Fuel prices have been all over the place lately and if you’ve been filling up your boat, you’ve definitely felt it!
In reality, fuel has never been a small expense for anglers. It’s right up there with your gear as one of the biggest ongoing costs in fishing.
But here’s what most anglers don’t realise:
👉 It’s not just the price of fuel that’s the problem. It’s how much of it gets wasted every trip.
The good news is you don’t need to fish less to save fuel. You only need to be more efficient!
Here’s 8 tips on how I reduce boat fuel consumption without cutting back on fishing time.
1. Find Your Boat’s Most Fuel-Efficient Speed
Every boat has a “sweet spot” where fuel burn is at its lowest.
On my 40ft game boat, that sweet spot is around 7 to 8 knots. At that speed, the boat sits nicely on its own wake and the load on the props is minimal. As soon as I push past that and try to climb over that first wave, the load increases massively and the fuel burn more than doubles between from around 9 knots.
So even though the boat can do 30 knots, I’ll happily cruise at 8 knots on longer runs. I get a much better fuel burn ratio and can stay out a lot longer before needing to refuel.
At 7-8 knots the boat uses around 16 L/hr (8 L/hr per engine). At a comfortable cruise speed of 24 knots, the boat uses about 160 L per hour (80L/hr/engine), which is 10X the fuel burn for 3X the speed. In our big boat we most definitely take our time!
Smaller boats can be a bit different, especially with outboards, but the same principle applies. Most will have a more efficient range somewhere around 60 to 65 percent of their maximum speed.
If you’ve got a fuel management system, start paying attention to it. That’s where you’ll really see what your fishing boat fuel consumption looks like at different speeds.
We all know someone who feels the need for speed. It might get you there quicker, but it’s about the worst thing you can do for fuel (and your back in the long run!)
2. Make More of Every Trip With Your Sounder
One of the biggest advantages of slowing down is what it does for your electronics.
At lower speeds, your sounder becomes a lot clearer, especially side imaging. You actually start seeing what’s out to the sides instead of just noise.
This is how I find a lot of those fish-rich little nuggets most people never even know are there.
A lot of those small, out-of-the-way fish holding areas get completely missed when you’re flying along. When you slow down and pay attention, you start picking up structure, bait and fish that most people drive straight past without ever knowing it was there.
But How To Find Fish Using Your Sounder?
Learning how to find fish with a sounder properly is one of the biggest ways to reduce wasted time and fuel. Instead of running blind and hoping for the best, you are constantly gathering information and narrowing things down as you travel. That alone can make a big difference to how much fuel you burn trying to find fish offshore.
If your sounder still feels a bit hit and miss, that is exactly why I put together Sounder Skills 1.
It is a simple way to understand what your sounder is actually showing you, so you can stop second-guessing and start making better decisions on the water.
3. How Weather Affects Boat Fuel Consumption
This one gets overlooked more than it should.
If the weather is up a bit, think about how your boat is going to travel. Even 10 knots of wind over a bit of distance can stack up short, sharp waves that your boat has to deal with.
If you’re running straight into that chop or swell, your boat is constantly climbing and falling over waves. Every time it climbs, the engine has to work harder to push the hull up and over. That extra load increases your boat fuel consumption per hour pretty quickly.
You’ll also feel it. The ride gets rough, the boat pounds, and you instinctively adjust the throttle all the time. All of that burns more fuel.
A following sea, where the swell is behind you, is usually the easiest on the boat. A side-on sea can also be more comfortable depending on the conditions. But punching straight into it is where fuel use really blows out. Here’s some tips for a smoother ride in a small boat!
4 Things to Check Before You Go
So before you even leave the ramp, it pays to look at a few things:
- Wind direction and strength
This tells you where the chop is going to build. Stronger wind over a longer distance means bigger waves. - Tide direction and period
Wind against tide is where you can really run into trouble, as it causes the “washing machine” effect. - Your planned run
Look at where you’re heading and think about the direction you’ll be travelling relative to the wind, swell and tide.
Here’s a case study of how running into a large swell used significantly more fuel and the guys ran out! Not a good position to be in.
A simple example:
If the wind is blowing from the southeast at 15 knots and you plan to run southeast offshore, you’re going to be punching straight into it the whole way. That’s going to be slower, rougher and use more fuel.
But if you adjust your plan slightly and run more across the wind or even with it for part of the trip, you can make the whole run easier on the boat and cheaper on fuel.
If you want to get better at reading conditions before a trip, I have also broken down the weather apps I use and how I use them to plan safer, more efficient runs in this blog: Ryan Moody’s Best Weather Apps for Fishing in Australia
4. Read Charts Before You Leave the Ramp
This is the other half of the equation, and it matters just as much. It is no good planning a smooth run if you still end up running around blindly once you get there.
Before I even fire up the boat, I want to study the charts and narrow the paddock. That means looking at bathymetric fishing charts and relief shading before the trip, not after I have launched and started guessing.
