Hunting / Fishing Boat

[William Reinicke]

I wasn't sure about the area ahead of the motor mount.
I don't want to come across as ragging on your choice of boat. I was just pointing out that it would have the same or very nearly the same required floatation foam as any other similar size and style vessel. I am actually right now, in conversation with a Havoc dealer concerning my own purchase.

Dave none taken that way, like I said, Im not even sure about the "chine" being the reason for less flotation. Its just what was told to me a lot from people I spoke with at the time of purchase of my boat. Even my buddies and i have talked about it and it doesnt even really make sense to us, but we arent boat builders. If anyone had more insight on this, its the builders here on this forum.

End of day, what I wanted was the max storage in my boat. More the merrier at the time, so when I figured out havoc didnt have any around any of there rear storage boxes, i was sold. The cherry on top was when it performed so well. I originally started with a 40 efi on it and it did mid 20's all day, and then when we put that 5000 efi on it, and saw 30, I was amazed.

I have videos of it jumping up on plane and dropping down. There is quite a bit of lift in my boat. I love it from a performance standpoint, but it took some getting used to when running real shallow. It will run over stuff only 2" deep and you can barely feel it because of the lift. Where I got myself in trouble in the past is when I dont realize how shallow it is, come off the motor and then when it sits down, you are rocking back and forth and high centered. With my buddys excel, you know when you get real shallow and can feel it all and know not to come off the motor.

 

[Carl]

this is very interesting., learn some new stuff every day.

 

[Kevin Puls]

I'm in the process of researching a hunt / fish boat build. While there are a bunch of topics on there that are close, none that I found hit the mark exactly or are fairly dated. Apologies in advance if this is overly redundant.

So with that - I'm looking for a welded aluminum boat, 18-20'. Use will be out west, marshes, small to large lakes and maybe at some point putting on a jet conversion to access a couple of the rivers close. No saltwater planned for now. Typically it'll be 2-3 people, gear and a dog. Only interested in tiller steer, right now the plan is to put it on a hydraulic jack, maybe modify with a low water intake and see how that does for a year or so. But, a couple the places I'll be hunting are shallow w/ a lot of salad , so at some point it'll probalby be a necessity to put on a mud motor. BTW, anyone mount a surface drive on a hydraulic jack, thoughts? It'll need to have a decent enough size front deck to comfortably fish off of. Needs to handle moderately rough water with a little common sense applied.

As far as manufacturers, looks to me there is a SeaArk dealer in Idaho and an Excel dealer in Utah, but any options west of those would be better for me. Could always go with a Lowe/Lund/Grizzly but as of now those aren't real high on my list. Also, not really interested in a full custom build, there's a couple great ones close but they typically specialize in sleds / drift boats so I'm not sure my wallet could affort those shops for a one-off boat.

So with all that, I'm all ears on manufacturers, layouts, specs of the build and anything else this group would offer.

Thanks in advance everyone! If PM is better please feel free

Wow I hope you don’t drive yourself completely crazy like I have done over the years. I have owned a lot of boats trying to find the right one. What style of fishing do you do? I exclusively troll on Lake Erie which generally requires a deeper wider boat.

I’m a big Hewescraft fan. Heavy gauge rock solid boats. They have several different models in sizes, shapes, weights. I have a sportsman. I plan to build a blind for it this year. It will be an open water blind though for diver hunting.

I would seriously look at the Lund Alaskan 18’ though.