looking at these excel boats with 25'' sides.how nice are these hulls compared to a gatortrax.thinking of buying a excel hull because of the taller sides.please let me know about these excel boats and are they better than a gatortrax.

them excels are nice hulls

they are only .100 alluminum but you can get .125 as option

They are heavier than a gt though.

u can get a gatortrax with 24 inch sides, u just have to ask for it. there are so many more options that they can do but they dont list em all. if you have an idea call and talk to kent and im sure he can build it for you.

I have an 1854 Excel Shallow water edition. I love this thing they are heavy but they are built like a tank. They are very dry on big waters here in kansas and as everyone knows we get alot of wind.

i did talk to kent at gt.it was about the big water edition,i want it to have more of a mod v and there mainly flat.i question is does anybody run a gt big water if so i would like to here so feedback on that boat.was looking at a gt bw 1862 very nice and deep,just curious if a mb 5500 would push that boat.

motor should push it no problems

my biggest concern is chop that is what i have to run through at times,so what boat is ultimately going to be better.half a dozen one way to another.i know there jon boats on steroids,but i got to tell u i think there fricking awesome!

If you get the higher sides on an 18 foot boat, the gator trax will handle rough water just fine. I've never had an aluminum boat ride as good as my gt. Just my 02.

I have owned 3 GT boats and had them on big water. The biggest of the 3 is a 1854 that I sold to a buddy so I am still regularly in that boat. The 50" wide Gatortrax boats have higher sides than the 44 or 54 inchers. My last GTrax was a 50 and I liked it the best of all. The sides of a GT hull tend to be straighter up, versus hulls that angle out steeply. It is a bit wetter ride: the big roller waves you are pulverizing into droplets as your heavy boat hammers through them can blow into the boat a bit more.

The good people at Gatortrax are a pleasure to deal with.

Of the five mud boats I have owned I once tried a Mod-V, built by Legendcraft. Sweet boat, but I absolutely hated it when running in the shallows. The keel is a stopper and will greatly impede your turns in the mud and over shallow gravel. Stay away from Mod-V if you truly want a mud boat.

I have a buddy who is an Excel dealer and I have hunted out of five or six different Excels. On our last hunt together, I rode in his brand new F4. Excels are nice boats to look at and they have a lot of great features, storage, built-ins, etc. My buddy's pimped out Excels have never run quite as fast as my boats in a head-to-head run when powered up identically.

I am currently running a Phowler 1852, which I selected for it's high, angled sides. It is a good quality boat from a company that is straight up in their dealings. It runs a bit faster powered with the identical motor (Prodrive stock 36) that I had on my last Gatortrax. It is durable as heck. I was out jumping log booms yesterday to chase down a cripple much to the amazement of my passenger. Like all good longitudinally braced boats, that's what it is built for.

I've run my 1750HD Gator Trax in Lake Okeechobee here in Florida where waves can get quite big and have only had minimal spray coming into the boat when going through a heavy 1 to 2 foot chop. I only have the 21" sides on mine but doubt it would have done any better with the 24" sides since it was the wind pushing the spray into the boat.

One thing I will say is that the boat does pound quite a bit when hitting these waves but it's to be expected in a flat bottom boat.