First trip up the river
The 17 footer (Smoker Craft Alaskan) went into the river today. We launched and trolled out to the mouth of the river, where we had to turn around, because the anchored fishing boats, had the path to the Bay completely blocked. (Who gives them the right to do that?)
We then trolled back to the launch, where the Walleye restrictions are still in effect until April 26th. On that run my partner had a couple of good hit’s but had trouble keeping them hooked. We’re guesssing they were Pike. The Alaskan ran well and we ran her all the way up to our dock and tied her in. I’m thinking the battery croaked over the winter, because I had to use the trolling battery to get it started. The main battery just doesn’t seem to want to charge up. Oh well, you know what they say, “a boat is just a hole in the water, that you throw money into”. (The bigger the boat, the more money) 
April 21st, 2008 at 8:31 am
My father-in-law had some problems with a deep cycle battery that he had. It was only a year old and it gave up the ghost. Evidently, you’re supposed to keep them on a trickle charger when not in use - like over the winter months. Might be the issue with the battery on the Alaskan….
April 21st, 2008 at 10:05 am
I have all the batteries in the garage over the winter, and try to charge them once a month using the 2 amp setting on the charger. I don’t know, I think this one just gave up the ghost.
I’ve been considering one of those maintenance chargers, that you can hook up a series of batteries to, and they just keep the lot of them a peak charge.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I have heard that you can bring batteries back from the dead by trickle charging them with some in-line resistance. Like hooking the negative from the charger to the negative terminal, but hooking up a 12v light or something in between the positive of the battery and the positive of the charger…. but maybe that works as often as the hard drive in the freezer trick….
April 21st, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I put on an old “dumb” charger today, one of the ones that will boil the water out of the battery if you leave it on to long. I left it on until I figured it was boiling pretty good and then let it cool down. Later when I tried it seemed to have taken a charge, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.