotta give those, oh, Matt's saying they need to be straight. If they're a little kicked, they don't want to do it too well. All right. All right, so I gave this Hobie a really fair shake. This is a Hobie Pro Angler 14, 600 pound capacity, tons and tons of room for activities. Ridiculously stable. I mean, it is really a boat platform. Thoroughly enjoyed the layout of it. All the fit and finish, the features, adjustment, super, super good. I'm still pretty excited to check out this FD. This was kind of the whole point of the video. I saw one of these the other day. I did a viewer's rig on one, one of our friends, and I wanted to see it firsthand. I wanted to see kind of what all the fuss was about. So I hit up one of the Jackson team members and he let me borrow his boat for this review. And then I got to thinking a Pro Angler would be sweet, compare all three. And so that's kind of what we're doing. Have you been in a Pro Angler before, man? I've not. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts. I'm kind of keen to try that thing out. Yeah, it's been a long time. Looking back like I'm going to go backwards. Yeah. Yeah, you got to flip those little levers there. See how he's got the cord set up? Yeah. So it's got the green to go forward, the red to go backwards. You got to give it a pull straight back. A really solid tug. There you go. See, this feels almost more natural. Going backwards? Yeah. And we've got Matt over there in the Titan. What do you think of the Titan, Matt? You can stock yourself for that one, you'll drift in. Yeah. I think this is, so far, the most maneuverable. So yeah, I mean, everything's always got its pros and cons, you guys, and that's really what we're here to talk about, what are the pros and cons, and what works for what and what doesn't. So, I'm finally in the Jackson Kusa FD. And the steering, yeah, it's going to take me a minute to get used to, but not too bad. I enjoy the feel of the drive, though. The drive instantly feels like it has good power, good catch, doesn't want to cavitate. I love the concept of it flipping up, too, if I'm in shallow water. It's significantly less maneuverable. It's not bad, but it's not as maneuverable as that Titan. But nothing really is that we've checked out. I mean, this isn't bad. It still has good control. Definitely feels more like a kayak. And I like that cockpit, fighter-style cockpit feel. I think the big rig will kind of be their boat that competes with the Pro Angler and the Titan. The Kusa FD may actually compete more with like a Outback or a Slayer, but it's what they had available and we wanted to get it on the water. And honestly, the drive feels really good. I like the deck layout. It feels fast. It feels smooth. Maybe a little bit more vibration in the flex drive itself, because it is a cable-driven device. But not bad. It still feels smooth. It's nice and quiet. I noticed with the Jackson, if I lean slightly on edge, the turning increases drastically, just by kind of shifting my weight to the outside edge. And I kind of get what Bam was saying about backing up. Like, you feel like you got to do a lot of back paddling before this thing grips and goes in reverse. Whereas on the native, it's like an instant feeling. It'll cavitate for a minute, it'll grab, and then you'll start backing up. I'm not sure where the lag is in this system, but it's significant between the forward and reverse. Not quite as intuitive. But I sure dig the seat on this Jackson. This thing is comfy. We've all been swapping around, checking out the different boats. It's cool to get these things side by side so we can actually talk intelligently when you guys call or come by the shop and are asking us for advice. We've been in all of them. We can talk intelligently about them. All right, you guys, we've been fishing for a while. Each of us have got to check out the different boats. And we're going to head back to the launch, and we're going to give you guys our final thoughts and kind of talk about which would we buy if it was our hard-earned money. All right, you guys, so we just got off the water. The three of us were in each one of the boats, gave them all a pretty fair shake. What would you guys say, if it was your money, which would you buy right now? I mean, I still think the Titan's the most maneuverable, and as far as ease of fishing, I would go with whatever I'm going to be able to fish the best out of. So you would go? I'd go Titan. I'd go Titan, for sure. Bam? Given the fact that I'm pretty much bass fishing like 100% of the time around here, I would say the Titan. If I was going to be a little more into salt or big open water clear lakes, and I wanted to go a long distance, I'm looking to go. Okay. And I'm kind of with Bam. If it was me and it was my hard-earned money, and I'm not even saying this because I'm a native dealer, because we do, this is the only brand we sell to three as a native, but I really do feel like the native had the best dexterity, the most maneuverability, the best bang for your buck out of these three boats. I do like the FD a lot. I think it has a lot of features, a lot of value. And this is actually something that I would consider bringing into the shop if I was getting it requested. If you guys out there want the FD and you love the FD, leave that in the comment sections. Let me know. Unfortunately, we can't be a Hobie dealer because there's another Hobie dealer up in Sacramento. And that's fine. We respect protected territories. But if you are looking for Hobie and you're in the Northern California area, our Redding store, Headwaters Adventure Company in Redding, does sell Hobie. And Brian that works there's a huge Hobie fanatic. He loves these boats. He knows them inside and out. And he could definitely help you out with any of your questions. So anyways, you guys, this is just sort of a rough and dirty, our sharing our thoughts, sharing our experiences. Obviously it's no substitute for you getting on the water and going for yourself. So please take the time before you spend your hard earned money, try to find a place where you can try these boats. If you have any questions or comments, leave those down in the comment section and we'll get back to you. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to the channel. We've got a lot more fun things like this going on. And if you guys aren't doing so already, go check out Matt and Bam on Instagram, at Matt Mandu, at Bam is a man. They're doing a lot of kayak fishing. These guys live the lifestyle. Also check out Bam's custom rods. It's called Guru Custom Rods. What's it on Instagram? Guru Custom Rods. Guru Custom Rods, just like that. Yeah, support this guy. He's a, he's fantastic rod builder. He loves the sport. He loves fishing. So, all right guys, I think that's going to do it for us. Until next time, this is Dan from Headwaters Kayak Shop, wishing you happy paddling. We'll see you on the next one.