Staten Island Angler Switches to Mercury, Expands His Fishing Range

To a serious angler, a boat is much more than a recreational vehicle. It’s a floating platform for testing knowledge, learning and exploring your craft and seeking adventure. Without a boat, the angler’s journey is limited by the physical boundary of the shoreline.

But the limits don’t stop once you do get a boat. Growth as an angler often coincides with expanding your boat’s capabilities in one fashion or another – usually through things like upgrading sonar, re-rigging equipment or testing props to squeeze out just a few more mph. Because every serious angler knows the more you can get from your boat, the bigger and better your fishing adventures become.

Capt. Joe Mattioli, from Staten Island, New York, fits into this group precisely. Mattioli doesn’t just fish. He’s been a serious angler for more than 50 years.

“I’ve had nine boats since I started fishing, boat fishing, since I was a kid,” said Mattioli, 71. “I had my first boat when I was about 18 years old, if not younger – a skiff.”

Boat by boat, Mattioli expanded his capabilities with his interest in fishing, until ultimately purchasing his current model in 2014 – a 38-foot Jupiter named “Reel Life.”

“I love fishing. Fishing in one spot is a very small part of the world or the ocean,” he said. “The thing is to explore it all, as far as you can. The small skiff took you to the next step, whether that was in the middle of the bay as opposed to being on the dock. From there you got a bigger boat that can put you out of the bay into the ocean. And here I am today, and I go out 100 miles offshore looking for fish. So it’s the quest. It’s the challenge of finding the fish that you could never go get because you didn’t have the means to do it.”

In summer 2025, that quest led Mattioli back to Two River Marine, a Mercury Repower Center, where he took the next step in his angling journey, replacing his old Yamaha V8 350hp outboards with twin Mercury V10 400hp Verado engines. More than just new power, the new engines gave Mattioli the means to explore even more of the ocean.

Recognizing it was time to repower

When Mattioli bought his boat, he repowered it with the only 350s on the market at the time – and he needed all the power he could get. With those old engines aged out and more options available in 2025, Mattioli approached his latest repower decision by diving into research. That led him to choose Mercury.

“I’m a very technical person,” he said. “I’m retired now, but I was in the aerospace business as a quality engineer. Everything I do I research thoroughly.”

His top priority: fuel efficiency. More specifically, Mattioli wanted to go farther.

“My main goal was getting more range,” Mattioli said. “With my motors that I had that were replaced, I was only getting 1 mile per gallon. Safely, I could have a range of about 280 miles. The ocean where we fish, there’s a part of the water called the Hudson Canyon, which is a 100-mile journey just to get to it – 100-plus – and with the old engines I couldn’t do that. I was at the limit where I could get there and turn around and go home. I couldn’t fish it because I didn’t have enough fuel left.”

The repower achieved Mattioli’s goal. Cruising at 30 mph with the V10 Verado engines, Mattioli is now getting about 56 more miles per tank compared to his old engines. At 35 mph, fuel efficiency improved by an impressive 25% after the repower.

“That is exciting, because again, it puts me at another level,” he said. “It puts me at another distance. It puts me in different waters that I never fished before. So therefore, that quest goes further and further and further. And the capability of catching species that I could never target gets even greater, too, because I can go out farther range.”

Mercury SmartCraft technology is also helping Mattioli manage his excursions. When he wants to really reach out there, his new digital Mercury gauges display exactly how far he can go. No more figuring distances on GPS and crunching numbers based on the fuel gauge.

“The new gauges that we got here, they do it all for you. You just look at the gauge and see, hey, I’m burning at this rate, this speed, this rpm,” Mattioli said. “One hundred percent, this is what you’re getting. When I’m running, it’s very important to me. I monitor that because, again, I would like to run at the most ultimate combination of rpm, speed and burn.”

If you’re interested in repowering your boat, get your journey started here. If you’re like Mattioli and want to see how Mercury engines perform on popular boats, you can dive deep into ample performance data published in Boat House Bulletins.