I am looking for things like:
- contour compression
- subtle contour bends
- isolated rises in otherwise flat ground
- small structural clues that most anglers scroll straight past.
Most fishos are looking for big, obvious structure. I am usually more interested in the subtle clues that suggest current compression, old landscape features or small productive areas that could hold fish without screaming out on the chart.
Chart reading becomes valuable because it lets me build a plan before the trip instead of running around blindly once I’m out there and that is one of the easiest ways to reduce boat fuel consumption on a fishing trip.
The other big advantage is that it helps cut fuel costs because I’m not wasting time and fuel searching on the fly AND it gives me backup options if one area is dead, crowded or infested by sharks.
That is exactly why I put together Offshore Opportunities. It is designed to help anglers read charts with purpose, understand the subtle clues most people ignore and head offshore with a much better plan from the start.
5. Take Advantage of Seasonal Opportunities
Winter is one of the best times to reduce boat fuel consumption if you understand what’s happening.
A lot of species move and stack up during the cooler months. Demersals like fingermark, barra, snapper and even large-mouth nannygai often come in closer and hold in more predictable areas. Pelagics can do the same.
The reason comes down to things like water temperature, bait movement and spawning behaviour, but the important part is this: You don’t always have to go wide to find fish!
There are often very good opportunities closer inshore around islands, headlands and even inside systems if you know what to look for.
Check out our blog “Fishing Headlands in Winter” to see some of the unusual catches we come across inshore during winter.
Our Finding Fingermark and Other Foragers course can help you find all manner of great eating foragers from pink snapper down south to fingermark in the north without running too far offshore.
6. Don’t Overlook Close Opportunities
This is a big one (And it’s mostly a mindset problem).
A lot of anglers think they need to get as far away from the boat ramp as possible to catch decent fish. So they leave the ramp, put the throttle down and don’t even look at what they’re passing. Meanwhile, they’re often running straight over fish.
Here’s me during a tournament catch a metre-plus barra at the boatramp lol.
It’s no different to beach fishing. You’ll see guys trying to cast as far as they possibly can, thinking the fish must be out wide, when in reality, there can be good fish sitting in the gutter 20 metres from shore. They’re casting straight over the top of them.
Here’s a good way to assess a land-based area if you want to avoid the boat fuel situation completely.
The same thing happens in boats. You might have a bit of structure, bait or even fish sitting on a small patch of ground not far from the ramp. But because it doesn’t look “far enough” or “offshore enough”, it gets ignored.
Distance doesn’t equal better fishing.
Some of my best spots are within 2 kilometres of the ramp. Some are only a few hundred metres away.
The difference is knowing what to look for. Things like:
- small isolated structure
- subtle depth changes
- bait holding in certain areas
- current lines or pressure points
These aren’t always obvious, and if you don’t understand how your target species use those areas, they just look like empty water.
That’s why people burn fuel running further and further, thinking distance equals better fishing, but it doesn’t.
If you know how to find fish and understand where they should be, you start seeing opportunities much closer to home. And that means less running, less searching, and a big drop in overall boat fuel consumption.
My 2000th saltwater metre-plus barra was caught around 100 metres from the boat ramp. As a charter operator, saving fuel and finding fish close to home made good business sense, and it became a passion of mine. One that I share in all my courses.
7. Consider Longer Trips to Lower Fuel Costs
Instead of doing multiple short trips, it can make more sense to stretch your time on the water.
If you do an overnight trip, you’re spreading the fuel cost across a lot more fishing time. You also open up night sessions, which are often very productive and you’ll usually deal with less pressure and fewer sharks.
A simple way to do it is to take a slower run on the first day, arrive mid-morning, fish through the afternoon and into the night, then get a few hours in the next morning before heading home.
You end up with a lot more fishing time for the same or only slightly more fuel.
If you’ve got a cabin, it’s even easier. If not, you just need to plan for a bit of rest.
8. Stop Fishing Dead Water and Waste Less Fuel
This is where most fuel actually gets wasted: Not in the travel, but in the time spent fishing in the wrong places.
If you’re sitting on ground that doesn’t hold fish or you’re fishing at the wrong time, you can burn an entire day and get nothing. Then you move, burn more fuel and repeat the same process somewhere else.
Fish With a Framework, Not Guesswork
Knowing where and when to fish is one of the biggest fuel savers there is.
A proper framework narrows down the search before the trip starts, fish with more purpose and spend more time in the sort of water that actually makes sense for your target species.
An option to avoid running out wide every time, wasting heaps of fuel, my course Barra Basics can open up a whole different way of fishing inshore and in estuaries. It is also one of my most popular courses for good reason, because it gives anglers a much clearer understanding of where barra should be, when to be there and how to approach them properly.
👉🏻 If you want to check out Barra Basics, click here.
Another strong inshore option is Finding Fingermark, which is not just useful for fingermark anglers up north, but also for fishos further south chasing fish like jewfish, snapper and similar foragers. It helps you narrow the search, fish with a plan and recognise productive areas you might have driven over in the past.
