Now for something important, fishing. Anyone have any experiance with outboard jet powered boats? I live close to some awsome small mouth and walleye rivers up in Minnesota. Been looking at either powering a small flat bottom witha jet ski powerplant or biting the bullet and going outboard. Just curious if anyone can direct me to the correct frame of mind. I dont want a rocket but some of the water can be up to 20 mph that I will need to go upstream in. Sometimes its in little water. Seen some nice boats but out of my reach financially. Even seen some with plastic bonded to the bottom for more rock use.
Thanks
Dave
Update, Thanks for all of the input. I found a slightly used 18' Clark thats almost 8 feet wide in Western Wisconson with a 65 mercury jet. Hull is aluminum .190 bottom and .125 sides. The last 4 feet is a modified tunnel. Boy do I ever have a lot of learning to do to get the handling down. Biggest problem is no rudder in the water and no steering unless your under power. It will run in 4 inches of water with two people and gear. I might have to try my hand at Fishing Guide if work gets much slower. The upper Mississippi , Kettle and St Croix are within 1 hour of my house, who knows maybe it wiill make its own payment. Right.
Hello Dave, in my neck of the woods there is a lot of water that "requires" a jet-type of drive. Those systems will operate in shallower water with less damage to the drive than almost any sort of prop system. A true outboard jet drive is likely to give you less issues with shallow water than a modified jetski drive. Jetski drives are really designed for higher speeds and thrust on smaller, lighter craft. If they aren't fed properly they're likely to cavitate and if they pick up a lot of debris or rocks they will suffer quite a bit of damage to the impeller. So if you can, opt for the manufactured outboard jet drives they'll work really well for you. That's my $.02. Best regards, Allan
Think REALLY HARD before You mess arround in a 20 MPH current. We don't want You getting the Darwin award.
Jet boat engines are not really eficient in terms of horse power required to get a hull up on plane, it takes many more HP than with a prop. They are the shallow draft solution if You can accept the fuel consumption / performance trade off. An outboard's ability to tip up to clear debris can beat trying to go under the boat when it is in 18" of water to clear a blocked jet drive.
A friend of Mine had a Jet Star, a 13 foot boat with a 60 HP Suzuiki jet drive. I got through the shallows going up stream OK by reading the water depth by eyball and staying in the deeper water. He was driving going back down, and shifted to "neutral" to drift through a shallow patch. "Neutral" on a jet doesn't stop the impeller, it just shuts off the discharge. It sucked a rock and locked up the pump. This happened just before dark, and We didn't have a hammer & chissel with Us. I did bring an ancor & rode, so We tied it to a tree branch with the ancor rode and called His wife to pick Us up along the highway. We pulled the boat into deeper water and chisled the rock small enough to get it out the next morning. The worst of it was the knee deep stinking muck allong the river bank.
Thanks for input, I ruled out the airboat because of noise and overhead clearance issues. I always wondered why you never see homemade jets out of jet ski power plants. I thought that a 60 hp one would be ok on a 16 foot boat, but I've been wrong a time or two. Looked at some beautifully built boats but dont have the $18K plus for the pricetag. Kind of looking late model used. The 20 mph water is usually short runs through narrows and some short rapids. There is so much about the tunnel style running slower but I like the fact you can run the motor a little higher so its not be the lowest part in the water. The inboard Alaska style ones are fast but milage is non existant.
Most of the rivers I want to run are gravel and muck mixed. The Mississipi and the Rum are the main two. Hoping work looked a little better up here as its hard to justify spending too much on a want. The bad part is the HP loss due to design as the gallons per fish is important to a point. Getting on the secluded water is #1. Its nice not to have to fight to fish.
A friend of a friend of Mine had a 40 HP jet outboard on a Boston Whaler, I don't remember which size, may have been a 15' [might have been a 13 or 17, it was a while ago]. It took all it had to run on plane & drank gas like crazy. It did go through the flats where a prop boat wouldn't.
My last boat was a 87 vintage alumacraft with a 3 cyl merc, it had decent fuel economy and ran a good speed. I have been looking at some used outboard jets and always hear they are really bad if you run them wide open. I cant run very fast on the Rum river but the Missisippi has some long runs from the boat landings to the good fishing holes. I could be changing lower units back and forth as its only 6 bolts but I am not so sure about the shifting mechanism. I may have to bite the bullet and buy a lower unit to fit the motor. Used a 3 hp weedless Evenrude on a square stern canoe equiped with small pontoons for small water some years ago but had to paddle to go upstream in faster water.
I just want simple but maybe usable is more important?
Some guys just mount a set of pitchfork tines below the skeg & cary lots of shear pins :-). I ran My dingys through lots of shallows, I never sheard the pin on My Evenrude 8, but I did screw up the rubber hub on My Mercury 8. I added bolts to positive drive the spline bushing to the hub. Coral reefs are hard on props.
Pretty wild there sharp tungsten. But if you ever ran out of gas or had engine trouble on that mud it'll be a real argument over who's gettin' out to push! lol
About 20/25 years ago there was a company called BAYKAT Manufacturing Inc King City MO that made a 26 foot w/3/16" thick aluminum hull boat kinda a cross between a dory and boston whaler. The interesting part is the "40+ hp outboard motor" was mounted 8 feet behind the bow. Not on the stern. There was a "tunnel" within the hull which forces the propeller wash to the stern. The boat pushed the front 8 feet and pulled 18 foot. The draft was about 9 inches. They made claims of average planing speed of 20+ mph w/40 hp. I wonder how that would work with the jet ski powerplant?
Found this picture/brochure in a "Boatbuilding w/Aluminum" by Stephen Pollard book at a used book store.
Topic Chit-Chat & Non-Welding Discussion / Off-Topic Bar and Grill / Anybody use jet boats on the rivers?
