Jet Drives

I think it’s interesting how rare jet drives are in the Midwest. Does vegetation affect them more than a prop drive?

They don’t play well in vegetation. Plants get sucked against the intake grate and chokes off the flow of water to the pump.

They are fairly popular on our river systems, especially places like the Upper sections of St Croix, Mississippi, and MN Rivers.

They require a little more skill to drive, are quite a bit less efficient (slower speed and more gas), and some extra maintenance involved. Also they don’t work the best with a V Hull and a V Hull is what you want for big water. That’s why don’t see many Great Lakes, or Offshore Jets.
There are definitely some areas though that jets are preferred and in some cases the only option take you where you want to go.

I see jet drives on the Croix all the time. And Aldo on the snake River. I guess it’s more of a where are u fishing type of deal. No need to have one on most of our lakes. But go play on the river and you’ll see them all day long

Weeds and leafs are a jets worst enemy. I have ran nothing but a jet since 2009. Every year there are more around. We did a 8-10 mile float in a guys drift boat yesterday and saw around 12 jets for the day.

Aren’t some boat hulls designed with tunnels for jet drives?

jwellsy wrote:

Aren’t some boat hulls designed with tunnels for jet drives?

tunnels work better on bigger hulls with bigger power. Smaller hulls and motors it is un necessary and hurts performance.

As a frequent paddler on the Upper St. Croix I typically see one on most trips. I’m generally not a fan for obvious reasons, but I get that the river doesn’t belong to just one type of visitor.

The other weekend I happened to be putting in at a landing at the same time a jet boater was taking out and he was a super nice guy.

He explained how he has almost zero steering control under 5-6 mph, so when he comes across a paddler he will often speed up to get out of their way. Most paddlers take this as an act of aggression and he gets a lot of middle fingers while he says he is just trying to safely get out of the way, and that these boats actually produce less wake at higher speeds.

I also asked him how far up the river he could get and his answer was “all the way,” which as somebody who often tries to move upstream with a paddle and a small trolling motor sounded pretty awesome.

Weeds are an issue for sure. Leaves are the devil when running a jet drive. I’m not sure what’s going on with the guy not having boat control at low speeds tho. I have no issues with control with a normal jon boat and jet outboard.