My first impressions of my new I-Pilot

Took an old buddy fishing today to try out some new techniques and most importantly my new Minnkota I-Pilot trolling motor.

Where has this thing been all my life?

It's very quiet, very strong (too strong at times) and works just as advertised which I doubted before trying it. Once you record a course up to 2 miles in length you can have it retrace the course and in my test it followed the track within 5' verified by my 797 GPS plot. Increasing and decreasing speed during the track run did nothing to throw it off. The steering is faster than my previous autopilot, when set into its advanced autopilot feature it makes very small changes in direction that are hard to even see when looking at the motor. To test the anchor function I tossed out a marker buoy beside the boat and the motor did everything by itself to keep us beside the buoy. Its smart enough to not wrap its cord up yet turn and make speed adjustments as needed to stay within 5 to 8 feet of that buoy spot until you tell it to do something else. The cruise control function is AWESOME! If you set it at .4 mph it will turn the motor up or down as needed to stay at that speed no matter what the wind or waves are doing to the boat. It varied by .1 a few times but that's not bad at all IMHO.

My only real problem is it's power. Even though it has 20 different levels of power between 0 and 10, it's lowest setting (.5) is still too fast for some of my trolling on my 18' Ranger. I have to make sure it won't void my warranty but will be looking for another prop I can cut down a little.

I know you bass guys don't all care for the power drives but I would think this would have a lot of benefits for you. Pull up to fish a boulder pile, cliff or tree and just hit the anchor button and there you will stay until you tell it otherwise. Land a fish, re-tie or go make mud sharks the boat ain't moving and the partner can still fish the structure.

BTW we saw some fish too......

Finally got to play with my I pilot yesterday. I held on a brushpile for over an hour without touching the remote or foot pedal (Terrova model). This was in a 10-15 mph wind in the middle of Lake O the Pines. Spot lock is Awesome.We have heard the stories about transducer cables getting wrapped around the motor from motor doing a 360 when spotlock is engaged.. There are two scenarios that can cause this..

1) Pressing spotlock while the boat is "moving"
2) Failure to make sure the boat is facing into the wind prior to engaging the spot lock feature

The boat should be as close to dead still as possible before engaging the spot lock. If the boat is moving, the momentum of the boat takes it past the point of engagement and the trolling motor being controlled by the spot lock feature will attempt to get back to the point of engagement even if it has to turn a 360 to do it..

If wind is present, point the nose of the boat into the wind before engaging spot lock.

Once engaged and in control. Fine adjustments to get on the productive portion of the break/brushpile are simple and effective. Hitting any key on the remote disengages the feature. This allows you to take manual control, adjust the boat position to your liking and then "re-engage" on the new position.

I have'nt had an opportunity to play with some of the other features yet... Too busy letting spot lock HOLD ME ON THE FISH....

I never had the problem of cable wrap at all. A couple of times the boat would swing enough to cause the motor to start wrapping the cable and I thought it was going to go all the way around but it would suddenly turn the prop off and spin back around to unwrap the cable, then turn back on to move the boat back to the anchor spot. The motor I bought was factory equipped, maybe the add on's are different.

Glad to hear that your first i-Pilot experiences are positive ones!!!!

sounds pretty impressive to me, glad y'all are having a positive experience