I am looking at a different boat.

I love to troll, and was looking at a 40 hp boat. How large of a motor can comfortably troll to low speeds. 70 hp?

I have a 225 that if the conditions are right, I can get down to 2.0 to 2.5 if I put my trolling motor down. I have never tried the drift bag, but would if I got serious into trolling. I am sure that would drop me to the 1.8 range. For northerns (the fastest freshwater fish in the world), you can troll at higher speeds, up to 5 or 6 mph I believe, depending on the time of year, etc.

Your 40 or 70 would do just fine, either way.

Thanks for the info.

I love to troll slow for northerns in the dog days of summer (seem to do the best)...and found a couple boats in the 70 - 90 hp range and was wondering how slow I can troll.

I should be fine as I only troll for northerns.

My 150 yamaha will troll down to northern/salmon trolling speeds just fine.

I used to use my 150 to troll for walleye and it worked fine, of course that motor only had two speeds. Idle and wide open.

I've got an 80's vintage Evinrude 90 hp that trolls down to about 2.8 mph comfortably (GPS). I can drop to 2.25 with some hesitation, and high 1's with slipping between neutral/forward.

I've never had problems picking up northerns with it; usually I'm going too slow. For walleye's it's probably a little fast.

150 optimax will troll pretty slow. and then if you get the Smart craft buttoms on the dash, you will be set up perfect

We used to troll with our merc 90 (2 stroke) for hours on end. Loads up now and then, and you just go for a quick WOT spin, and then back to trolling. We now will troll for pike with our 150, about 2.6-2.8 mph without using bag or TM deployed. You can always slow down from there, but it gets more complicated with bags, etc.

70-90 hp, no problem.