Trolling Motor Battery

[Ben Kobrin]

I have that one in my 8' pram. When I was at Baum lake last month it worked great with my 30lb thrust Minn-Kota. It had plenty of capacity for a day's fishing, and I charged it each night at the motel (took about 4 hours to recharge it with the 6 amp charger I brought). That indicates to me that it wasn't really very discharged, and that it should run my boat for a good long time.

That's great to hear. I've also got the 30lb Minn Kota and while my pontoon is 12 feet long, it's very light so I'm hopefull that I won't be underpowered.

[michaeln]

I think it depends a lot on how you use it. I certainly didn't have it running all day. At Baum there is a steady current running through it, so when I wanted to go downcurrent I either rowed or drifted with occasional spurts from the motor for corrections. I also spend a lot of time anchored and casting.

Further, the drain on the battery goes way up when you use full power, so I don't use full power that often (heck, the little pram really scoots on full) because I am usually not in a big hurry when I'm fishing.

[Ed Wahl]

Hey Woolybugger and Michael, I was in the same boat as you(figuratively speaking) until I decided to see just what it would take to drain my battery by using it.

I've got the cheapest 24 deep cycle marine Wal-mart has, bought it 2 years ago.

Last summer I dropped my pram, a pretty heavy Metalhead, in the American River at Discovery Park. The mouth of the American.

I ran it on high speed upstream expecting at any time after about 15 minutes to start losing power.

Well, after about 2.5 hours of pushing against the current at high speed I came to Last Chance Riffle and decided that was far enough. No power loss that I could tell.

I took a siesta then headed back down, fishing and again, running at full speed. At the lower end of the river I was moving a bit slower, but not too bad. Plenty of push for maneuvering around the hundreds of boats anchored down there.


Scott and I ran from Westlake Landing Park up the Moke and into Sycamore Slough using electrics once. Except for huge wakes from big boats we had no issues.

In normal fishing such as Baum, or the smaller lakes like 'Seco, you'll never need to worry about conserving power.

Just charge them up when you get home. I've got an old charger built for car batteries, but it's got a setting for a 2 amp charge. So far no problemo.

Ed

[Frank Alessio]

The more you run them down before recharging the better.... Frank

[Dabalone]

As far as warranties on batteries my experience has been they will go bad the first or second month after the warranty expires, damn things must have self destruct timers in them. But that is auto batteries, warranty on a deep cycle battery is probably a good thing since they are drained and recharged over and over. If not taken care of properly they will go bad prematurely.

Another point related to all this is your trolling motor. Always get the motor with the built in Maximiser, if it costs a little more its worth it, adds much more mileage out of a charge. Not sure if Motor Guide has the same thing and it may be standard on all Minn Kota's now, if not I would certainly get one with it.