Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Jet Outboard

I love those guys......and need to send them a few thousand again in another year or so. I had a 90 Ficht from them and Randy recognized my voice before it was all over. I still have the 90 Honda I "stole" from them as a replacement. With tens years in the salt and one partial dunking, it may be running on borrowed time at this point....perhaps one more season.

yeah klik, but we're going to have to change the spelling to BOATT


break out another ten thousand : )

I have a 20V70 with a 175 Johnson prop/jet I use on the Kuskokwim. I used to have a 20' flat bottomed jon boat with a 90 hp Evinrude with prop/jet. To switch back and forth you need jackplate and CMC will not give you the lift you need, which will be around 7 inches. Not even using the different bolt configs. CMC used to make one that had 12" of lift, but no more. Go here to find the one you need:
http://www.powrtran.com/cgi-bin/cart/showdetails.cgi?parts_id=9662

you guys ever seen any uhmw plastic intake fins to run on a jet intake. we invented these about 5-6 years ago. they will give you better performance with a jet by funneling more water in the intake plus give you a wear surface when hitting rocks and trees.bottom 2 pics are of a set that i ran for over 2 years on my boat.they took a beating and kept me from busting my lower.i was able to raise my motor one hole after installing them.
we sell the thru jamesriverjets in scottsville va. 434-286-4004

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gol dang looks to be another good idea!


I may have to try them, will run it by the crew at the boat shop, who knows maybe they will want to carry them.

Any thoughts on putting a stomp grate on your OB jet? I know Karolds welding in Fairbanks makes them. Don't know anybody who uses one but I cant believe it would hurt. I think he has them priced around $200.

Hot damn that looks fun! How often does a guy shear off the intake in those shallow rivers? Just curious. Looks like the trig is to steer clear of the white caps (rocks)?

Jordan

Considering this will be my first jet, I'm hoping not very often! My jon has a 3" tunnel so the jet foot can be almost level with the bottom of the boat. Tunnels can save the day if your not paying attention or hit a surprise you couldn't see.

had a stomp grate for my old Evinrude 115 that was on the boat previously, my bestest pard made it for me and during fall when the leaves are in the water it was wonderful.


but we haven't got around to modifying it to fit on the 130 Etec.

sure saves some time during the fall

yep you've got a handle on it, normally when the water is disturbed at the surface there's a reason for said disturbance, rock or tree or something disturbing the flow of the river.

where it gets tricky is in narrow canyons when you have gobs of pressure waves that are frothing and somewhat camo the junk in the river.

the other things that make river running interesting are meandering shallow channels over big plains of gravels, but ime the worst are new sweepers

reading the river is pretty easy and straightforward, with the odd exceptions thrown in to keep it interesting

the trick is learning your boat, how it handles, how it the weight of the load needs to be distributed etc.

I'm driving a true flat bottom so i don't grip corners, I power slide through them like driving on a dirt track or on ice.

love running light, but most of the time I'm hauling family and loads of groceries, building materials, household stuff etc.


ran up past Perrydise on the Salcha on Oct. 2 a couple of years ago, we weren't even seeing air boats up that high, she did indeed get skinny.

last fall a pard ran his sport jon up on a mudbank in the middle of the Tanana, he was 600 yards from any trees, and at least 20-30 yards from any water, in mud.

he called me at 8:30 at night for a rescue, but due to darkness had to wait till the next afternoon before I could get there to help him get it back in the water. He had the boat stripped down and found some push poles and had made a deadman in the sand to pull against. We made pretty quick work of it by the time another pard and I pulled up to get him floating again.


there's always an adventure awaiting when jet boating, some more fun than others, but it all beats working...well most of the time

That's pretty good water compared to what I have the last 5 miles to my cabin. Twice as wide, and looks deeper too. There's places where I have a 30 inch deep channel in a funnel, 4 feet wide, on a 15 foot wide river, and just below, it's 40 feet wide and 18 inches deep all across. Calls for some precision navigation, especially with the tiller- prop units with lift I've been running the last 40 years, and one doesn't want to get off step!

I'm getting too old for that chit- I'm having a console control, 40 Yamaha Jet fitted to my 18' Lowe flat-bottom... Just hope it's done by June 5.

