Sea Pro’s latest 21-foot bay skiff, the SV2100CC, is a tough and practical center console that will serve well in a wide variety of fishing situations. It’s a wide-open, spacious fishing platform that also carries a considerable amount of storage room, and it will fish equally well inshore and in limited offshore situations.
We tested the boat courtesy of Captain Chuck Tuell of Fernandina Beach, Florida, who runs a pair of Sea Pros in his charter operation (his second boat is a Sea Pro offshore center console). The 2100 was very stable at rest and under way thanks to a relatively wide 7′ 10″ beam. Even with several large guys standing on the same gunwale, the boat exhibited very little tendency to lean. Plus, its modified-vee hull only draws about ten inches of water, according to Sea Pro.
The sharp entry of the 2100 provides a soft ride, a feature we put to the test with the few boat wakes we could find in the Intracoastal Waterway on our flat-calm test day, and the pronounced chine should keep spray out of the boat in all but the most extreme circumstances. Our boat’s 200-hp Mercury OptiMax outboard jumped the skiff onto plane very quickly, and provided a brisk cruising speed of 29.3 knots at 4000 rpm. At a wide-open 5200 rpm the GPS read 39.5 knots, so you know this boat can get you where you’re headed with plenty of time to spare.
Spacious Deck
The Sea Pro is a caster’s dream, with lots of deck space fore and aft. At the bow you’ll find a sizeable raised casting deck with ample dry storage below (even more storage space is available beneath the twin bench seats just aft of the casting deck). The bow also features a recessed anchor locker and plenty of space forward for mounting an electric trolling motor.
A ten-gallon live well is located beneath the forward console seat, and would most likely serve to hold pitch baits for fishermen in the bow. There’s vertical console rod storage for three rods per side, and the helm is protected by an acrylic windshield surrounded by a sturdy stainless-steel handrail. For security, Sea Pro throws in lockable console storage. A 100-quart cooler with a reversible backrest does double duty as the helm seat, so you can watch where you’re going – or where you’ve been. Sea Pro even includes nice, small touches such as drains on the rod holders.
Another raised casting deck aft features two hatches, one of which opens to reveal the boat’s batteries and provide inner-hull access. The other hatch conceals a large insulated fishbox that Chuck had plumbed as a live well, and there was another ten-gallon live well on the forward end of the casting deck. Three live wells should keep even the most hard-core live-baiters happy!
Sea Pro’s solid construction process includes hand-laid fiberglass lamination, foam flotation, a fiberglass stringer system, bronze through-hulls, and a high-density composite transom. The company backs its products with a ten-year transferable warranty, too.
To sum up, SV2100CC is a boat that can handle a lot of different tasks for not a lot of money, which makes it the right boat for a great many fishermen.
Sea Pro Boats, Newberry, SC; (803) 321-5777; www.seaproboats.com.
