Thread: Does anyone run a trolling battery for a starting battery?

If you happen to run your trolling batteries down...motor wont start

Originally Posted by KnightShadow10

If you happen to run your trolling batteries down...motor wont start

I have my trolling batteries separate from my starting battery. What I meant was using a trolling style battery for my starting battery so I could longer life on my live well pumps and depth finders.


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Mine is dual purpose.

Originally Posted by mgrimm

I'm sure there is a good reason for not using a trolling battery for a starting battery, can someone tell why? The reason I ask is I have my electronics and live well hooked to my starting battery and I have trouble with it running down. I have my trolling batteries separate.


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Sounds to me like you need a bigger starting battery.......My starting battery has three fish finders hooked to it...live well aerator, and a air pump and I can run all that all day and never run my starting battery down....My 90 four stroke always starts right up. I do have a timer on my live well tho.....it cycles 3 minutes on 7 minutes off. The air pump I run constant.

Originally Posted by "G"

Sounds to me like you need a bigger starting battery.......My starting battery has three fish finders hooked to it...live well aerator, and a air pump and I can run all that all day and never run my starting battery down....My 90 four stroke always starts right up. I do have a timer on my live well tho.....it cycles 3 minutes on 7 minutes off. The air pump I run constant.

I know my starting battery is not in the best of shape it has fully discharged on me twice and sit for a period of time before I knew it. That is why I was looking to go to a deep cycle trolling battery for my starting battery.


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It depends on your outboard. Some that have a lot of internal electronics and an alternator take a big cranking battery to fire them up. Smaller or older outboards with stators general fire up even on weak batteries because they start generating their own power as soon as they start spinning.

Look to see what the CCA requirement is for your outboard and shop for that. Higher RC will give you more time to run electronics, but you have to meet or exceed the CCA minimum.

Be sure you charge your battery regularly between trips, and make sure your outboard charging system is working.

To answer your question, yes I run a deep cycle battery to start my OB. Like you starting battery would run down during a day of fishing, the problem started once I installed my 2 HDS units and the LSS to my boat. Same as you livewell, bilge pumps plus lights all run on the starting battery. Honestly I don't know what the original battery was but I replaced it with a 29 series deep cycle battery. It's been hooked up that way for 4 or 5 years I guess and I've not had any problems. FWIW I used to have a 40 hp 2 stroke but I replaced it last year with a 60 hp 4 stroke so they aren't particularly big motors.
Also I want to mention that at the same time I made the battery switch I also added an onboard charger.
I think the onboard charger would have helped with the smaller cranking battery but since the HDS units draw more power than my old unit I decided to just replace the battery.
No matter what you do, if you don't have an onboard charger that would be the 1st thing I would do.