The second ride we took at the Yamaha 2010 media product meeting was a special one. Elite Series and Yamaha professional Dean Rojas took us out with the new SHO 4-Stroke as well but this time it was teamed with a new Skeeter FX Series. This is the first combo that we know of that blended the outboard with the design of the bass boat. This boat was specifically designed for the new SHO 4-Stroke. From hull to lines the boat and motor were matched perfectly.
“In the past, all bass fishermen were concerned about was speed – getting to their fishing spot before anyone else. Even as times have changed, Skeeter and Yamaha still deliver the speed and fishability that anglers need to be competitive, but with the FX Series, we can also deliver a higher level of overall performance, reliability, efficiency and style in a single boat,” says Ben Jarrett, Skeeter’s National Sales Manager.
“This was a no-compromise effort in the long and tedious design and planning process, building a bass boat series to meet the expectations and demands of what modern fishermen expect in a boat,” says Jarrett. Rojas is no slouch as a boat driver and he put it through its paces with us riding shotgun. We ran turns, stopped and started both from a dead stop and in mid-range and ran it at top speed as well. This boat and motor combo were perfectly matched. "I am really excited about this motor but because it was precisionly matched with the boat it makes me even more fired up to get started in 2010. My boat is in production now and I can hardly wait to pick it up. I get excited every year but this one is truly special with the new FX and the SHO."
The coolest part of the test was when Rojas put the boat in a tight circle and gave it full throttle. We went in a perfect circle with no blowouts and could have stayed in it until we ran out of gas. That is a testament to the boat, the motor and the new line-up of props also engineered specifically for the the SHO and the new FX Skeeter.
Every angle of both the motor and the boat are perfectly matched and no longer does the motor look like an add-on. It blends well and Yamaha did a great job of making the boat and motor equally important.
Both the FX20 and FX21 come standard with a Humminbird 788 dash-mounted fish finder and 728 bow-mounted fish finder with transducers, temperature probes, GPS antenna and interlink system, and Minn Kota Max 101 foot-operated, 101 lbs. thrust, 36V, 42” shaft trolling motor. Also standard is an FX touring trailer with tandem axle, disc brakes, spare tire carrier, swing tongue, ratchet tie-downs, aluminum wheels, color coordinated Euro-Step, polymer fenders, custom lighting and torsion axles.
No motor and/or boat discussion is complete without talking about set-up and props so stay tuned to Wired2Fish as we will go over that in another What's Up.
