Looking into a boat,is this one any good?

[randerson52]

I am looking into a Tracker Grizzly 1648 BASS package. It is 16 ft holds 5 people,

transom height is 21 inches
bottom width 48 inches
hull material 0.100 5052 marine alloy
beam is 71 inches

but since i will be fishing the Round Valley resivoir, which has a restriction of a 9.9 horsepower motor, i was wondering if that would be enough to push us around, or if we should go with a 25 merc for the river. Bassintom, if you see this lemme know what you think, because you fish in New Jersey and have a boat, and i wanted to know what your setup is

Thanks
PB

[catfishtonyd]

I'll tell you what I did with the same situation. I've got a 16 foot Carolina Skiff. The Tracker Grizzley is about the same size, and it's as good a boat as any 16 foot aluminum boat.

One question. If you get the bigger engine is it going to be a tiller steer, or a remote steer? I personally would get a tiller. (1) they take up less room in the boat. (2) you can remove and put it back a lot easier than you can one that has steering and shift/throttle cables hooked to it. I've got a 20 hp Mercury tiller that I have to remove two bolts and loosen the wing nuts to take off. No problem. This is important if the 9.9 lakes won't let you even have a bigger engine on your boat at all.

I'd forget the 9.9 lakes, get the bigger tiller engine, and just get a couple of big electric motors to fish the 9.9 lakes. You're not going but so fast in a 16 foot boat with a 9.9 anyway, forget about it. Most 9.9 lakes aren't so big they can't be fished just fine on electric motors only. Around here they're less than 1000 acers usually. You can fish that all day long with electric power. I'd have one bow mounted motor and at least one on the stern. Get good batteries, and you're in business. And you have a big enough gas engine when you go to bigger lakes/rivers. If you can afford both motors of course that's different.