I have only been around the go devil motors a little but they seem to work really well for what they are designed for. One thing I did notice is the motor did not have a reverse which may or may not be an issue for you and that some of them may have a reverse like I said I have very minimal experience with them. Now about jet drive motors, I do have a lot of experience with them. Avoid a jet motor like it is a shady in-law wanting to borrow money, they are very prone to damage from debris in the water, they are expensive, you must run a bigger motor to get comparable performance to a prop, and you have almost no control at slow speeds. It seemed like everytime we ran the jet drives in "dirty water" they had to be worked on, it seemed like for every hour we ran them we spent an hour working on them. I don't know what type of river you are trapping on and how much current is there but I use a canoe with or without a trolling motor a lot, they are light, and very manuverable the only down side would be if you had strong current it could be a problem or if you were traveling a long way from put in to where you started trapping. In shallow water you can wade and use the canoe as kind of a floating gear sled as well. Hope this helps.