Don't know a thing about jets- and little about console control. Guess I'm gonna learn. Probably should have gone with the Go-Devil, at half the cost...

lol las, I want to go old school again, 18 ft. flattie with a tiller handle, but it will have a jet.

that settles it, you've described your river running and it sounds fun! (well until you hit something)

really gonna have to video the cabin run in mid summer when the water gets skinny.


horror stories are abundant about the upper Chat. Even the head mechanic at Boat Shop has asked me to accompany him on that river. It's made their service dept. a ton of money, that's for certain, over the years.

one guy downriver even bought an airboat, but the dang river is so windy and narrow that he kept puttin on the bank

so he had Boat Shop get him a 16 fter with pontoons on each side of the jet unit so he could run when it gets skinny.

seems to be a pretty decent craft for the task

but old school hasn't let me down yet, though their have been some adventures

only twice has it been so shallow I opted not to run it, once going down with a pard, caught another neighbor trying to get back out and one other time we opted to run up the Salcha instead because water was too low.


at the launch a guy asked me for a cigarette as he said "I been running this river since 9 years old and have never seen it this shallow!" We went up without a hiccup.


running the Tikchik was where I learned to drive a jet boat and it was a steep learning curve, I'd had about 10 minutes experience in a boat before I was charged with taking two clients up it.

when we stopped for a break one of them asked me "Randy how long you been running a boat?" when I pulled up my sleeve to look at my watch he shouted "damn I knew it" lololol, oh what a fun trip that ended up being!

narrow, windy, and shallow, let's go jet boatin!


would love to run to your cabin with you someday las, sounds like it'd be a blast!

as an aside you ought to see the boat my cabin neighbor takes down there that staked the place in the early 70's

that big azz boat would work just fine in Valdez, but he has a real ocean boat for that.

he has to lay it on it's side in some of the skinny water. the guy can flat azz drive a freakin boat!

me, I'm just learning

The first time I rode in a jet boat was in the late fall with Bob Meals of Tri River Charters in Talkeetna. I will never forget coming onto a real shallow spot in the river and I knew we were going to be hitting gravel hard. Bob laid that boat over and said he had to "make some water" to get over the spot without hitting. Of course to him it was routine, but I was white knuckled. I left the boat damn impressed and appreciative of guys that "know" their boat and how to drive them.

in va. we run rivers like the shenandoah ,james and the new. lots of rocks ,ledges and sand bars. i've seen a few lowers knocked off or broken. i put 3/8 uhmw on the whole hull on my boat to protect from rocks and make it slide across stuff easier.

Maybe a slightly smaller boat if you want to stay under 50 hp. Power is handy for upstream running and hauling the weight for a long trip and game meat. I have a 19 foot boat that is not overpowered at all with a 115 hp prop. It is rated for 175 hp. The best test would be to run a set-up like you are proposing.

My current motor is a 4-stroke Yamaha and I am in love with the thing. Starts, idles all day without carboning up and uses hardly any fuel compared to a 2 stroke. I would take a used Jap 4 stroke or an E-tec Evinrude over a new anything else except maybe Mercury.

i,ve fished and floated the Shenandoah...lots!!! of ledges and fish the james...lots of rocks....then there was the rapaanic? lots of fish - and snakes and posin ivory. anna lake?...tore that place up!....best was cat fishing the Potomac at night ...middle of DC lots!!! of beers and nobody on the water fri/sat nights...the ladys would howlar down from key bridge

Well I flew up to Fairbanks this morning then towed my new boat back. Man it was like the tropics up there compared to in the park and through the Cantwell/Chulitna area near the igloo. I figure those folks are just gonna throw in the towel as far as summer goes this year. Still damn near 3-4ft of snow down through there. Saw a few bou crossing the Nenana, everything else was hiding I think. Here is the new hull, I think it will be a good little boat.



Not spring..



Should have had a snowmachine instead..

Nice lookin' boat and trailer. I like it.

What does it have for bunk boards?

One thing I did on my boat trailer was install some plastic pads on the bunk boards to make it slide on and off easier. I used some left over strips that my buddy had bought for use as runners on a snowmachine sled. It was very worthwhile improvement and way better than the carpeting it originally had.

I love aluminum boats. Do you see many in Alaska with sponsons(pontoons) and tunnel hulls? I see quite a few down here for shallow water use.