Thread: Trolling motor boat speed question

I'm not happy with the speed of my boat at trolling motor only lakes. I have a 17' Lowe Stinger aluminum boat with a 70 horsepower Yamaha on the back. Up front I have a 55 pound thrust 12 volt Minn-kota foot control. With a fresh battery and no wind I can get up to 2.2 MPH but it quickly drops to 2.0 MPH and stays. Not good on some of the larger lakes like LCR.

My question is what kind of top speed do you get out of your boat and what can I do to improve the speed of mine?

Was thinking of buying a 24 volt 70 pound thrust motor or larger up front or adding a kicker motor to the back, either a 55 pound thrust 12 volt or 70 pound 24 volt. Any thoughts on which would give me the most bang for my buck and what kind of speed improvement I could expect?

Thanks,

Roy

My 14' semi-V Lowe gets 3.6 mph with 2 transom-mounted motors totaling 95# thrust.

The 16' Sea Nymph is a full V and much heavier. With a 40# up front, a 55# kicker and fully cooked batteries, it tops out at 3 mph.

With a passenger and extra gear, these numbers drop a few tenths of a mph.

Roy - do you either have your battery up front or have decent sized wires to that front mounted trolling motor?

Roy,

Moe thrust will give only a marginal improvement on speed. 70# of thrust will get you about 2.8 mph. The advantage a 24 volt system will give you is endurance.

Also remember, it is better on the batteries to run at 1/2 current draw than it is for them to run at full current draw.

It just takes a long time to run to the back of LCR.