Part 1 - The Outside

Let's face it, this is not going to be an unbiased review of the Ranger Z117.

In the first place, I bought the thing. I have had Rangers before, and the guys at Denver Marine made me a great deal on a boat I love - and one that I know is quality from head to toe. Or, OK, stem to stern.

So, the secrets out - I am biased towards my boat, but I will still tell you the things I don't like as time goes on (and there are already a few, but almost all minor and all fixable with a little effort or a few bucks!

The boat is 17'6" and comes in at around 2300 pounds trailer and all - I can tell it is behind my CRV, but it is well within the tow limit. The trailer did not come with brakes, but I will probably have them installed. You can't have to many brakes.

The height on my hitch is an inch or two lower than the recommended height, and my driveway goes over some rough dips, but the bottom of the spare clears it, if only by an inch or two sometimes. I much prefer the spares that are mounted horizontally, but it does make a good step where it is at, and it is attached with a  heavy duty angle iron piece that is welded directly to the frame of the trailer.

The new Evinrude HO E-Tec's are a dream engine. Oil injected and computer controlled, these engines are nearly impossible to destroy. Even if you let the oil run dry, it will give you 5 hours of 1200 rpm service - enough to get you back to the dock with no undue wear on the engine. It came with a 3 blade Viper stainless steel prop, and pushes the boat between 50 - 54 depending on water conditions (and according to the on-board speedometer).

You have to choose how you want the engine set up. Bjorn, the head mechanic at Denver Marine is pure professional; at his recommendation, I chose the 100% synthetic (synthetic oil is made from petro chemicals, though - think about that for a second. They use oil to make synthetic oil). It is a little more expensive a gallon, but after the burn in does not burn nearly as much so it turns out cheaper.

That's the other great thing about this motor - no break in required. The computer automatically selects certain revolution ranges to go heavy on the oil, bu it is all done behind the scenes. You drive it how you want.

I LOVE full throttle, but the boat feels at its most comfortable as regards speed to rpm ratio at about 4000 RPMs, 1800 below its factory set 5800 max. That pushes the boat a little over 40 MPH without breaking a sweat.

At that speed it rides great on the water to. The boat does not take up a lot of water, but it has a pretty good V to the full, and it cuts good sized whiteys with no problem. The only day I have gotten wet the waves were 3 feet and the wind was horizontal - and even then I stayed more dry than not. On 1 - 2 foot swells the boat doesn't even pause, and actually runs better at higher speeds as it skips across the waves.

One thing I really liked about the trailer is the new hitching system Ranger uses - it looks odd, but the inside looks about the same - just better engineered. It was stiff - I like to use bearing grease on my hitch, it makes for a very smooth transfer, its cheap, and it lasts a long time!

The boat is extremely sparkly - to be honest, I would rather have a nice navy gray or a camo pattern - but there is something about a sparkly bass boat!

This ride planes out quite fast and runs great, even in rough water. In the next post we will start to look at the interior features of the boat, and go over them with a fine tooth comb! Until then, good fishin', and I'll see ya on the Lake!

This is the view that has kept me from writing in this blog; it was my original intention to add to this blog each week, but when push comes to shove and I can either write this or go fishing - well, you can see what wins out!

In this post we're going to talk about boats - new, expensive boats!

I am very used to my old beater Lowe aluminum boat. It was great - shallow draft, jet drive, and you could bang it up against nearly anything and quite simply not have to worry.

Fiberglass boats are not like that!

All it takes is floating by the dock, after you have carefully put the boat in the water:

Get the roap ready, back into the water till just the bow is out, then take the rope to the dock and tie it off. Back in far enough to float the boat free, and carefully pull forward. If you get a rope that floats, there is a much smaller chance of snagging the rope on the trailer when you are pulling forward. If you do, this is what happens:

That's not what knocked a hole in my gel coat, though - that was me, sitting in the boat, not tied up and messing with the super cool Lowrance Elite 5 that the guys at Denver Marine hooked me up with. It was a nicve, calm day, no other boats out, and I was all of a sudden aware of several things at once. One, waves had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, as they are wont to do, and my boat was fifteen feet closer to the concrete lip of the boat landing than I thought.

And Bang!

A hole in the gel coat of my brand new bass boat.

Thanks to another great local business,

Four Season Marine Supply

575 Hwy 16 N, Denver, NC

(704) 489-8242 ‎

and the Evercoat gel coat repair kit they sold me, I now have a gel coat that does not have a hole in it - perfect repair, and super easy to accomplish. Unfortunately  all the pictures of the repair process were accidentally deleted and I hope that one unintended collision with concrete structures is all this boat will ever have!

The water was warming to the low seventies, but due to the weather over the last week and a half has been reduced back to the mid sixties - the spawn looks like it will be set back another week or two.

But the  fish are biting!

This was caught on a small soft bait - some kind of little shad thing, the Fluke I believe, and this is what I have caught most of them on; and small jointed shad crank baits - more in a week or so!