Hey all, new to the boards here and just trying to gather as much info as possible. I recently purchased a 24hp Beavertail long shaft for my duck hunting rig. I have gathered that the longer and more narrow the boat the better the motor will perform. I already have a 1448 with a trailer that I have set up how I like it, and I would prefer to not have to drop any more salad on a new boat. I am beginning to worry a little that my boat will plow when I have it loaded with gear. I am not super concerned with speed as long as it will get on step. I hunt rivers quite a bit and I hope I won't have to PLOW against current to all my spots. I've have read other threads on here with people who own 1442's with 20hp motors and they seem to do ok. Anybody have some helpful insight as to what kind of performance I can expect. Thanks a bunch in advance!

My buddy has a 23hp gdlt on a 1644 I believe and he ran 3 guys in all day and it always got on plane. Alone he ran at some pretty good speeds. You should be fine with that setup. That boat you have is light and you should be able to carry a load jsut fine with out it plowing. My buddy never had an issue till the prop wore way down

That's good to hear, I was hoping that would be the case. I mainly hunt with myself and another person, but we usually haul as much gear as we can get into the boat. Thanks again for the post.

With my boat being shorter and wider than what is ideal, am I going to want to load a bunch of my weight in the front of the boat? I was thinking of running my battery and tank and everything up to the front to ditribute the weight better, or isn't it as critical as I'm thinking?

Every boat is different so your best bet will be just go and run it and see how it does then if you think you need to move stuff around go from there. My 15 ft boat I ran the gas tank in the back but on my 17 ft.that I run now it does better in the front. You'll just have to see what works better.