First boat..need help

[Rickhem]

I've had a few different boats for exactly the kind of fishing and fishing locations that you reference. My current boat is a 14 foot Mirrocraft Northport Troller that I bought new back in 1987. It has a Yamaha 15, also bought new back then, with the 9.9 stickers on it. It was common to swap out the 15 stickers for 9.9 back then, not sure how that goes now, but I've never had anyone even ask about it. You'll want to be able to get off of RV as quickly as you can if the weather changes while you're out there. Lots of people have been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the wrong boat when that's happened through the years.

My boat has a 20" transom, so I have a long shaft outboard, but it stope that stern wave from slopping in when you power down quickly. My boat does not have bench seats, floor is all open, and it's got a livewell in the back that I use like a bench seat. Open area has two removable pedestal seats, and a small casting platform/storage area up front. Lots of room for three people, and I've had as many as 5 on the boat in smaller electric lakes with the outboard removed for that trip.

My prior boat to this one was a Lowe 14 v-hull, the red one you see in lots of images. Great boat, but those bench seats use a lot of space. It was modified with floorboards and pedestal seats, and a bow mount trolling motor.

Do your research, a lighter hull will need less power to get on plane, and will plane faster when loaded. Research how think the aluminum is on whatever boat you're looking at. Find out what the hull weight is too. You'll be pulling it on a trailer, so you need to know what your loaded boat weighs.

For outboards, a tiller leaves you more room inside, but means you're going to always be in the back. Two strokes are fairly bullet proof, offer more power for their weight, and you'll only need to mix the oil and gas, which really isn't a big deal. A smaller engine is easy to take off and put back on when fishing electric only lakes. Saves weight doing that too.