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Opinion on boats, engine

Hello all:

I'm considering buying my first boat, and wonder if any of you folks have any advice/opinion on the following:

- Lund boats or Alumacraft boats. I want a light 16' deep-V boat that I can trailer in my small Toyota pickup, which is rated for 3500 lbs trailering. Around here there are a lot of Tracker boats, but I've heard complaints on Tracker customer service and problem with leakage through the welds. They tell me Alumacraft is a good quality boat, and Lund is top of the line.

- The jet propulsion engines from Honda (BF35 or BF65). They really look interesting because it allows access to shallow areas and it's quieter, but I wonder if this new technology (or perhaps not new, I don't know) is not that well developed that it's best not to get into it at this moment.

I'm in central Texas and I'm looking to do mainly bass fishing around the Hill Country lakes (some of them pretty large bodies), and perhaps once in a while go to the Gulf coast to do bay fishing or close-to-shore fishing.

Thanks in advance for your help Sergio

Sergio
Mar 16
2005
Sergio, You really should come by the store in Marble Falls, we need to talk. You've obviously done some research, but what you've come up with just won't work well for what you're wanting to do. 830-798-8886 Pat
Mar 16
Lund has a good reputation. Haven't heard any complaints about Alumacraft. Bob
Mar 16
I went through this same thought process back in 2002. I ended up with a G3 SimRacer
Mar 16
Like some other guys said, jets are bad about intake clogging. I've had one for a couple of years with a 6 degree deadrise bottom, but I run it in shallow, fast running gravel type streams. If I was mostly going in lakes and inshore, I think I would stick with a prop as the others said (power, speed, fuel mileage, noise, clogging). The other thing not mentioned so far, is that jets don't corner well, even with v-bottoms. I frequently see newbies sitting in their boats on dry land because they misjudged making a corner. While you don't have to do the twisty stuff near as much in lakes, some hard swerving is bound to come up eventually. The other thing on aluminum hulls is the bottom thickness. If you get overly brave about running shallow, you inevitably will hit the bottom at some point. Why have it if you don't use it? :) The common jet boat bottoms around here are .19" thick and a 5052 alloy, very tough stuff. They call them plate boats. If you have .100" or less thickness and 2024 alloy, touching hard rock and even gravel sometimes will open you up. You then sink really fast. hth bill bill
Mar 17
Bill, Bob, SimRacer:

Thank you all for your help. From your comments it's obvious that the jet propelled engine is not the best choice for my target application. I was thinking that a jet-driven engine could add extra capability to the boat for shallow water and allow me to fish the shallow flats in the Gulf coast, but it's obviously not the case. You need a more specific rig for that. In reality I'd do such a fishing trip rarely. I would say 99.9% of the times I will be doing bass fishing.

Sergio

Sergio
Mar 17
   

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