I've seen several posts on this topic.
For those of you that don't know me my name is Corey Crochet owner of Cottonmouth Custom Boats. I don't post a lot but this topic is the whole reason I build boats so Here goes......
I'm the guy always trying to make boats go where they are not supposed to. Two of the rivers I love to fish the most "Amite and Comite" are very challenging mixture of current, sand, rocks, shallows and lots of trees. Throughout the years we've ran:
Outboards w/ tunnels in my evil knievel days
Jets w/ notch tunnel-too slow and heavy
Airboats- an expensive headache

And then came surface drives.....
They were descent but still lacked some key ingredients for this application as stated in many of these posts and the whole reason for the xlr8 and cottonmouth. After many trial and error attempts we combined a 14-16' self lifting hull design with our recessed transom and a 23 copperhead and the results have been awesome not just in hard bottom but also heavy vegitation and thick mud and stumps. I know the small engine don't accommodate everyone so we have been testing the xlr8 in larger hulls with the gtr. Hope my boats can help people reach those "unreachable" places.

All I see is a whole lot of very vague claims without a shred of evidence or data.

Where does the lift come from? Why is it better than any other hull?
What allows this hull to run better in hard bottom?
Where are the videos?

How bad does that recessed transom catch mud while in reverse?? Just looks like pods with a plate welded across the bottom of them, and would grab.

Knew that wouldn't take long! And that would be why I rarely post!
Where does the lift come from?
Old school air boat design tuned to my application.... Basically my hull grows from front to back instead of tapering to the back. Combined with the right angles as it moves through the water it lifts more as you increase speed allowing you to run shallower and carry a load better. The recessed transom's main purpose besides getting the belt housing out of the way is drop transom height allowing you to run a higher prop angle giving you more of a forward push and also allowing you to "over trim" and stay on plane. I've just recently figured out how to get links to videos so give me a min. There are lots of videos and pics on our Facebook if your bored.

Nice boats man

Our recessed transom is part of the hull not added like most pods. The copperhead's don't have reverse and We just started testing with the gtr and honestly I had many of the same worries. On our initial run we had no issues w/ reverse in the mud we had available but I have not taken it to the depths of hell like we have the copperhead. Generally reverse is for the boat ramp and when your stuck. The times I've stuck the xlr8 were on dry land and reverse won't help much at that point.

I'm failing to see the logic in how it allows you to run a lower transom height. Wouldn't it need to be slightly higher so your skeg can clear that plate on the bottom, versus if it was hung off the back of a standard transom or hunt deck?

I'm not trying to stir up shit..... just asking you to be specific with your claims and provide evidence to support them.

When you run off a traditional transom and lower the height the belt housing starts grabbing the rise coming off the back of the boat as well as anything else. When recessed I was able to give it just enough room to clear leaving only the skeg exposed to cut what your going through. I've dug up some testing videos I'm gonna post. Ones at night sorry most of testing was done frogging lol

does the skeg hit the piece under it when you trim down?

No the skeg does not hit and has full trim and turn radius.

What's the angle of the transom?

15

pretty clever, is cottonmouth the only boat with that?