My wife, dog, and I took the new boat out for a shakedown and for me to start learning the lake. While testing the trolling motor we had a mishap. The TM battery is at the rear forward of the drivers seat. I was on the bow driving the boat with the TM. My bride started telling me about smelling something dead. I scanned around the water.. nothing seen and I wasn't smelling it. We swapped seats and I identified the smell as hot wiring. Shut everything down and started checking with a gloved back hand. TM battery was HOT. I don't have a disconnect but the only gear on that circuit is the TM so I asked my first mate to pull it's plug from the bulkhead. A wire had actually melted into the lid of the battery box up and nearly out. I was close to getting a bucket of water on it to cool but the temp started slowly dropping. WHEW! Eventually used a pair of slip joint pliers to disconnect the hot lead... battery continued to cool. My best guess is the long power lead to the TM AND it being 8 gauge may have been enough resistance to heat up and/or an older weak battery having a higher internal resistance perhaps?
I don't have much experience with 12v flooded acid power systems.

I proceeded to troll as slowly as possible with the main engine. I noticed fish seem to hang on the deep side of a transition from shallow to deep where the 10' is several feet down from the top. I also noticed valley's (could have been holes...sonar illustrated as a valley, at approx. 20' FOW I'm guessing the FOV at 6-7' (using 3' depth to 1' FOV formula I read on the forums or got from a YouTube). Valley's seemed to hold fish as well.


I had one ODD incident on the lake and am not sure if I broke some soft of rule or what. Most of my findings were between Nivens Creek landing and Little Allison. While on Little Allison we slowly trolled past a fisherman. I noticed he had a marker bouy out and explained it to my wife. I didn't get that close (I don't think I did anyway) and the guy stopped fishing, took out his phone, and took our picture. Phone technology being what it is there's no way the picture was of any quality. Just struck me as odd. It's a free lake and there's no reason to start trouble so we just motored on.

I did mark a lot of things and was successful in finding brush all over the lake. Especially off the ends of personal piers.

Overall it was a successful trip. I am considering moving my stern sonar closer to the operator's seat (it has gps too). During daytime it's a challenge to see and pick out the details (plus I was playing with settings ).

We docked and loaded 5m before it started raining. I'll keep reading, studying, and practicing...I enjoy it all.
Jer