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.

Congrats, looks like a versatile boat in good condition you can do all kinds of fishing with besides bass and include the whole family. Winner.

Looks like a great find to me!

Awesome! Someone told me that there is surprisingly good bass fishing in Taneycomo? My wife is the opposite, the faster I push the boat the more she likes it.

We only caught trout, but weren’t targeting anything else. Dad was saying he’d seen several bass videos on YouTube from it though. Water temperature on discharge end was around 60degrees, so cool bass.

I caught a couple pound smallmouth a few years ago and a keeper walleye last year. Guy on
Our dock brought in a 7 lb walleye Friday, but they’re not very plentiful.

Used to bowfish for carp on Taneycomo as a kid. Saw a lot of bass doing that actually.

Nice! We just bought a new to us Lund Pro Sport 1700 that I'm getting to know. Good luck fishing!

I think the better bass fishing is at the lower end of Tanneycomo, water probably warms up a bit by the time it gets down that far. The water coming through the generators at Table Rock dam averages around 48 degrees year round, comes from about 120 feet deep from Table Rock.

Great lakes in that area, that boat should see a lot of good use Cheesy.

A wonderful addition to the family....enjoy the boat this holiday weekend.

Congrats on the boat! Looks like you've started out right.

One of ole_270's jigs he tied up as replacement for what we lost on our week of fishing.


I'd bite it if I were a fish.

Looks like a winner!

That's a real nice, clean boat. Can't go wrong with a Merc.

Nice boat. Those 2 stroke merks are very reliable.
Fish don't know the age of the boat. You may need to up grad your electronics if you haven't done so already. Good fishing.
tbear

Bought a Garmin Echomap 73SV for it. BPS had them for $850 but wouldn’t sell to me because they were going on sale 3 days later as a Fathers Day door buster sale for $450 where they only have 3 in the entire store supposedly. I called Scheels from BPS, they price matched and gave free 2 day shipping.

Going to look for a 9” for the front on Black Friday.

Nice boat, good luck with it