I have a Minn Kota 565 on my 1448.  Until today everything was ok, but while going back to the dock it would run for about 4 or 5 minutes then stop working. After about 90 seconds or so it would start working again :'(. I'm guessing something in the electronics is getting hot, and opening on thermal overload. (I have a 55 thrust hand control I could put on, but I'm kinda spoiled by the foot control.) Has anyone else had this problem? or is it just time to buy a new trolling motor?

Have you checked all your connections to make sure nothingis loose?  Odd that it would shut down like that intermitently ~

Put your motor on slowest speed possible  let it turn, if it stops turn the power way up if it doesn't go take a screw driver and touch the prop (don't do with fingers) if the motor takes off it has a dead spot in the armature. Most times fixed cheap.

Garnet

Open it up and check the brushes. I had an evinrude trolling motor doing the same thing-replaced the brushes and its still going.

I had this same problem over the weekend during a tournament........when the fish were biting too. The trolling motor worked fine one minute then nothing. After about an hour of going through eveything (fuses, breakers, and switches) for some strange reason I decided to take the trolling motor plug apart. There is was. For some reason the hot wire got a little too hot and melted the plastic plug. We hard wired it and everything was good again. Might be a place to check if you come up blank everywhere else.

Before you start tearing into what's probably a perfectly good motor,  replace that connector with a better, higher amp connector.  It got hot and melted because it had a bad connection.  It only take a very small amount of resistance from a bad connection with the current a TM pulls to create a whole lot of heat.  Try holding a small 30 watt light bulb and see how fast you let go of it.  One ohm of resistance at 30 amps generates 30 watts of heat, that'll melt most anything with a surface area as small as a connector.

Maybe a bad circuit breaker, the 90 seconds down would give it time to cool off and reset it's self