[Destroyer]

Originally Posted by Zarkohl

I agree that long seems to be the way to go. Alot of the previous posts that I reviewed suggest to go with long shafts in order to keep prop in water and the cowl out of water. Curious if anyone who uses a kicker with a short shaft could give us some insifght as to their experience.

I'm with Willy on this one. My kicker is a 9.9hp Honda 4 stroke short shaft.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I use an EEZ-IN bracket that has about 18" of travel, so a long shaft engine is not needed. I lower it into the water when I want to troll and raise it completely out when running on the main. The advantage is no drag in the water and since the bracket is spring loaded moving it up and down is a snap. I don't have to tilt my kicker.. I just lift it out of the water.

Now, on the other hand, if you'r going to use a fixed, non-adjustable bracket than I would think that a long shaft kicker would be better, simply because you can mount it higher on the transom and not have to worry about following waves swamping it as much.

The bottom line is that when all is said and done, you need to get your engines anti-ventilation (cavatation) plate into the water. Since we're talking about a kicker engine and not something you're going to get up on plane with it really doesn't matter if your a-v plate is at or a few inches or so below the water. You can do it by lowering the engine, adjusting the location up or down where you mount the bracket on your transom, using a long or short shaft engine, etc. How you get there is really up to you.