So, like I've already said...the fishing is so different down here from what we're used to! Right off the bat, we noticed that most people here have what are called "bay boats"...shallow, flat-bottomed boats made to go into really shallow water. Our boat is a deep V-hull that needs a little deeper water. Not much deeper, but still deeper than the bay boats.

Dale had noticed that most of the boats here have an extra unit on the back of the boat that connects the motor to the boat. He was talking to some of the boat owners around here, and found out that it's a Jack plate.

A Jack plate raises and lowers the motor vertically, in addition to the normal tilting of the motor to raise and lower it. The guys here said that it lets them maneuver better in the shallower waters.

So a couple of weeks ago, we had a Jack plate installed on the boat. We couldn't do it ourselves because you have to take the motor off of the boat to install it, and that thing weighs hundreds of pounds!

Anyway, we can now go places we couldn't go before! (and yes, that means getting "stucker" than we could before, too...lol)

For a visual, it's that aluminum unit between the motor and the boat.

The motor itself "trims" up and down, which tilts the motor forward. The jack plate raises the motor straight up out of the motor so the prop is in the normal running angle, which lets the motor have the same power in shallow waters as in deep water.

We've only had the boat out a couple of times since it was put on, so Dale is still figuring it all out.