Thread: Trolling battery life question

OK, you should be doing better than that but a couple things come into play.
1) Are you raising the outboard most of the way out of the water? This reduces drag way more than you would realize.
2) How long is your trolling motor shaft and how deep in the water are you running it? Tin boats tend to sit higher out of the water and in my opinion really need a longer shaft on the troller than a glass boat, I run a 60 inch and rarely have more than 12 inches of it above the housing. The deeper the motor is in the water the better the leverage it has, especially into the wind.
A good point of reference is, my boat is mostly likely twice as heavy as yours, I am running a 36V 112 but I can troll well over 9 hours on a windy day.

I have not been raising the motor but will start now. I have the 45 inch shaft ( i think) but i do keep it all the way down. Considered the longer shaft but the way i had it mounted it would have stuck way off the side. (I didnt think about moving the mount).

Not sure how much it affects the situation, but i did notice on the charger that it says its for 90 to 135min capacity batteries and i think mine are 185 or maybe 205.

Raising the motor will help, is the charger showing fully charged?

It shows fully charged but it takes a while. Both the charger and the meter on the terrova show fully charged.


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Meter on the Terrova is crap, with a 210 charger you aren't charging but at a rate of 5 amps on each battery. Check the voltage on each one at full charge and double check the water level in the batts

Will do.


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Sounds about right to me. Rees has another battery to discharge. Umbrellas create drag too. I raise my motor and troll downwind as much as possible and 7 hours or so is about it.

I did have both umbrella up today.


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