Posts: 1663
Location: Kodiak, AK | You'd not regret the 101 by any means, but there's two prevalant schools of thought. One is always buy as much power as you can afford. And for an outboard, I agree 110%. But for me, I was running an 80 on my boat and it did fine. I had four batteries on the boat and it was a tight fit. Came time to get a new Riptide and 101 crept into my mind...and this was where I considered the second school of thought, and that is that the extra battery has to "earn it's keep." And by that, I mean is the extra weigh, cost, and space worth the extra power? An easy answer is "of course it does!" And on big water, I'd say yes without much futher discussion. But if you fish alot of no wake lakes or do more trolling than you do casting then the 80 is plenty and you'll save the weight of the battery and have more space for baits or a first aid kit. And remember, batteries ain't light. So your boat is gonna have to move it and while it may not slow you down much, I know bass guys that closely watch their tx weights and worry about 30 lbs for a second Power Pole. So if you watch your weight, the extra battery needs to be worth the weight. With all the crap I've added to my boat, I've noticed a reduction in my top end. But I'm seldom driving up in that range, so not an issue and I like the extra weight for rough water handling.
I ended up going with the 101. I fish entirely big water, strictly casting and seemingly always in the wind. I was able to modify the interior of my console and shoehorn a battery in there and worked a split lead to my two aft batteries to allow my four bank to charge five batteries.
As far as the Terrova using more juice...technically, I'm sure it would. But I can seldom think of a time I killed my 80 on my tug in even a long day of heavy fishing. That said, the 101 moves my boat a full 1 mph faster than the 80 did and it has iPilot on it, which I do use more often now in a continuous mode and I'm sure if I ran the 80 to that extent, I may have ran it down much lower. But I used that motor in much more of a momentary fashion. |
