I have been anxiously awaiting the new boat for a few months now. It finally was completed last week and we are back on the water busy with Charters.
THe new boat is a 2012 23 Shoalwater Cat with an 18" raised platform and a short tower. It is rigged with a 150hp Evinrude E-TEC and has a Minn Kota 101lb Trolling motor with I-pilot. I installed a Powerpole Blade and will install the electronics this week. I went with the Lowrance HDS 8 Gen 2 with Structure Scan and the Sonic hub sound system.
The boat is a great fishing boat with a lot fishing room. It is extremely stable and the tower allows me to see much more than I was able to see before.
The I-pilot Trolling motor is awesome and allows me to stay off the bow and out of the way of customers while they are fishing. I like the anchor feature as well as being able to record tracks and go back and follow the same trails.
The powerpole blade is able to hold better than my previous powerpole and we can adjust the speeds it will deploy. It was very easy to rig with all controls being wireless. All that is required is to power up the pump and install the lines.
The HDS 8 gen2 has a faster processor than the 1st gen HDS units and with the Structure scan, I will have a much better view of the bottom when fishing Sebastian Inlet and the nearshore wrecks off of east central Florida. With sonic hub, we can listen to music when cruising or hanging out at the sandbar, the nice thing about sonic hub is that I can control it right through the HDS 8 head unit.
