86' Fish Nautique (gettin' put to work)

Welcome to the site Rick and congrats on your new boat!

skutsch wrote:    Is this the one that was on ebay?

Don't think so Steve, that one was being sold in MD if I remember correctly and this one has FL regs on it.

Welcome aboard Rick, and good luck with the new adventure. Where are you located?

Congrats on your new boat and welcome to the site.

Looks like you have a good start on her,and looks pretty good. At 9k it would be hard to put more into it but with what you paid you can do so and still be under that figure easily. Keep the pictures coming please this will be interesting thread

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You have to find somewhere online to decode Chevy block casting numbers. Not a bad deal congrats! From the looks of the motor she's been in the salt quite a bit. Maybe set up a closed loop system when you overhaul it?

Ha yea, I am thinking for the sake of longevity as a working engine that (I assume) won't be pulled out of the water every evening therefore cannot be properly flushed between uses.

What size and pitch prop are people running on a 23 Fish with a 350?
I have a 14X11 on there. Seems kinda small but there is only like 2-2.5" of clearance so.

The color on that transmission looks like it might have had a Waukesha in it when it was new.

New Gauges, New Switches.. Installed.

New Exhaust, Risers, Bilge Pump.

All new wiring.

Ready for her test run...

Sittin purdy..


SO.... we found the reason he didn't have a thermostat in the motor when we bought it.. and why the motor smoked so much... and why he didn't want to put it in the water for us to sea trial it... . He had the hose from the check valve that supply's the raw water for cooling into the water pump reversed.. Instead of going into the inlet of the pump he had it going into the outlet...lol.. Testing it on a hose you would have a hard time seeing this as the pressure from the hose sends it threw and out the exhaust. Was an easy fix and solved tons of things we were scratching our heads about! We ran the boat for about 1.5 hrs got her up to around 22-24mph, cruised nicely at 2600rpm.

Now, the next step for us is moving all the safety gear and electronics over from the other boat. I'll continue to keep putting pics and status updates up in case anyone has any cool ideas on configurations an such...     

Wow, the boat has come a long way in such a short time! Congrats and job well done.

14x11 sounds about right for a small block powered 23' vee hull. My buddy's 20' Shamrock with a 302 had trouble pulling a 13x10.5 Acme. Im surprised that the big block wasnt the powerplant of choice for such a large boat.

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Hey Mob i just read through your post, good buy! nice boats.
I currently own a 78 fish. I love and hate it.
they are a little different but pretty much same animal from the 78-86.
the 14-11 is the factory prop, i dont however know if the 350 is factory.
I was under the assumption these boats came with the ford powerplants. But my knowledge of the fish grows slowly greater each day( they are tough to find out info on) as you will come to find out.
any info i have found i will gladly share.

Also please let me know how the west system holds up to cracking, I have many cracks to fill in mine.


so one thing i notice is you do NOT have trim tabs. when my trim tabs were not working on my fish i just assumed not go out in it. I actually had a failure and had to hose clamp them down to allow myself to run faster than headway on a trip once.( i was overloaded) you say you got only 23-24knots, was that with full tank and passengers? I would bet with a set of tabs you would easily gain a few knots.
My fish has the 70Gal tank right on the stern rather than under floor, so the weight distribution in yours is going to be a little better.