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The heart of any fishing boat only beats with top quality batteries. A lot of fishermen often overlook this simplest and most basic of fishing accessories, buy the wrong type of battery for their application, or don’t properly care for the batteries they do have. Marine batteries are built quite differently than automotive batteries to hold up to the pounding and demands all day fishing puts on them. By choosing the proper type and size of battery, performance can be greatly increased.

Cranking batteries are just that-batteries used to start the outboard motor. With today’s bigger outboards and fuel injection systems, it takes batteries with 1000 cold cranking amps (cca) or higher to turn these motors over. Accessories such as electric trolling motors, bilge pumps, or fishing electronics should never be run from a cranking battery, as most have no deep cycle capacity.

Cranking batteries are designed to deliver large amounts of amperage in a few seconds and are built differently than deep cycle batteries. Thinner plates that create more plate surface in the battery and little resistance are features of a top quality cranking battery.

Deep cycle marine batteries meet the demands of all day usage from electric trolling motors, electronics and boat accessories. A deep cycle battery is built to deliver long, slow discharges over a period of time. Quality deep cycle batteries can be run down and recharged several times, with top quality batteries surviving over 100 discharge/recharge cycles.

Unlike cranking batteries, deep cycle batteries are built with heavier, thicker plates to deliver the power needed and for standing up to constant discharge/recharge cycles. Fiberglass reinforced plates and high reserve capacity are features you definitely want in your deep cycle batteries.

Reserve capacity (RC) of a deep cycle battery is a measurement of the batteries staying power. Listed in minutes, the reserve capacity rating is defined as the number of minutes a new, fully charged battery at 80 degrees can be discharged at 25 amps. By adding up total amp draw placed on a battery and doing some simple math, we can determine how many hours a deep cycle battery will power our boat. Deep cycle batteries are available in three sizes: 24 series, 27 series and 31 series. These series determine physical battery size and amount of reserve capacity with the 24 series being the smallest and the 31 series the largest.

How big of a battery should you buy for your boat? In my opinion the answer is simple-carry as many of the largest batteries you can! It’s hard to have enough power, and today even recreational fishermen have lots of demand for electrical power. Sonar units, GPS, livewell and bilge pumps, high thrust electric trolling motors, electric downriggers and anchors are found on most boats today.

My  walleye tournament boat has 4 batteries on board. The 24 volt  bow trolling motor is powered with two 31 series deep cycle batteries, a large 1000 cca cranking battery starts the 200 Evinrude E-Tec and the 8 hp kicker, and a separate 31 series deep cycle battery powers all of my electronics.

This may seem like overkill, but the results from my electronics must meet my requirements over a full fishing day. I can’t afford low battery power to be a factor in where or how I fish. Most fishermen can get by with a little less. If you are running a 12-volt trolling motor a minimum of 1 deep cycle and 1 cranking battery is needed. If using a 24-volt trolling motor, obviously you will need to add another deep cycle battery. In both of these cases you may want to consider adding an extra deep cycle to power your electronics instead of taking time from the trolling motors batteries.

The proper type and size batteries are an extremely important part of any fishing boat. Without them we go nowhere! By choosing the proper battery depending on our application, they will last longer, perform better and we will have more fun. There are many quality batteries on the market so compare when you shop. My favorites are the Deka Marine Master batteries made by East Penn manufacturing or Interstate's Marine Series.  Both are available at Freeway Sports Center.

Next time we will be discussing charging and maintaining your boat’s batteries. If you have any questions or would like a flyer on choosing the proper marine battery, e-mail your name, address, question or request to lance@walleye101.com and type "Lance’s battery info" in the subject line.