The history of Mitzi Skiffs is a terrific one born out of Living the Skiff Life daily and filling a niche in the skiff industry. Founded by veteran boat designer Tom Mitzlaff (currently the owner of Solo Skiff), Tom wanted to design a functional skiff and originally designed the Mitzi 16. This skiff is a sponson type boat hull in which the transom extends around the outboard. The result was epic hole shot by avoiding the transom from digging “down” into the water and allows the skiff to hop on plane in shallow water very quickly. These sponsons also added buyoncy past the outboard and resulted in a ridiculously shallow draft skiff. This design was so popular that Tom’s skiff design has a cult following to this day.

Flash forward to 2017 and the Mitzi Skiff is still in production in Bailey, North Carolina. The company has worked to expand their offerings to include a larger 17 foot model. This option comes with standard options and a tournament edition and incorporated input from years of use (and abuse) from anglers. The 17’s goals were to offer a skiff with little to no hull slap, quality build to withstand professional charters, ease of poling AND a skiff that will do 45MPH with a 60HP engine AND can fish 3 to 4 people.

Eric from our Trick My Skiff Facebook Group recently snapped off a couple shots of this sweet rig that his buddy recently bought from Big Boys Toys in Palatka. Eric said the skiff ran about 30K with aluminum trailer, Yamaha F70, Atlas jack, Lenco tabs, Garmin, JBL, pole, oxygenator, LEDsetc etc. The mini tower was a huge hit. For $30,000 that is ALOT of boat, motor, trailer for the money as we’ve seen boats with this same fit & finish cost twice that price.