I don’t get our much to fish anymore and when I do I’m not as prepared as I would like to be. In my last post I spoke about shopping for a new cheap trolling motor battery.

I decided to go with a deep cycle Everlast Maxx from Wal-Mart. It wound up about $94 out the door. I was planning on taking the boat out over Easter weekend to just do a trial run and make sure both trolling motor batteries were up to snuff, but we had a packed house so unfortunately I did not get out. I did manage however to get out this morning – GOOD NEWS! The bad news is I didn’t think about capping off the new Maxx with a charge. The river is about a 45 min drive from where I live and half way out there the thought started creeping in my head about if I charged it or not. Not only that I know Wal-Mart batteries come with a really weak charge so I was freaking out. And being on the river complicates things a little more when you are trying to pull the current and flip at the same time.

So I got to the dock through on the voltmeter and of course the battery was about 1/2 charged. I knew that I would be in trouble if I decided to flip. So one of my fellow anglers that I use to back boat with told me about some tips on managing your batteries charge if your are in a situation where you need to preserve volts.

Here are some tips:

  1. Come to the realization that your battery is dead and you will not be able to run and gun like you could on a full charge. I’m not of the page of fish they way you typically would. My reasoning is if you do get on a bite, you want to make sure that you have some juice in the battery to repeat the pattern until you can start culling.
  2. This tips stems from the first one. You will be limited to where you can fish. Run up river pull in tight to the bank. Let the current pull you down while gently tapping on your trolling motor. You can use the resistance to propel you forward or at the very least slow your boat down. I love pulling the current on a freshly charged battery because you are more in control of the boat using the trolling motor as opposed to working with the current.
  3. If you do happen to have a dual battery system. Never use the secondary battery for the trolling motor. You want to make sure that you can start your boat and if both batteries are dead you are in some major trouble. Especially if your weighing fish in and need the big motor to get you back to the weigh station. I luckily this morning had two battery’s and was not all that concerned about killing both batteries. I fished up river and new the current would get me back to the dock.
  4. The best tip I can give you is to mount some on board trickle chargers that you can easily plug into your boat. In other words…Don’t forget to charge your trolling motor batteries!

I know some simple, but effective tips to making sure you don’t have trolling motor battery problems on your next fishing trip.