Leaderboard

You’ll be fine, consider the fact that all new trolling motors come with a transducer literally mounted on the head of the trolling motor. The interference is caused by electrical pulses…for example by having your trolling motor on the same battery, you will see the draw of the trolling motor on your electronics. No different than when people hook their electronics to their boats terminal bus, your lights livewells etc will project interference. although gypsy says he doesn’t see it, he may not even know what he’s looking for, or have electronics sensitive enough that it’s noticeable. I can assure you, there’s a very noted difference between high end electronics that are installed correctly vs not. I’ll tell you right now, you won’t find a single guy that’s running $10,000+ worth of electronics on their boat with the electronics hooked to their trolling motor battery.

You don’t want to run your electronics with your trolling motor battery you are going to experience massive interference effectively wasting the investment you make in your electronics.

You can run the fish finder off either battery, it draws hardly any power... but id run it off the tractor battery if it were me. I'd keep the tractor battery for this year and buy a 24 or 27 for the TM.. I go all day on a 24, but I rarely go out for 2 days without charging so you might justify the extra capacity of the 27 ( keepnin mind the extra weight). A solar panel will get you a bit of charge but not much ( pretty much an hour on solar will give you maybe 5 minutes of TM) Any chance you can hook to a generator on your trip to charge the battery in the evening? Most generators have a 12v circuit. Worst case ontario if the battery for the gas engine goes flat you still have the pull start.

When you are using it does it come loose? the clamps always needed checking on my boats with wood. So i don’t think that will solve your problem. Put a note on the motor to keep the clamps tight. a python adjustable cable lock is a quick way to make sure your motor doesn’t go to bottom.

not a cat

I'm no expert by any means....but cats (big and small) walk on their pads, with their claws retracted. They only extend their claws to climb or capture. Bears, however, can't retract their claws. I suspect that might be a young bear.