Today I was on Lake St Clair trolling for musky we got one big pike around 10lbs and a 42.5inch musky before hearing a beep sound from the motor. Unfortunately it was the battery dying. I had built a musky revival box and a few yrs back had my marine dealer install a washdown pump. I hooked the hose up to the tank to fill it and now wonder if it is somehow the cause of the battery dying. Problem is, I have used the washdown station many times for getting slime off my hands while salmon and musky fishing. I switched the battery from the bow trolling motor battery and put it on the main... the one before was a group 24 now the one on the main ended up being a group 31. After 10 min of trolling I grabbed the minkota hand tester and it showed the battery was at half power... immediately I told my nephew and his friend to grab rods and reel in lines, I was worried the battery would die before we could get to the marina. After flying in, I got curious and checked the battery level again just after coming off plane, and it now read 3/4 charge..... so it improved, but I still don't know what has caused the battery level to drop. Is my alternator toasted, did the washdown pump somehow screw things up? Anyone else have issues with batteries dying when trolling?
motor killing batteries.. but we got a nice musky and pike first.
- Thread starter live2fish
- Start date
spincast
Well-Known Member
Not enough info to answer how big a motor were you trolling with, and how fast /how many rpm? What electronics did you have on? Radio, multiple fishfinders ? Anything else? The fact you recharged on the run home says the alternator is working but as you didn't say how long and how fast the run home was, can't say if there may be an issue do you have the voltage showing on your fishfinder? If not, add it then you can see if upping the problem ups the voltage. Sooooo many things that could cause that with today's setups ps nice fish
Hds 12 carbon and Hds gen 3 7” both on. And trolling 3mph. Never had a problem till today. The wash down hose gets used in the summer to spray off salmon slime. Filling the musky revival tank probably took 5 min of continuously running it. Motor is a 150hp 4 stroke merc. Running back was probably 7km (using navionics app to guesstimate that). Using smart craft troll control I was around 700 rpm’s.
I would suggest heading out with a multimeter. That way you can run a few quick diagnostics to narrow it down with everything there to test in operation. That way when you turn on the pump you will see if voltage is dropping or maybe just the combination of fish finders plus the pump plus cold weather made it so the alternator couldn’t keep up at slow trolling speeds. If you need further help pm me.