Hey all, I'm new to MMT, and a recent owner of a Fowler 1652 with a 27 HP PD motor on it. I've been using it for duck hunting on the Mississippi River, and it works great - as long as its on plane.
Once I get in shallows and slow down, it just stops. It's also hard to get started once stopped, and impossible to use the FPR, as you can't ratchet the lower end around with the skeg plate jammed in the mud.
I was thinking about removing the skeg to see if it would help me at all - I don't run in any rocks, it's alot of muck, mud, and sand, with a stump or a log thrown in there to keep you on your toes.
Any advice or lessons learned from others? Thanks, Neil

if you remove the skeg you will cause more trouble in the long run. You should have no problems cranking your lower unit in the mud. if there is sand with a hard bottom which im sure the river has it will give you some trouble. if you hit something running in the river without your skeg you run a serious risk of cracking your gear housing and that will be more trouble than you want. Leave it on there and fight with it and deal with the little headaches to save you a major one later on. just my .02

you cant trim it all the way up and ratchet the reverse around?

Nope - if I trim it up (lift it out of the water as high as it will go, I can only ratchet around once, maybe twice before the skeg starts digging into the mud. It's a tall transom, if that makes any difference. How high can others get their motors trimmed out?

Your trim up/down will depend on a few different factors like transom angle, Hydraulic or manual trim, square or round chines, etc....

In a shallow, hard sandy bottom I do better in reverse than in forward, do to the helicopter effect. It can get a little tricky sometimes to get the LU to spin a round in the harder stuff and it sometimes wiser to just push pole to deeper water rather than wear the prop down. If the boat is floating and I'm having trouble getting in reverse I try and bump it in gear as I rotate I find this works 90% of the time, and if that fails I'll dig a little hole by hand then repeat the steps above. Once your up stay on the throttle or you'll have to start all over.

eat some spinach.

bullshit post.

either u are a idiot, or one of those yankees set it up wrong.

or go eat sum spinach.


if u can't put the motor in reverse u have no buisness trying to take off the skeg.



it sounds like u are trying to run sand, nothing runs sand. mud is differant from sand. next time u get stuck jump out head first. if u survive it is mud.
if u break ur neck it is sand. do not try to run sand.


after u run the boat awhile u will get better at learning these things.

He ain't!!!!

Well, I sure don't need to eat spinach. Unfortunatley, I'm an idiot.

I looked at it a little more and found the problem that was limiting my travel upwards. But thanks for the helpful posts, anyway. Neil

Can of spinach.