I have a 12 Pelican jon boat and am getting a trolling motor and battery or 2, and charger for it. Need some suggestions as to what brands to get in motor, battery, and most important charger. Is there a "magic" charger that will get me the most out of my batteries? I ask cause I have been recently fishing with a buddy and we use his stuff and it seems his battery isnt near as good as it was just a few months ago. I dont know if he isnt charging it right or if this is just someting you get when you just strickly run a trolling motor for propulsion?? Any help or sugestions greatly appreciated

For a trolling motor you can not go wrong with a minnkota. Get the biggest 12v one they offer, 52lbs I think. You can get bigger but it will be 24v.

For a battery get the biggest one you can find. An AC Delco M27MF would be a good start.

to charge get a fully automatic charger of at least 10 amps. by fully automatic I mean on that will charge your battery when it gets charged it will turn off the full charge and go into a maintain mode. i would recommend a http://store.schumachermart.com/ssc-1500a.html . When you return from fishing connect the charger to the battery and leave it there until you go fishing again.

You can hook your batteries up like I did mine.  I use 4 six volt batteries hooked together to form a 12 volt power supply.

If your friend's battery is noticeably slower in just a few months I am going to guess he doesn't charge the battery until the night before. Or has done some other damage. Battery maintenance is more important than brand name.

In order of importance.

1 what Team Dougherty said

2 alway recharge ASAP after use.

3 dont run it down to 0% stay within 80% to 30%

4 check the acid level. Only refill with DISTILED water not acid or anything else.

Do a Google search for deep cycle battery maintenance if you want to know more.

Check the archives on this site for battery maintenance.  If memory serves, the largest contributor to loss of battery life is over-discharge during use.  Again, if memory serves, the frequency and method of recharge is not so important as the method of discharge.

Check the archives on this site for battery maintenance. If memory serves, the largest contributor to loss of battery life is over-discharge during use. Again, if memory serves, the frequency and method of recharge is not so important as the method of discharge.

HMM maybe this is the problem then. Cause we usually run it till its pretty dead and have to row back >. Any you guys use one of those solar chargers whille you are out there to get a little extra time?? Do they work any good?

Solar charger?  Waste of time and money, at least while you are on the water.  Your TM will draw the battery down much faster than a Solar charger can replenish it.

I have a Minkota 30# thrust on a 12 foot aluminum boat I use ALL day and then some with a group 27 marine battery . both from wal mart came to under 200 with tax. The bggest thing for me was learning to crecharge right away and in the winter keep it outta the cold and on a trickle charge

alright bought a MinnKota 55lb motor. Now recomend me a battery and charger. would prefer something that I can get local. Any of the chain stores would work if posible

I have seen tests where Trojan batteries consistantly score the highest.  They are actually a little underrated in reserve capacity, but they are expensive.

I had a grp 27 trojan and even after using it for 12 hours it would still be at 70%.  I never once got it to go below 65%.

So I bought a group 24 optima blue top.  Lighter, and very sturdy.  holds all the power I need, but I do have an MK with maximizer which really does add to the time on the water.

I'm a firm believer in maintenance free batteries.  I'm a klutz.  I once spilled a car battery in the back seat of my car.  It ate throght everything.

I dropped the optima on the concrete ramp and it got scuffed but there is absolutely no damage.

for a charger get one that has setting for deep cylcle and agm.  also a trickle setting and of course atuo shut down.

For almost two years I used a car battery, then made the leap to sears die hard marine.  This was back in the day, but they worked pretty good.

I just can' take any chances with leakage anymore.

Long Mike is correct.  

The quickest way to kill a battery is over discharge.  As the remaining charge gets lower, the effect on shortening life gets higher.  For maximum life you shouldn't discharge below 50%.  Discharging to 25% may reduce your battery life by (I'm guessing) 30% from maximum.  But for each 5% below that you are reducing life by larger and larger amounts.  

Finally at total discharge, the level of damage skyrockets because at those levels you end up with "cell reversal".  That happens when the internal resistance of the weakest cell becomes higher than the internal resistance of the trolling motor.  To the cells in series and the overall circuit, the trolling motor now looks like another jumper from positive to negative like all the other jumpers in the ring and the weak cell becomes the "load" or substitutes for the motor.  So now for that cell in the series chain, it has + on its negative terminal and - on its positive terminal causing rapid internal damage.  

This reverse voltage would be about 10 volts for a 12 volt motor but will be 20 or 30 volts for 24 and 36 volt motors so the latter motors are much more likely to kill a battery in a few seconds at total discharge than a 12 volt system.

Our Trollbridge36 has a battery protection feature to save batteries from this failure mode.  When it detects the voltage getting to this danger level it will switch from 36 to 12 volts, putting the batteries in parallel to save the weakest cell from damage.  If you "ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO RUN THE MOTOR" you can override this and switch back to 36 volts at your own risk.