Electric vs Gas Trolling Motors

[liquidair]

Hey all,

I've got a 1978 15' Lund aluminum boat with a DT75 Suzuki on it. I'm guessing the whole thing loaded weighs about 1500-1600#.

I'm looking to troll at about 2 nph with some current/wind.

Will an electric Minn Kota do it for me? If so how many lbs of thrust am I going to be needing?

[BobV1]

To answer your question, yes a Minn Kota will do it for you.

Suggest that you contact Minn Kota regarding amount of thrust needed. There are too many unknowns to accurately answer this segment.

Is it a fresh or saltwater application?
Do you want a bow or transom mount?
How many volts 24v or 36v?
How much current or wind? Continuous or intermittent?

Minn Kota will be able to go through a much more extensive inquiry, than the few questions that I've listed, and give you an accurate product recommendation.

Good luck in your search.

[tprice]

We use both motors for trolling here in our are of Upstate SC.

We fish for freshwater stripers and there are two methods of trolling

1-troll with "big" motor while pulling crankbaits, jigs, umbrella rigs and etc which we pretty much do at a dead idle speed which is about 3-3.5 on most any boat.


2-live bait trolling, this is done with bow mounted electric motors, most everyone will use the Minn Kota Auto Pilots. We do this pulling live blue back herring, gizzard shad or trout for stripers using planer boards to spread out lines out(may troll up to 8-10 lines at a time) The prefered speed for this is 1mph or less.

I have a 21 CC with deep v and my Minn Kota is a 24 volt 60" shaft with 72lbs thrust and if I turn it wide open it will hit 3 mph however I would imagine the batteries would only last a few hours. With the lower setting I have honestly trolled a solid day and gone back the next and still have plenty of power(forgot to plug in my charger when I got home)


I also use my trolling motor when fishing in the saltwater on the coast of SC and we have some very hard currents and it works pretty well there as well but have to run it pretty hard at certain times of tide change

[Inlander]

My rig weighs 2,000 pounds lightly loaded and I have a 55 pound minnkota bow mount. At full speed, it runs 2 mph. That should produce at most 2 hours of run time before depleting the battery. Running with the wind should maintain 2 mph with less power and longer battery life. 55 pound thrust is the maximum output with a single battery. More thrust requires two or more batteries.