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Ulterra Quest Initial Impression.
I have had this motor out on the water twice now. Having owned a legacy Ulterra, and the one after that, this Quest model is in another league entirely. Can’t say enough about just how mechanically superior this motor is. And the GPS functions are also greatly improved. The spot lock keeps you to about 3 feet of where you set it. I have the boat scale set midway and there is no sudden jerks left or right as I would experience with the older Ulterras even though I had boat scale set as low as it would go. It’s nice that the puck is now built into the motor itself. Jog feature works superb. The drift mode will come into play if you’re wanting to work a bank or a contour and you have current and or wind. I plan on using the drift mode when trout fishing the Little Red River for trout. I can also see myself using it if I’m bank beating looking for bluegill in the summer. The one aspect I would think crappie fisherman would really like about these motors is just how quiet they are. On the old Ulterras I could hear my prop turning even at low speeds. You can put this motor on max and hear nothing. I am sure there are other brushless motors out there just as quite but this is the quietest motor I’ve ever been around. To say I’m in love with it so far is an understatement. Now….you can get an Ulterra with the advanced GPS features same as is on the Quest. And for a lot less money. But I find it odd that Minn Kota would still put out a motor that is known to have mechanical issues with stowing and deploying when it is obvious they know it has problems. The Quest is a piece of cake to mechanically stow should it be necessary. Not so on the old style. The model I got has the Mega si transducer built in. I didn’t really want that but the models with the 2d transducer are still not available. Could have saved some money but I needed a trolling motor now. Having come from a stick steer boat to this one I’m used to having a sonar at my fishing seat. My sonar on new boat is mounted in the rear as I now own a tiller steer. Now I can’t really afford to hang another Helix 10 off the front of this thing so I’m going to put a mount up front and just change the head unit back and forth. I can just hook into the si head on the Quest Ulterra as it comes with all cables I need. There are a ton of features I can use on this motor with my sonar. Many I doubt I’ll ever need or use. The foot print of the Ulterra is big. Nearly 11 inches wide. It seems though that the screw holes are same as the old version of the Ulterra. One thing to be aware of is this motor weighs in at 105 pounds. Had I kept my old boat and tried to put this motor on it the plate where the TM was mounted would need to be beefed up. Now for the money part. When I ordered my new rig 3 months back I budgeted $2700 for a trolling motor. This new motor was $4100 and the wick release mount I put it on was another almost 300 bucks. Believe me it hurt to pay the 1400 dollars over what I had budgeted. But in the end I’m glad I did. I came close to going with the new Quest Terrova to save money. But in the end I have no business being on a deck lifting a trolling motor. Will be heading out looking for crappie and bluegill this Saturday to exercise this motor some more.
Regards
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