This has not been my weekend.

5am Saturday morning I'm lying in bed and I hear and feel a loud thud outside the house, a large limb came off a tree in my back yard courtesy of tropical storm Ernesto and takes out a section of my fence. Then my digital camera dies. Then I discover that the clutch is going out in my truck. To cap it off, I went fishing this morning and this happens.

I am using my trolling motor to get back to the dock at a local lake so I can drop my son off on the shore because he needs to drive back to Norfolk, VA where he goes to college. I pause to throw a spinnerbait at a fish that swirled on the surface, and my son says to me "dad, you're smoking." I was about to tell him that I was not smoking, I was chewing "as usual," when I noticed smoke coming from underneath the trolling motor mount. I immediately take my foot off the on switch of the foot pedal, but the smoke gets worse, and within 15 seconds there is sizzling and smoke is pouring out of the compartment where the TM battery is stored. We get the battery out of the compartment finally and disconnect it. The wiring from the battery to the plastic connector that hooks the TM receptacle is completely burned off--bare charred copper. The battery terminals were practically welded on. No visible damage from the connector through the receptacle to the trolling motor--although I have not tried to power it. Battery looks fine, I put it on the charger briefly, and it looks like it is completely drained--but somehow I don't have a good feeling about it.

What happened here. Obviously it was a short of some kind--but how? I felt around underneath the mount and did not feel any sharp objects that could have cut the insulation. I had been running the TM for about 10-15 minutes straight prior to the fire. Any ideas so that I can avoid this in the future?

P.S. Yes, I will install a circuit breaker this time. :-[

Short circuit of some kind. Good luck finding it.  Sounds like you shorted out in the foot pedal.  It happens.

Could have been a short.   I deleted the rest of my reply after reading your problem a little closer.  No doubt about it being a short.   When I first read it, I was thinking you meant just the connector was burned off.   If the whole wire fried, you've got bigger problems than a loose connecter.

These are the times when a $15 circuit breaker is worth its weight in gold.