Trolling Motor Battery Recommendations

Wal mart everstart marine deep cycle; comes in a few sizes depending on what you need; affordable; friend of mine just replaced his in his 21ft. bass boat and ran them for 5 years with regular use and charging.

If you're someone who is really good about maintenance on their equipment, any old deep cycle like the Walmart EverStart DCs will last 3+ years. If you're rough on your equipment, often forget to charge when you get home and go long time between charges or uses, then an AGM battery is worth it to you since they do better with less maintenance than wet cell batteries. Cabela's are decent. I have found Optima Blue tops to not be worth the cost.

ETA: Traditional wet cell batteries will last a lot longer if they remain fully charged (use an on board or trickle charger to maintain full charge). Their lifespan decreases rapidly if allowed to discharge and then remain discharged for long periods of time. AGMs don't care so much.

Duracel AGM from SAMs club, size 31....

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Don't they say it's best to recharge right after each use, rather than right before?

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They should be charged both before and after. I've learned more about batteries in the last two weeks than I ever wanted to know, and you should never let deep cycles become less than 40% charged at all or sit overnight below about 70% charge. It causes them to sulfate and then they're basically paper weights. They also will lose charge while sitting, so they need to be either fully charged every few weeks or left on a trickle charge. The flip side to that coin is some chargers will over charge the batteries if left connected and will eventually boil out the electrolyte, also killing the battery.

What I decided when I went through this was to use regular wet cell 80AH deep cycles from academy, wire them up in parallel so it would be a lot harder to drain them, and then just be mindful of how I treated them. Academy gave a core charge and will take them back inside a year no questions asked, and in general all wet cells are about the same between brands. I also got a noco smart charger that recognizes when to dial back the current to them and just top off the charge. If you have a good onboard charger then you already have that part, just be sure to plug it in as soon as you get back.

I put both batteries through their paces this weekend and was impressed with the charger and how much juice I got out of them. A couple times I fished until lunch, put on charge, and then went back out in the evening and never dropped below 12.5V.

And no acid leakage on those Optimas whatsoever = clean battery compartments and clean connections.

The optimas and AGMs were a little too rich for my blood, but I read a lot about them and the technology makes sense. I just couldn't justify doubling the cost when just taking care of them gave me the same benefit.

Blue tops have spiral cells. They're the only ones to my knowledge that do and that gives the surface area of each cell like 20% more contact area.

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All that really matters is the amp-hour rating of the battery. If they have spiral cells, maybe you can get more Ah in a smaller battery vs other sealed lead-acid/AGM batteries, but that doesn't change the fact that they're over-priced for the Ah rating that the battery has.

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My understanding is the spiral cells produce more cranking amps because of the increased surface area. Not really a concern on a trolling motor bank.

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unlike the previous poster who had them in parallel; not sure why

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I'm running a 12v trolling motor, so it doubles the amp hours. Means my batteries never get run far down and should translate to longer battery life.

I bought 3 from Advance Auto Prts last year, so far so good. Order online use code TRT41 and get 40.00 off a 100.00 purchase. I saved 120.00 on my three.