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Originally Posted by nleblanc
Looking at purchasing a new boat and was looking for some advice as what to get. Will be fishing inshore and offshore on fair weather days. Looking at getting at least a 22ft.. Thanks in advance
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There are a lot of tradeoffs between various priorities. You should consider the following:
How fast do you want to go?
How important is a smooth ride in choppy conditions?
How far offshore are you going?
How much shallow water do you want to fish and how much smoother ride in choppy water/offshore are you willing to sacrifice to fish skinny water?
How important is fuel economy?
What is your price range?
Do you prefer to spend most of the money on the basic (boat and motor) or do you plan to spend a lot on feature/performance enhancing accessories?
Will you be storing the boat under a shed or outside?
How important is a low maintenance boat? How much time and money do you plan to budget for keeping it up?
Will children be fishing from the boat? I prefer a boat with higher gunwales for fishing with children.
Lots of other questions will come up also regarding various features: casting deck, live well, rod storage, other storage, trolling motor, sonar, etc., etc., etc.
If you don't spend enough time thinking about what you really want and the cost-benefit trade-offs in how it will be used, then you have a risk of salesmen pushing you toward what they think you need, or even worse, the boats that have been sitting around for a while that they are eager to move. When you think things through, you might find your preferences and anticipated usage lead you to a different configuration than the most popular bay boats on today's market, or you might just determine which of the popular bay boats best suits your needs.
You might go sit at Calc Pt or another area launch and talk to some boaters. Most boaters are more than happy to tell you about what they like and don't like about their boat for how they are using it.