Questions about jet jon's

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sightfish

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So I've run small aluminum boats with outboard jets (mostly an older 25 HP mercury 2 stroke) and am looking at options to upgrade. As you can imagine a 25 HP jet moves a 16 x 48 boat at about the speed of smell with two people and wont even plane in most cases. I'm interested in a modified jet jon due to the fact that I think they will run a little shallower, you don't have the jet foot to knock off as on outboard, and they have plenty of HP to move along nice. Here's question: We are going to be using this boat to access very shallow water for fishing which means sand bars, moss, rocks, and anything else bad you can think of. Since we are basically going to be beating the crud out of this thing, do you think we are better to stick with outboard jet? What about trash in the pump? Trash has been an issue with even the outboard jet where we fish and wondering if will be bigger issue in one of these. Any advice is appreciated.
 
Inboard jets are also vunerable to sucking up stuff. I've had stuff get stuck in the impeller, but that was partly my fault for having an open-style grate.

Even if you don't get rocks stuck in there, it tears up the impeller & wear ring fast.

I kill the engine if it gets less than a foot (& I am off plane). If I am going fast & it gets shallow, the hammer goes down!

If you are trolling the shallows, maybe a kicker motor could work.

The advantage of outboard jet is that it is water ready & fully legal right away.
 
I'm thinking I might like to give one of these a shot and look like SC Designs is the man since I don't have time to go through learning curve and build one on my own. Best way to get in touch with him?
 
I have both an outboard jet on one boat and an inboard jet drive on the other. Both boats will suck up debris in the water and the shallower you run the bigger the risk. You can tilt the outboard if you need to and if it's really shallow just walk the boat through. With the inboard and jet drive, you have to decide quickly when to shut it off to prevent damage and if you run aground, the weight might make it tougher to walk through the shallow water. My boat with the outboard is a tunnel jet so you may want to consider that so your motor is mounted higher up to reduce the chances of damage. I would look at the lowest cost option to start with and see how things go.
 

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