Classic sight-fishing on the flats, with one on poling platform, caster on bow. (Maverick Mirage 17 HPX-S)
January 23, 2025
By Jeff Weakley
Versions of this conversation come up pretty frequently. A friend muses about a new boat, perhaps the perfect rig to “run over” to the Bahamas. Cue talk of ditching the single engine rig, start looking at twins and greater fuel capacity. Maybe he’s stuck on a mudflat: Cue speculation on the shallowest ride this side of an airboat. Ditch offshore boat and go technical skiff.
Or you might be totally gonzo, like me—lately I’ve been daydreaming about a musky boat. Nearest muskellunge is like 800 miles from my home. What the heck is wrong with us?
It’s healthy to reflect on stuff like this. Maybe you’re in the position to own multiple boats (me = small trailer boat + kayak). Perhaps you simply enjoy the buying-and-selling process, while sampling different fisheries from one year to the next.
For most of us, though, the best advice for shopping a Florida fishing boat is: Reflect on your fishing passions and life circumstances and try to come up with a semi-realistic vision of your weekends and time off.
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What will you be doing most with your new boat? Where will you spend most of your time? Who will be coming with you, and what will their needs or expectations be? Come Saturday, or PTO, are you really running 120 miles to the Abacos, or trailering 800 miles to Kentucky?
It goes without saying that budget is important—for most of us anyway. Just as important as what boat you set your eyes on is where you’ll be keeping it, and how you will be transporting it.
Understand this is Florida we’re talking about. Many homeowners associations and some municipalities have restrictions on trailer boats. Some require boats are kept completely out of view; others prohibit them entirely.
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Investigate your situation. You may need to budget for a marina or storage facility—or move. Waterfront property, with a dock or boat lift, may be the dream, but factoring Florida’s boom-and-bust real estate, hurricane cycles and shaky insurance makes boat-buying seem an elementary calculation by comparison.
Drift fishing blue water with kite rods to starboard, flatlines to port. Trolling motor and outriggers offer options. (Cobia 265 Open) We’re Gonna Need a Bigger … Truck For trailer boats, you’ll need to account for the towing capacity of your vehicle—or perhaps upgrade your vehicle accordingly. Sport utility vehicles tend to offer less towing capacity than a comparable pickup (sorry, Soccer Dad). That’s due to the SUV’s extra weight on the rear axle, among other characteristics. And don’t count on a salesman or Google search to give the true towing capacity—look at the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating and Gross Rear Axle Rating decal on your door frame, and the manufacturer’s towing guide (a dramatically different document than a sales brochure).
When you account for the weight of the trailer load, you must account for not only the weight of the boat and engine, but also the trailer itself—plus whatever is in the boat. Eighty gallons of fuel? That’s like 500 pounds. The figures may surprise you. A basic 20-foot center console on a tandem-axle trailer could easily approach 5,000 pounds, a figure often advertised as max towing capacity for some suspiciously light-frame sport utes. Exceeding the recommended towing capacity is unsafe—deliberately pushing the envelope just doesn’t make sense.
Also note that the temptation to shop tow vehicles based on “daily driver” fuel efficiency can be counterproductive. If your boating lifestyle will involve frequent highway trips (for instance, trailering to the coast from an inland town like Orlando or Gainesville), in many cases the three-quarter ton/heavy duty class truck will provide better fuel economy.
Much more could be written on this subject. In the salt, be prepared to replace trailer axles, brakes and tires every few years.
If you don’t want to deal with towing, marinas are a good option—assuming space is available in this post-Covid era of crowded waterways. “High and dry” rack storage is convenient, but you give up a little in the form of mobility. Of course, you can always bring a trailer there, or rent one, and have the marina put your boat on it, for that special out-of-town vacation. Independent boat transport services are available, too.
It’s a cost-benefit calculus nearly all Florida boaters go through: Monthly storage, versus towing. You can’t shop for a boat without first considering this.
Trailering? Consult your vehicle’s towing guide. Account for weight of the boat, plus engines, plus trailer, plus equipment and fluids. Shopping Fresh or Salt A flat-bottom aluminum or rolled-edge fiberglass skiff with a portable fuel tank and a tiller-steered outboard can be enlisted for a variety of fishing tasks in Florida, from lakes and small rivers, to protected coastal backwaters. Maintenance is a cinch, re-sale value is good, storage and towing are seldom complicated.
Where you’ll want a vee hull—or at least a modified vee—is when you’ll be crossing open water. The vee-shaped bottom knifes through the chop, providing a smoother ride.
If the only fishing you plan to do is bait-fishing or general casting with perhaps one family member or a friend, these small, bare bones skiffs, 12 to 16 feet, are a good option in fresh or salt waters. Hard on aging knees, maybe, but easy on the wallet. Same can be said for kayaks and canoes.
As your passenger number and/or fishing priorities grow, the needs diverge slightly in fresh and salt. Enter bass boats and flats boats.
