Any FSH Owners Near Clearwater, FL area?

[bgruhn76]

The wife and I are getting ready to purchase an FSH within the next few months. Any other FSH owners near by? Would love your feedback based on our local waters here. I've been discussing the issues with another member that lives on Atlantic side in S. FL, but our waters are a bit tamer (mostly).

 

[JDinfla]

I live South of Clearwater and we use our boat out in the Gulf regularly. We were looking at a 19ft Mako skiff with a Mercury 115 on a jack plate and decided to check out the Fsh 190. The Yamaha was about 3 grand more and had many more features and almost twice the capacity.
We have been very happy with the boat so far. If its rough out I don't like to be out anyway, so this is a fair weather gulf boat, great picnic sandbar boat and a pretty good flatsboat. I wish I hadn't seen that they didn't bother to remove the hull plugs after drilling the holes for drain plugs when I was installing the GPS fishfinder but it's a $31,000 boat new with a T top. A bigger boat is not in our range.

 

[Bill Smith]

I'm in St. Pete and agree with JDinfla. Great all around. No complaints at this point.

 

[Henry]

south Tampa. best part is pulling the tube for the kids. Able to get to the beach w very shallow water.

 

[Kahuna Khris]

The wife and I are getting ready to purchase an FSH within the next few months. Any other FSH owners near by? Would love your feedback based on our local waters here. I've been discussing the issues with another member that lives on Atlantic side in S. FL, but our waters are a bit tamer (mostly).

Rent a condo in Madeira every year and thinking of towing FSH down from Toronto Canada. Did you get one and if so, how is it in intracoastals and Gulf?

 

[Ehren]

I live in Clearwater. Just bought the 2017 FSH Deluxe with a custom T-Top about a month ago... It's a great boat with my only gripe so far being the overall power of the motor. Although I have had the boat up to 42 mph out in the intra-coastal, top speed seems to be easily effected. Admittedly, mostl likely due to the custom T-Top that I added...
Very interested to see the 2018 FSH 210 that are rumored to be coming out in the fall. Just not sure if they would be worth the extra $10k-$15k jump in price... This forum did have a post discussing the 21' FSH with supossid spy pics but it appears to have since been removed...

 

[Corey]

Out off Clearwater in mine all the time...Love my FSH! Taking it to Keys for my fourth time in a year next week.. to me there is no better for the money!

 

[Corey]

I see lots of complaints on these posts about the power.. mine runs about 40-45 on tame seas.. really I have NO interest in going any faster.. bought the boat to enjoy the water... How are you going to enjoy it if all you want to do is break the sound barrier? 40-45 on the water is a pretty good clip if you ask me...just sayin!

 

[Nctinter]

Live in Trinity but go out of Tarpon Springs. Love the boat. Thought the boat would be too slow for me. With 2 people on and full tank we get up to 45mph which is better than I hoped for and all the speed I need. Had 7 people on it the other day, bunch of gear and got it to 38. Minor gripes would be the crazing on the gel coat. Major issue I'm having is the floating sea grass up here. It's everywhere right now and clogs easily. I don't think it's as much of a problem down in Clearwater

 

[Hannibal]

We've had our FSH for a year. No complaints about the boat itself. We've had a great year with it. If you buy in Clearwater, make sure you take a picture of the HID number of the boat you climb all over and agree on. Wife and I checked out a 190FSH Sport and made a deal. They said go have lunch and come pick it up in a couple of hours. When we got back to pick it up, it was another 190FSH Sport that they had dragged out of somewhere and were just about done cleaning it up. They already had the paperwork done and ready for the one they were cleaning. We reluctantly looked it over while the crew was cleaning out the leaves and bleaching the stains. I accepted it as we had plans for a sandbar party the next day. The hatches and bucket well on the swim platform don't fit right and a retainer nut was missing from the engine kill switch on the swim platform. I went back later to ask for the second retainer nut and you'd have thought I asked them for a second motor. After 45 minutes (no exaggeration) of arguing with them, they agreed to take a plastic nut off of another boat and order a replacement for it. I've since installed a Garmin 741xs and a VHF radio for going not too far offshore. It does ok in up to 2ft seas. More than that and I wouldn't want to be out in any boat. A head in a 19ft boat is almost unheard of. 10 pts for the FSH for that!
I'm getting a heart throb for the new sx195. I could set it up with a pedestal mount 7" Lowrance on the dash, VHF under the dash, rod holders and a second battery and have a boat to fish with and a cruiser to lounge around in. The only drawback for me would be no head. A 5 gallon bucket in the ski locker would work for me unless we had mixed company. If I trade up, down or however you look at it, it will be at the St. Pete dealership. They've always been straight up and treated me very well with motorcycles there.

 

[bgruhn76]

Well we had a slight delay in our boat buying adventure. But we are now ready once again to consider purchasing an FSH. I know Yamaha is releasing the 2018 model lineup in August, but the 210 FSH was rumored to be 2019 model. Anyone hear differently? I'm holding out just in case it's 2018 and has twins! That being said, any nice pre-owned 190 Sports around? They seem to be few and far between.