Questions About Boating On The Gasconade

[Adam]

I've decided to invest in a 16' foot jon boat with a trolling motor and a 25hp outboard, not a jet, almost went with a small 5 or 10hp but for all the fishing I wanted to do the 25hp suited me better.

I heard that the Gasconade in most cases is too low to run an outboard that isn't a jet so I was wondering how far can a guy get with a bow mounted trolling motor and a paddle?

[BobK]

Alot of it depends where you plan on fishing and time of year (water flow).

I boat mostly around the Vienna, Mo area and can tell you an outboard motor will limit your access. I would highly recommend saving up for a small jet motor if possible.

I did the same thing....bought a small boat and a outboard and then found myself upgrading a year later to a small jet.

There are just too many areas on the Gasconade where you will find long deep runs and then encounter a shallow shoal requiring a jet to get through.

[Al Agnew]

It takes specialized knowledge and a specialized set-up to run most of the Gasconade, other than maybe the lowest 30 miles or so in good water, with a prop outboard. It's doable--there were some old-timers who could run the Current, Meramec, and Gasconade in big wooden johnboats with prop motors. But the advent of jet outboards made the knowledge and equipment obsolete. I never got to know any of those who ran the outboards on the rivers, but I watched them sometimes. They had perfect knowledge of the depth of the riffles and when to make turns, slow down, speed up. And they had a mechanism like a foot pedal device that lifted and lowered a plate to which their motors were attached instead of just attaching the motor to the solid transom of the boat. They ran the rivers standing up at the outboard, and lifted the motor without tilting it when they came to very shallow water, so that the prop was barely underwater. They could run in about 12 inches of water, compared to the 4-6 inches that a properly set-up jet can. Maybe somebody else can chime in with a more accurate description of the transom device.