I'm trying to decide if having electric downriggers is worth the hassles I'm running into.

I have a 1992 17' Arima Sea Chaser with a 90 HP Johnson, a 15 HP kicker and a single battery system. If you know this boat, you know the stern is pretty tight. On the starboard side I have the battery and the oil injection tank for the Johnseon. They are a very tight fit. On the port side is the fuel tank for the kicker.

If I install electric downriggers it looks like I will need to also convert to a 2 battery set-up, which will mean figuring out a new place to put the oil injection tank, installing a second battery and all the associated switches. Then I'll need to install harnesses for the downriggers. I believe I will also need to install some sort of fuse or circuit breaker in the line for the downriggers in case one of them snags up or something similar.

While I'm fairly certain I can do the work, I'm also wondering if it is worth the hassle. So far I haven't figured out where I can put the oil injection tank and it looks like I will need to order harnesses for the downriggers from Cannon since no one locally carries them.

I'm kicking around the idea of just taking an external deep cycle battery with me on each trip and hooking the downriggers up to it and just charging it the night before with my home charger. It would save the hassle of converting to a two battery system but I'm not really sure how long the battery would last running 2 downriggers all day. Does anyone have any experience with something like this?


Thanks!