Help with picking a river boat plan.

I've been reading this forum and have found it to be a wealth of information. I have been looking into building a river boat to fish the Manistee river in Michigan.

The following requirements would be nice, but I understand if they all can't be met. I'm not partial to the Mckenzie style boat or a simple jon boat.

Fish 3 people comfortably

Be able to move upriver with the least amout of HP. River flows on average are 2,000cfm.

Inexpensive to construct. The boat will most likely be used less then 3 weeks out of the year. I would like to strike a balance of floating down the river in something that I'm proud of and floating down with a paper bag over my head.

Easy to moderate construction difficulty. This will be my first boat build, I have some woodworking experiance, but it is not extensive.

Any thoughts or ideas of what plans I should be getting?

 

google 'ausable riverboat'

 

What is the current speed, not the total river flow?

 

I like the idea of a HDPE jet boat. Perhaps parts could be taken from an old jet ski (PWC).

 

2000cfm is a useless number not knowing depth and width of river. A river section half as deep and wide will move 2000cfm at 4 times the current flow.

 

General length range, what you consider minimum power, target speeds you'd like to see, etc., etc., etc.

 

> Be able to move upriver with the least amount of HP.

The strange thing about upriver travel is that while slow is normally efficient, too slow and it takes so long that you actually use more gas. In an extreme case, 0 MPG is easily achieved.

 

A scow. Big load carrying capacity...easily driven, easy to build , elegant constuction

 

looks like subline has left.

Outlaw