You make some great points and most i have thought of, i didn't realise the 12/14fters would be unsafe in 3 foot waves. Honestly, in an ideal world id build a removable blind for the 18ft fishing boat. I just dont trust the engine after only 1 season. No failures, just runs rough when its cold. Maybe carb kits will take care of that. The old girl needs a paint job anyway. Do you think that an older main, in good repair, plus a reliable kicker(i would also use the kicker as a backtroller so that its never laid up and begging failures) would be a safe option?
safety aside, is taking a fishing boat duck hunting a good idea? My biggest concern other than safety is that you go out and get the floor wet, put the boat away and the air temp is melow 32f and now the wet wood in the floor is freezing, is that going to cause shortened floor and stringer life?
side note: locals ive talked to told me to just use my troller for backup. I think not. Even with 2 batteries, ive been pushed around by the wind way too much to trust that thing in a storm.
I had a 19’ Alumaweld that I recently sold. It was mainly my fishing boat but I used it also for waterfowl hunting in Grizzly bay , Honker bay and San Pablo bay which are east of San Francisco Bay in California. It can get quite windy with 4 and 5’ roller waves. I experienced more than one occasion coming back to dock where the waves were coming over the bow and slamming the windshield. Very scary. What I did to camo it up is I had large pieces of burlap camo which I draped all over the boat. Only took me and a friend about 15 minutes to cover it in camo. 5 minutes to uncamo it. I also had a dog ladder for my lab to get back in the boat. It was a great rough water boat.
i had a 90hp merc which pushed it to 40 to 42 mph. I also had a merc kicker fairly new that I used for trolling and as a backup to get me home if necessary. Forget about using an electric trolling motor for backup while duck hunting. They don’t have the power you may need. If it’s windy and/or a strong current it may not have the power to push you forward and keeping it on track in the wind may be a real problem.
If you get a kicker, mount it on a bracket that is adjustable so you can move the motor up and down. In rough water you want to get the prop as deep as your main motor. What otherwise happens is most kickers are not deep enough in the water , for trolling calm water that is no problem. But in waves the rocking boat allows the prop to come out of the water a little so you get a kind of cavitation, the the prop goes back into the water , bites and you have power for a few seconds. It’s like in a car stepping on the gas and then taking your foot off the gas, over and over and over....
The whole boat was draped in camouflage, we were dressed in camouflage including camouflage face masks, even the dog wore a camouflage neoprene vest. We were pretty much invisible to ducks.
A couple other safety things I had in my boat are 2 bilge pumps in case one failed. I had 2 batteries. I always carried my cell phone but also had a mounted VHF radio and GPS. In darkness or fog you’ll really appreciate the GPS. I also carried a couple powerful lights and a strobe light.
If you set it up right using a fishing boat for duck hunting can work quite well. If you have other questions about waterfowl hunting or hunting from a boat feel to ask. Like I said I’ve been duck hunting almost my whole life. (I’m 70 years old)