New boat shopping

I’m looking for a mod v flat bottom for fishing. 18 ft or so. Looking at crestliner, Lowe, tracker ,and alumacraft. Boats are going up in price I know but I’m already going to be without a fishing boat this year so just going to bite the bullet and order one. What’s a good boat out there with the least “quality” issues?

War eagles are pretty bad to the bone

Dink buster wrote:

I’m looking for a mod v flat bottom for fishing. 18 ft or so.

I’ve got a Ranger RT178. Its a mod V aluminum bass boat. I bought it new in 2015 so I’ve got 5 seasons in it now. I have not experienced any issues with it.

I will tell you that it is not great in rough water though. The mod V hull simply isn’t designed for it. However, I did not buy it to be used with that intention so I don’t use it in anything super choppy.

Feel free to PM me with more questions.

I own a roughneck and I’ve done some research on the models you mentioned. IMO the roughnecks, retriever jons, grizzlys, and predators are all very similar in design/quality, cost, and features. My personal favorite is the predator and if I could have my choice my boat would be the 18′ predator tiller.

Alumacraft’s waterfowler mod-v seems to have lagged in design and features IMO.

Another thing to consider is that with some of the “package” boats you are also limited to your choice of motors. For example, its surprisingly hard these days to get a mod-v with a yamaha motor. Yamaha owns G3 but their mod-v’s seem geared more towards hunting than fishing… and they have limited tiller options.

For cool-factor, the war-eagle, havoc, and excel boats are pretty sweet!

JP

I have a 17′ all welded Alumacraft with a 40 HP surface drive for my small river boat. I went with the Alumacraft because it had the features I wanted. It has a live well, 7′ rod storage, comes rigged for a 24 volt trolling motor setup and has plenty of storage up front. I beat on it pretty good and have not had any issues with it.

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That looks like a pretty decent rig! Where do you store your TM batt’s?

JasonP wrote:

That looks like a pretty decent rig! Where do you store your TM batt’s?

They are in the compartment under the terrova head. 2 batteries and an onboard charger in there.