For those of you already subscribing to The Watercraft Journal, you’re already familiar with Yamaha’s far-afield-of-normal open-bow, center console WaveRunner. What we originally deemed as an unfinished prototype back in 2023, has been proven to be “the real McCoy” as far as what we might expect from a finished model. We’ve caught this machine twice in the wild and now once more.
Earlier last week, an eagle-eyed subscriber of The Watercraft Journal spied this WaveRunner about to be dispatched for some on-the-water testing. Our spy wrote, “The Yamaha boys were out at West Point Lake on July 2nd testing with the ski. […] I guess they are moving forward with this project.” Its passengers clearly didn’t expect to get wet given their blue jeans, work boots and long sleeves.
And why is that? Because this vessel is huge. Its length quite literally filling half of that of a 28-foot trailer (from our estimates). It’s important to note that the United States Coast Guard limits a personal watercraft to below 12-feet in length, so it stands to reason that this WaveRunner could possibly exceed that boundary requiring far different and more expensive registration and licensing.
Clearly devised for the ever-expanding PWC fishing market, this WaveRunner – we at WCJ believe – will be officially released here in the United States as the JetFish (a model name given to a heavily-equipped fishing-dedicated FX HO in Australia and New Zealand). We believe this larger JetFish will too be powered by the 1.9L High Output 4-stroke and aimed at US lake and river fishing enthusiasts.
