Home Forums Fishing Freshwater New (to us) Bass Boat success

Bought our first fishing boat, new to us, 24 year old "John Storie's HAWK", 19'4" bass boat with a 175 horse Mercury. Was really hoping for a 4 stroke, but beggers can't be choosers. Bought it cheap (relative term?) to get our feet wet and see what we could learn.

It has a few warts, but being a 1997 model, to be expected I guess.


Bella, the wife's mutt seemed to approve-


My boy holding his fish, my nephew, wife's 89 year old grandpa, and dad (ole_270) drifting Lake Taneycomo on Father's day for trout. These were in the bait section, mostly stocker sized fish on this end of the lake-


Slippery little suckers. Up at the top of the lake is the 'trophy' area. Only flies, jigs, jerkbaits and the like can be used, no bait, no soft plastics. Trout go from being 10"-12" as the norm down in the bait area to being 15"-19" with commonly caught 20"+ in this area. Our biggest this trip was one at 19" and one at 18" weighing 2.8 lbs.


Ole_270 with one of his. All fish were caught on jigs he had tied for the trip.


Wife and her snoozing mutt on the 17 mile ride down to the dam that starts Bull Shoals Lake. Taneycomo is 23 miles long, starting from the dam of Table Rock Lake to the dam that starts Bull Shoals. We mainly fish the upper 6 miles. Dinking with the GPS, I found we were running at 52mph at some point, fast enough for me. Wife doesn't like to go much over 30mph though.


No breakdowns, couple learnings (that emergency kill switch by the throttle really does work, as well as the neutral safety), so all in all we had a good time.