I live in northern Ontario, Canada. I fish mostly for walleye (small to medium sized lakes). The boat/canoe I have been using for a while now is a 12 foot sports pal transom canoe, it weighs about 48lbs.
Up until recently I have been using an 30lb thrust electric motor. Just recently I took my girlfriend fishing. The lake became fairly windy and wavy, the little electric motor could barely bring us back to shore (this is typical and I expected it). But this experience scared the girlfriend a little. It took some thinking, but mostly because of safety, I need to purchase a gas motor, something I could depend on if winds and the waters got a bit to choppy for the electric motor.
So I decided to purchase a honda 2 HP 4-stroke motor. Heck it’s light 28lbs (won’t have to carry around that big battery anymore)
Anyway, I just bought the motor today, won’t get to try it out till next week. I read some reviews and talked some owns of this motor… they said it’s very hard to maintain a slow trolling speed with this motor. Has anyone else experienced such a problem with this motor or other motors? If so, is there an techniques I could use, to drive the motor, and keep it going slow, to catch them walleye?
The dealer ship said I could stretch the throttle spring, but then there would be no neutral.
i cant see why you cant get down to 1.7 -2.2 mph.i have a small boat (8ft pontoon style)and get my 3.6 hp, 2 stroke down to .9 mph.if your really having problems , get 2 drift socks and hang them off the front of the boat before you start trolling and it will slow you down enough to catch wallyes.
Don’t hang the drift socks off the front of the boat. It could do one of two things:
Pull your bow under the water and swamp you under the right (or wrong) conditions
It will cause your boat to porpoise like a mo’ fo’. In other words, that drift sock is going to steer your boat where you don’t want it to go.
The drift sock, however, was a good recommendation. You probably will only need one, and off the back of the boat. Attach it to the boat with a floating line, like what you use for skiing or knee boarding.
What we use to do is drop a 5 gallon bucket behind the boat, but that would take up too much room in that little boat. Drift socks are soft, and can be folded up and stored, and take up very little room. With the drift sock, on a day with plenty of wind, you just kill the motor, deploy the drift sock, and let the wind do the work. The sock will keep the boat pointed strait, and you don’t have to use any fuel. It’s a win/ win. We use drift socks when we fish Santee Cooper her in SC. We drift for big catfish, and drifting is about the only way you can get it done *under some circumstances. *
**
Good luck man, and enjoy the motor. Those are good ones.