I had the pleasure of fishing from a new backtroller boat with a 75hp Etec. My experience with the boat was all positive, the boat handle rough water great. The layout of the inside is perfect for fishing and I loved the wash down floor and the pad that is on the deck. I have never been around a Etec at all but the motor ran well with no smoke and was quite to boot. I would recommend this boat to anyone shopping for a new 17ft tiller and would say its probably the best value on the market today in its class, and John is also a great guy to talk to!

I saw the BT at the Mpls Boat Show and it looked nice - am sure it handles rough water very well for a tiller. My question is how would it be going into smaller lakes or rivers. Does it draft much water? Looks deeper than the new Ranger tiller or a Tuffy 1700 but hard to tell until you use one. Any insight there?

I don't think small lakes and shallow ramps would be a problem, I did put it in on a marginal ramp inside a marina when the wind was the wrong direction on the main ramp and had no problem.

Slim,
I had tested the boat a couple weeks ago with fairly impressive results. However, we did not have large waves. How was the hole shot in big waves with or without a load? Did the bow have enough lift to give it a dry ride or was it more like a barge plowing through water? Did you take on much water water when backtrolling into the bigger waves and did you have solid 2-3 foot waves?
Thanks,
Corey

I ran in soild 2-3 footers with a light load but didn't backtroll into them, we were drifing and then running back for another pass. The boat was alot drier than I thought it would be when running back and it had plenty of power to get on top. The boat has a 13 pitch prop which I thought was wrong but handled the rough water well but only had top speed of 30mph, maybe your better off with that prop for rough water and forget about gaining a few mph on the topend. I had a 2090 Warrior and a 1895 Yarcraft in the past and this boat seemed as dry if not drier.

Like I had posted a month or so ago, I ran this boat in a tourney on Mille lacs in June and i was shocked at how well it handled the waves for a 17 foot boat. We were in 3 footers prefishing and the only water was blow back from the tops of waves. It sits just far enough out of the water to be dry backtrolling with a vantage into the waves and tracks nicely. The only thing that happened twice was we had a little bit of hull steer when going wide open across waves but this can happen with any deep fiberglass boat. I wish they made a 20 foot model!