nightstalking lights?

[Winchester]

I bought a couple clamp work lights recently and some 12v bulbs for them. I'm going to try some night stalking. I was wondering how many of these lights can be ran off of one battery and how many hours you can expect to get from a typical deep cycle battery?

[rango]

when i was using the clamp ons, wed run two lights off one battery 6 hours with no problem in cold weather. somtimes at night we run 2 and up to 3 qbeams on one battery with no problem for up to 6 hours, which is usually about as long as we nightstalk in cold weather.

[Winchester]

thanks rango

[threegals]

ditto on Rango's message. I always burn out before my batteries. I now even use a regular battery and not the deep cycle and get enough juice to handle my couple to three hours of fishing. I use a long slow charge on mine.

[FalconSmitty]

I use a small lawn tractor battery for each q beam. 6-7 hours

[FishnLine]

I use a small lawn tractor battery for each q beam. 6-7 hours

Really!!! I never thought of using one of these. I'm kinda like you, my boats small and those batteries would be ideal for my boat.

[rango]

yeah, ive also heard of some folks using the small batts. we used to do all nighters, seldom ever leaving the water before it had got so light the lights was no longer effective. i doubt i could last all night now and 4-6 hours on our night stalks is usually about all i do. we do a lot of our nightstalking through the week and the guys i fish with usually have to come in around midnight so they can get some rest before work. some nights we will use up to three qbeams on one battery and have no problem in the 4 or 5 hours we are out. if i had a small boat id seriously try one of the smaller batteries to see if it filled my need before going with the heavier, more expensive deep cycles.

[BIGDUX]

Are the submersible lights more or less effective?

[rango]

Are the submersible lights more or less effective?

i like the submersible because of the ease of storage. i can put six of em in a small ammo style storage box. the floaters is just as good, but with the styrofoam collar, present more of a problem for storing as many as i need. with a full crew we usualy put out 4-6 lights, so everyone will have a light and the qbeams are about as compact as i have found.

[DeepThoughts]

I was very interested in the whole gambit of what different lights, batteries and tactics everyone uses for night stalking. So I thought I would add some info about what we use. Most of our ideas actually started with what Rango has posted in the past (Thanks Rango:D ). We fish from a pretty large pontoon and have plenty of room, but light is still most important. The qbeams are the deal for the submersible light and store extremely well, I don't think theres anything like "seeing" a big ole slab fight its way to the top through the lights. We were thinking of making a portable setup, so we could fish two spots and I have purchased a 3 AAbattery powered green submersible that I need to try soon. We fish very clear water. Painted tips on the 5ft ugly sticks are great, and I have used a bottle of white-out that worked pretty well, also easy to remove if I wanted to, but on the 10ft poles, I bought some of the stick on chem lights from the dollar store and taping those bracelets on works great too. As for the deck lighting, we use a couple of Tiki torches on the bamboo poles they came with, which are 30 feet away from the exploding part of the boat Anyway, like I said most of those ideas are from Rango and we certainly appreciate all the ideas that we get from the "pros."

We have also added jug fishing to the night stalk and have been working on crappie jugs, but have only caught cats so far. We use the chem light bracelets like an antennae in the pool noodle for watching the "show"