2020 Ranger Boats 220C — London, KY 40741

A 2020 Ranger Reata 220FC at London, Kentucky, asking $29,995 through Pittsburg Marine. Ranger is bass-boat royalty — Forrest Wood's yard at Flippin, Arkansas, the brand that effectively invented the tournament bass boat — and it only entered pontoons in December 2018, under Bass Pro's White River Marine Group. That makes this 2020 a second-season boat from the line, and the FC suffix is the whole idea: Fish and Cruise, livewells and a rod box sharing 24 ft 2 in of deck with overstuffed lounges, so the boat serves the six a.m. fisherman and the noon flotilla without apology. Ranger brought one genuine engineering difference across from the bass world: the logs are powder-coated, an electrostatic finish baked on in an oven, where nearly every competitor runs bare aluminum. On a boat you may keep in the water all season, that is not marketing — it is the corrosion argument settled at the factory.

The case against is mostly about youth and paper. The pontoon line has no decades-long record; the boating press tested the sister 223F warmly but the 220FC itself has little independent coverage, so the model's reputation leans on the brand's; and resale on Ranger pontoons is thinner and slower than on the bass boats that made the name — the buyer pool for a fishing pontoon is real but narrow. Owner threads on the bass boards run positive with ordinary quibbles, nothing structural. At six seasons old, the survey priorities are the usual ones plus the finish itself: powder-coat is excellent until it is chipped, and a chip that has been weeping under the paint line is the one flaw this boat can hide better than a bare-log boat can.

The price puts it in a photo finish worth savoring: the cruise-first alternative from Barletta sits eight dollars below it, three years newer, with none of the fishing kit —

— while the same errand from the same corporate parent costs half as much, three years older, in Sun Tracker trim:

Between those poles the Ranger's claim is specific: the only boat in this corner where the fishing half was designed by people who win tournaments and the finish was specified by people who expect boats to stay in the water. If that sentence describes your summers, this is the one to survey first:

Sources: Ranger factory specifications; Boating Industry launch coverage, December 2018; Boating Magazine Reata 223F test; owner threads on BBC Boards.