What makes a boat rooster tail

Rooster tails typically occur when the boat is trimmed too much up — that is, the propeller shaft is facing upwards. When the prop rides high in the water, water is coming off its very tip, forming a rooster tail. Not only that, but the faster the boat moves, the taller and more pronounced the rooster tail becomes.

Ideally, when a boat is on plane, the prop shaft is parallel with the water surface. When the propeller shaft is parallel to the water, it propels the boat strictly forward. If you trim the motor too much up or down, you will decrease its efficiency. Not only does this make the boat less efficient, but it may also put excessive stress on the prop and the motor assembly.

So-called jet boats can also produce rooster tails, but they are very different from rooster tails made by motorboats or powerboats. To propel themselves, jet boats gather water from beneath via intakes and then expel it through a nozzle in the stern.

So essentially, jet boat rooster tails are a normal part of operation rather than an undesirable side effect like in powerboats or motorboats. With that said, you can adjust the magnitude of a rooster tail in a jet boat too.

There is one key prerequisite to throwing a boat rooster tail — an outboard or sterndrive motor that can be trimmed up or down. With that said, you could throw bigger rooster tails if you run inches of pad on your boat. Thick pad combined with high trim produces astonishingly beautiful and no less astonishingly large rooster tails.

You want to make sure that you have half of your propeller in water, and the other half out of the water while the motor is tilted back slightly. If your propeller is positioned properly, then when you speed up, the disturbed water will hit the prop and shoot up into the air right behind your boat. If you notice a smaller rooster tail, this could be because you have too much of the propeller still emerged underwater.

If you are having a hard time producing a rooster tail, not to worry, because there are a few products on the market that are available to help. Full discloser, I have not tried these devices myself, but the two main products that I was able to find are:. When you want to show off at the lake by creating one of the biggest rooster tails, the Rooster Booster 8 Degree Wedge can help make that happen. The Rooster Booster is specially designed for any Berkeley style split bowl jet drive.

This device comes with mounting bolts and two nozzle gaskets. It has a positive propulsion angle of 8 degrees. The Standard Mount Rooster Boost is specially designed to help boost up the rooster tail behind your boat. It is highly adjustable with a stainless and aluminum design. Drag rooster behind boat.

He will tail you for a little while anyhoo. Joined May 19, Messages 25, Breeding,good breeding and proper diet I suspect. Sorry I could not resist that. Pro racers claim it reduces efficiency. You want to keep your drive trimmed for the type of boating you are doing. The "higher" up you run your trim in theory the faster you will go and bounce , but the optimum is to have all the thrust pushing the boat forward not up or down. If you like speed be prepared for anything.

When I got my Puma, it was the first underseat fuel tank I had on a boat and I didnt realize how flat the Puma was designed to run. I thought about changing engine height, prop, etc. I spent half a day before I realized the problem. Once on plane, I just gradually bumped up the trim until the boat released from drag.

When I looked at the trim gauge I could hardly believe how little trim I needed. Knowledge is a good thing and this board has a lot of knowledgable people. It performed very well and would run high 60s. Hole shot was good also. Wizard wrote:Youre not the only person that trims too high when they go to a BassCat. A friend of mine has a different brand of boat and is looking for a new one so I took him for a ride in my 14 Puma FTD. I ran it again and showed him we were running over 80mph then I trimmed it on up to show him how high I could get the nose of the boat, but then we lost 3 mph and he seen how much I was having to drive it.

Then he was amazed and I explained how the Cats have a air packing hull.