You need a tiller outboard with shallow drive or a jack plate. I've had all the mud motors. I run in Reelfoot which is 100% slap full of stumps and cypress knees under the water. Unless you are in vegetation you can get around with an outboard if you set it up right.

I remember I got a Pro Drive one time (this would have been early 2000's) and I was down there at Pro Drive's shop we went out to the basin and were running around and I thought I had the baddest thing I ever drove and I look up and a Crawfisherman comes hauling arse past me with a 40hp Tohatsu on a Jack plate running through the same place I was. The only place he couldn't go was across a mud flat with no water. The mud motor would do it there. I never seen a mud flat I could cross like that anywhere North of I10. The Mud isn't the same.

Vegetation is another matter. They shine in the weeds.