Hi all--

Great forum, by the way...

Bought my first boat last year about mid-summer, 17' '95 Hydrasport with a 115 Evinrude V4, fish mainly on the upper mississippi.  Question I have is does anybody have any tips or tricks to improve fuel efficiency?  Seems like I'm using much more than I should, and the tank seems undersized...I suck up more than half a tank running from one end of our pool (7) to the other.  Fuel was so expensive last year, ended up not going more than 3/4 on the throttle.

Any suggestions would be great!

I found my solution.  Boat payments are cheaper than gas!  I got rid of my gas guzzling 19' Stratos fish & ski with a 150 for a 17 1/2' Stratos with a 50.  Been in the water 3 times so far and still have 3/4 tank.

I can tell you from my experience that anytime you are full throttle you are burning the hell out of some gas.  On the advice of a boat mechanic, I open her up all the way till she planes out, adjust the trim, and throttle back to about 3/4 throttle.  Even on long runs I don't hold it wide open for more than short bursts.  This seems to help some.

I don't know about some of the new technology but I seem to remember hearing or reading somewhere that a good estimate of gas usage for an outboard is 10% of the horsepower per hour at full throttle.  For example, a 150 hp motor would burn 15 gal. if you held it wide open for 1 hour straight.

I do know that stabilizers are hyped for fuel economy but I put one on the old boat and lost about 5 mph as well as using more gas.  It did improve the handling somewhat and get on plane faster but the bad outweighed the good and it was removed pretty quickly.

I guess the old saying about a boat being "a hole in the water that you throw money into" is true.  You gotta pay to play.