Today’s technical bass boat—as opposed to a pontoon, deck boat or other recreational platform—is characterized by flat decks fore and aft, with a reclined helm position and low windshield, typically with below-deck rod lockers. It’s not just about some “racecar” look: The emphasis is on clearance topside for all-day casting from bow and stern. On a bassboat, nothing gets in the way. You run from point A to B, then you stand and sling baits in a 180-degree arc. Your friend takes the other 180. A saltwater flats boat, on the other hand, may feature a slightly elevated center console for some visibility while running the boat—looking out for shoals. Rod storage is along the gunnels, or in upright rodholders. A poling platform at the stern is a typical accessory, giving one person a high spot from which to watch for fish and propel the boat in potentially the shallowest water by the quietest possible means.
One boat to do both? Bassboats and pontoons (which are imminently fishable in lake environs) can be used in salt water—but the hardware, and particularly the stock trailer, may degrade more rapidly than you’d like. If you’re fishing Florida lakes and rivers more than 80 percent of the time, a bassboat is probably a good investment. If you’re “fifty fifty,” the decision would lean toward flats boat—or even a bay boat. Both “saltwater” types fish pretty well on Florida lakes and large rivers.
Into the Great Wide Open We’ve already gone over the basics of flats boats. What’s a bay boat? Loosely defined, it’s a big flats boat. If you’ve spent any time on a skiff, bassboat or traditional flats boat, you’ll know you’re on a bay boat the minute you step foot on it: Too heavy for pushing around with a pole. Beamy enough to walk around the deck without listing. Crank the engine, put the tabs down and cut through 1- to 2-foot windchop. Does the same on a lake, too.
Builders have taken the bay boat platform into new territory in recent years, repeating in some ways the evolution of offshore center consoles.
Ancient history it seems now, but in the 1960s and ’70s, a 20-foot boat was a pretty big boat. Boaters and boat-builders quickly realized that, all other things being equal, 25 feet is about the point at which a boat running on plane “bridges” the gap between choppy, short-interval seas driven by 10- to 15-knot winds: The keel touches the tops of adjacent waves, without falling into the trough. That’s what a person means when they say “running on top.” The next step is right around 30 feet. As a corollary, we also figured out that center consoles, by virtue of the helm position slightly aft, are a little easier on the body than forward-helm cabin or dual console boats. Less slamming, for lack of a better term. That’s where the industry sort of landed in the 1990s: walk-around cabin boats, DCs and pilot houses still available, but CC’s dominating the saltwater market.
To anglers who enjoy casting, and spend less time on the open ocean, the high freeboard (sides) of the traditional offshore fishing boat aren’t needed or desired—and thus, in the late 1990s, the flush deck layout of the traditional flats boat met the dimensions and running surface of the offshore CC. Since that time, the length and consequent wave-taming qualities of the bay boat have reached into the 30-foot class.
If you’re fishing Florida saltwater, it’s a very tough decision—bay boat or offshore boat.
For anglers who lean toward trolling and bottom fishing, and regularly anticipate running 10 or 20 miles offshore, a conventional deep-vee, high-freeboard center console or cabin boat, with sides and closed-transom that come well up above your knee, makes the most sense.
If casting light tackle or sight-fishing for redfish, seatrout and snook is the priority, the bay boat wins by a wide margin. The discussion could go on for hours or days … or years.
Both types of boats, it should be pointed out, can be propelled on the fishing grounds by bow-mounted electric trolling motors. This is super convenient for fishing shallow water or deep water. The relative stealth and precision positioning benefits the angler in shallow water (to about 2 feet deep or so), while the deepwater functionality takes the form of a snag-free, hands-free anchor. Drop the troller and you’re on the grouper spot.
The lower-profile bay boat will be blown about less by the wind, and offer easier access to handling fish and other tasks which come up on the inshore waters—egress for wading or walking the boat across a bar, for instance. The high-freeboard offshore boat, on the other hand, will feel more secure when tending trolling rods or navigating home on a bouncy sea.
Offshore boats continue to grow in length and complexity—and the luxury touches available have pushed outboard vessels into markets once dominated by inboard sportfishers and convertibles. Million-dollar center consoles with 40-foot hulls capable of knifing through steep, 4- to 5-foot seas? There are lots of them out there. Lofty towers to expand the fish-finding horizon or render technicolor detail below a trolling spread? Easily and these days commonly added to center console boats. Cuddy cabins that don’t grow funky in the Florida weather? Air conditioning is standard on many premium boats these days. Deep-vee boats that don’t “roll” in a beam sea? Gyro-stabilizers are available. Catamarans, with their unique, wave-slicing hulls, are also compelling options, arguably surpassing “mono” hulls in some performance characteristics.
On that last note: Here at the end of this brief buyer’s guide to Florida fishing boats, I’ll repeat the term “arguably.” It can be applied to just about everything I’ve written here. Arguing about boats—with friends, with dealers, even with yourself—is a time-honored tradition. Throw trucks and real estate into the mix, and we’re talking national pastime.
Get out there and test some boats, see where you end up!
This article was featured in the December-January 2025 issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click to subscribe .