Thought I would give my year of experience with the setup of my FTD/SHO to maybe give you guys a starting point and save some money on prop testing. I fish quite a few tournaments a year, so my priority is for the best all around tournament setup. The Puma FTD is two different boats in tournament loaded and full livewells vs. empty one person configurations. In my experience the setup is different for both. I have tried different pitch props in Mercury Tempest, Fury, and Yamaha TI ventless. Without boring everyone with all the results I will describe what works best. My engine height is 3 inches below the pad. The best tournament prop by far is the Yamaha TI 25 pitch. It comes out of the hole quickly, has good bow lift, runs 76 gps @ 6000 rpm with a 2 person full livewell load. This prop can hit the rev limiter with one person and a light load, but it is the best prop for a tournament configuration.The best prop I have found for speed is a Yamaha TI ventless 27 pitch that I had blueprinted by Mark Croxton. It will run 81 gps @ 5850 rpm. I had this prop blueprinted as it came on the boat and was very slow out of the hole and would only turn 5700 rpm. My hope was to get it perform as a tournament prop, after blueprinting it was still too much prop and slow out of the hole. It is now for sale as I only tournament fish, not a speed freak. As a side note the Yamaha 27 TI in stock configuration very very slow out of the hole with a tournament load. Lastly the third best prop was a Mercury 26 Tempest Plus, this prop would run 77 gps @ 6000 rpm, but was slow out of the hole and had poor bow lift.Hope this helps..Tom WilkinsonLast edited by Tom W on April 12th, 2011, 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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