Trolling motor batteries are very temperamental when in storage. If you don’t take care of them and maintenance them properly…they will go dead to the point of not being able to revive them.

While out checking on my aluminum boat which has two trolling motor batteries in it I noticed that the float charger was not on my Trojan trolling battery. I guess I forgot to put the float on it when I was doing some cleaning in the boat.  AS you can see in these pics the results aren’t good.

I use a standard electric voltmeter that I bought at Sears  to test all my trolling motor batteries. This one is made by Craftsman and very easy to use. Again, as you can see this one is reading at 0.09 which is not good.  This is probably a case of to little too late if I decided to try and put it on the charger and bring the volt levels back up. I will try it, but more than likely this trolling motor battery is done.

I posted this because it’s imperative that you store your trolling motor batteries properly when in storage. Check your fluid level and make sure you throw a float charger on it to ensure it keeps the battery topped off.  I use the cheap battery float chargers from Harbor Freight. Yes they are junk but they do the trick and for the price you can’t beat em. Here is one that I took a quick snapshot of.

These float chargers can actually be mounted onto the trolling motor battery itself or you can mount them to your boat. This is nice because once your done fishing you just connect the alligator clips and plug the charger in.

So to sum up my post…make sure you store your trolling motor batteries in a dry place with correct levels and be sure to have it connected to a battery float charger. Don’t make the mistake I made and forget. This stupid mistake is eventually going  to cost me a about a $150 to buy a new Trojan trolling motor battery when summer comes.

Until next time!