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Posts: 272
| This is impossible to quantify, as everyone fishes differently. "All day" for some means 5-8 hours and alot of drifting, anchoring and sitting around at the tavern. To me, all day means 5am until 9:30pm.
Many people do alot of controlled drifting, which you use quick short bursts on the TM and the rest of the time your batteries aren't doing anything.
I will say that this opening weekend, I went "all day" (my version) and we faced current and some winds. I was pretty much on the TM constantly except for a couple times we worked with the wind. "Timmy," as I call my Terrova TM, was on 3-6ish power all day. Literally. I really tried to minimize the time on #6 because I knew it was going to be a long day and I wanted battery life at dark, and so we did more controlled drifting when the winds were that strong, so I was doing mostly 2-6 second bursts on #6 power during that short time we fished that way. But it was windy enough that there was alot of "burst-ing" going on. Otherwise I bucked current or we moved right along casting with 3 guys in the boat. I don't know how long they'd last. I plugged them into 10 amps that night and they were good to go in the morning for another 16-hour beating.
I went from 4:45 that morning until 9:30pm that night on a 24v Terrova with 215 reserve minute 31's, with an amp hour rating of 23amps. This is an important fact that I don't think most folks realize. Not all batteries are tested equally. The standard is a 25 AH test. Some are, most are not.
The batteries were purchased that week.
One thing I will say about Optima batteries as someone who has never owned them, so take it with a grain of salt, not sure what the big deal with them is. Their reserve capacity, which is what you WANT with a trolling motor battery, is for crap compared to alot of other batteries. Not saying the battery itself is crap, but I sure cannot justify myself spending 2-3x the price for ~1/2 the reserve minutes. I don't care how many years the batt is supposed to last or whatever the bragging points are. I'll happily replace batteries every 3-4 years if my daily time on the water is extended by the increased reserve minutes.
Long story short, with 31s and an 80# terrova, I can say that I could set my trolling motor on 3 or 4, set the autopilot, take a 16 hour nap, and wake up to Timmy still pulling my boat. I have an '02 Alumacraft TP. Its very wide, pretty deep and the boat (wet) weighs about 2400 lbs and it is not an overly-efficient hull.
Lots and lots of factors with running time on batteries. Almost gotta fish with someone to really know how they fish to really guage what they mean when they say things. I had a buddy who said they'd troll walleyes with an 80# terrova "all weekend" with his boat. Piled in with him this spring, and the first thing he does is fire up the kicker motor........umm, yeah. Kinda what I thought.
That's what I got.
-EY
Edited by muskie-addict 6/20/2011 6:05 PM
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