30 Years of Products

Although most people credit John Rybovich as the inventor of the fighting chair in the mid-’50s, the devices we call fighting chairs these days bear little resemblance to the first models. Now a necessary component on boats chasing big fish on heavy tackle, today’s fighting chairs are much more robust than their predecessors, mainly to be able to tolerate the extreme drag pressures that can be achieved these days. Professional boats using 130-pound-test line regularly push 70, 80, even 90 pounds of drag when circumstances and conditions allow. Murray Brothers was the first chair builder to elevate the fighting chair to a work of art, but others soon followed. Today’s fighting chairs run the gamut of sizes, shapes and functions, and many are festooned with extra rod holders and rocket launchers.

“Although the first chairs built with an offset stanchion that [allowed] your rod tips [to] clear the corners on a large boat probably were invented around 20 years ago, it was the new bearing materials, and understanding how to use them, that really made a big difference in chair performance,” says Sam Peters of Release Marine. But he also knows that people still have an eye for beauty and says, “One of the biggest things to happen in chair design is the addition of CNC machines and [using them] to sculpt and contour the wood into smooth shapes. You don’t have to sit on a flat board anymore!”