After you have decided on your boat, you have to decide upon what sort of power you are going to need. There are good second hand engines out there and bad ones and this will be dealt with later, but for now you must get an idea of what you will need. As mentioned earlier, you must consider where you are going to fish and how far away it is? All boats are suited between different horse power ratings. Most 18 ft boats for example would be suited to 40 HP - 60 HP. It is worth considering how many pasengers you will have on board regularly as this weight will affect how the boat will perform. In an ideal situation a boat should have more power than you are comfortable with. Not because you want to be a speed demon but because you can deal with extra weight if the need arises and deal with strong currents in large following seas should you find yourself caught out in bad weather. Realisticly however, you should consider exactly where you will be fishing. If your fishing grounds are not far and you are quite content with the standard of fishing available, a low powered engine is probably quite adequete for your needs. If on the other hand you think you will need to do a bit of hard graft to get your fish and foresee yourself having to head out to wrecks etc. then you should be aiming at a bit of power and would want to be attaining at least 20 mph without pushing the engine to the limit.
2 Stroke or 4 Stroke?
The 4 stroke engine is 33% more fuel efficient than a 2 stroke engine it is less noisy but is also more expensive and a lot bigger in size to a 2 stroke engine of comparitive power. For example, a 40 HP 4 stroke engine is the same size and weight as a 60 HP 2 stroke engine. This is worth considering when you think about all that weight on the transom of the boat. Some boats simply are not built for all this extra weight.