Will an electric downrigger pulling a 12 pound ball drain my 1 battery over the course of a day? I would think the battery should be recharged enough while trolling with a 15 horse Yami, but I am not sure.

Do you have a main motor? Is it a 4 stroke? If so, you can idle your main motor for a while if you are worried, as they don't load up. Most 4 strokes have a heavy duty alternator and can take care of your issue.

Trolled for 9 hours yesterday with stand alone batteries running the riggers and pot puller, and they had no issue. The batteries were not tied into the motor's electrical system, so they did not get recharge. We also didn't pull each rigger 50 times from 150 feet. The amount of use might be an issue.

Main motor? Yep.......that is the main motor! 1 motor and 1 battery. It is a 4 stroke.

I do have an old gell cell battery to take along just in case, but the sucker weighs 100 pounds so I'd rather not take it. That's it.........hey wife, you can't go fishin cause I'm taking a backup battery. Naaaa, that wouldn't be any fun.

Depends on how many amps the alternator is on your 4 stroke, but most likely it shouldn't be an issue. Did you check with a shop?

I have found that I can run two penn electrics for about 10 hours of fishing with out charging the battery at all. I normally wouldn't do that but I have a few times and was suprised how little power these dr's really use (ditto on the EZ-Pull pot pullers.)

My honda 8 puts out 6 amps and that is definitly enough to run downriggers, electronics, lights and Car stereo with amplifier all at the same time.

Your pretty much bullet proof any way since you can always pull start the Yami.

Doh.......Now why didn't I think of THAT. I did notice a while back the instructions on the motor for a manual start and will have to look it over again. The boat, motor, rigger I just installed, and Salt are fairly new to me. Look out Ebay on Friday, cause here I come.

Sounds like you should be fine,like mentioned above you can always pull start your power source if need be.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Just out of curiosity, how many years have you been stirring your coffee with pencil lead, Bernie?

Since you have a battery I assume you have electric start which means a rectifier. I have a Suzuki 9.9 kicker and run fish/depth finder, gps, running lights, black box (no I don't know if it helps with fishing) and two downriggers with no battery loss while trolling.

not that it matters, but that 6 amp output is probably at full throttle. considerably less at trolling speeds.

I'm sure your right gw, but it still puts out enough at idle to run all that stuff w/o draining the batt. Even at full throttle it will only put out what the battery needs.

Bucket's got a depthfinder that has the battery voltage as a display, so you can run 'em as hard as you want to as long as the voltage rebounds well.

"Honey, I need to buy a new depthfinder that reads voltage so we'll get off the water safely".............No chick is gonna turn down that logic!

Lots of good info here. Thanks ALL.

KnowFish, The finder that came with the boat does have a meter on it which raises a question I have thought about before. I didn't ask because I didn't think anybody could answer, but I have been wrong before so here goes. How many volts remaining in a battery does it take to crank a Yami 15Horse 4stroke?

None, if you use the pull cord!

Bucket,
Wow - You always come thru with good info that really point out the depth of your knowledge and experience.

I wouldn't recommend this at all.

Thanks Chuck!

Went out Friday morning at Ebay. Battery held up fine all morning.

First time with my boat in salt. First time using a Cannon Mag5. $hit went wrong about 45 minutes after launching. First time pulling up the ball I didn't have the clutch tight enough so the rigger was spinning and I freaked out. Pushing the button up and down and nothing happening (registering in my head). Apparently I cranked the clutch tighter then the ball was flying up. The Mag5 is FAST. It's at about 10 feet left and I can't stop the thing. I grab the spool and the fuse blows. Lucky for me I brought extras.

Played with the rigger some more and became comfortable with it. Should have done that first. There is a reason they call Cannon's short stop, because they stop 1 to 3 inches from blasting the pulley before shutting down.

Then the fishfinder quite working. Continued fishing. 140 feet of cable out really pulls my boat to one side. I like!

Caught a dog fish, then had a good take that didn't stick, then landed a 10 pound king.

Fixed fish finder at home, cleaned prongs and lubed with vaseline.

Why not?

Ya why not? I run my vhf, sounder, gps, down riggers, stereo all off of one battery that is charged by my 8hp honda kicker. Never had a problem with the battery running down. All other functions run of the main battery that is used to start the main outboard. I have trolled most of a day using the main so the kicker was not charging the battery and the riggers ran fine all day.