I'm writing this to hopefully help and educate those interested in buying a small

boat and need a little guidance,now this is from my experience.I recently bought a war eagle 1436 with the low front deck installed with the sliding rear seat to fish smaller lakes and rivers with and this is what i experienced.I purchased this size for the fact that it was rated for a 20 hp engine and i installed a four stroke

9.9 johnson on it.The first thing noted is that it did wobble a little when you tried moving from front to back,i'd run the outboard the wife would sit in the front seat minuse the pedestal,when we would swap seats you'd have to stay near the center of the boat or she'd rock from side to side.Interior room was smaller than i thought to with a small drink cooler and a bag with towels,food etc left little room in the floor area.Now to the performance,she'd get up on plane in a fairly timely manner,but no speed demon at all,i'll have to play with the tilt feature more.If i had it to do again i would ompt for a 14' with a beam of 48" for it's stableness even if i had to up the horsepower.One other thing with the low front deck it was tight with the footcontroll trolling motor,a hand model bow mounted would have served much better.In this size boat i think it would be

about perfect in river settings and shallow water cove fishing.

Thomas,  A wider beam will almost always be more stable.  I had a 36 inch bottom for years and it served me well in tight and shallow places on the river but it was less stable than a wider boat.  It just depends on what you are using the boat for.  

T Mike