Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

[Melvin Hatcher]

I would like to add a fish finder to work with my bow mounted 24 volt riptide trolling motor.<br />Can I use without problems one of the trolling motor's batteries for power for the fish finder, or do I need to run wires from the starting battery to power the fish finder?<br /><br />Regards,

 

[Rudy Brown]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

I have mine hooked to the trolling battery.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

Mine too. No problems with interference.

 

[Melvin Hatcher]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

Rudy Brown and Upinsmoke,<br /><br />Thank y'all for your reply.<br />Do you have pictures of how they are wired, or can you 'splain how y'all hooked them up?<br /><br />Regards,

 

[Silvertip]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

You have a 24V system (two 12V batteries in series) so you can simple connect the HOT and GND wires to either battery. DO NOT connect the wires across both batteries. Pick one or the other. To avoid interference, connect the locator to the battery that has the negative lead from your trolling motor. This battery is less likely to result in any interference since the locator and motor will have the same ground point where it would not if connected to the battery with the positive cable from the trolling motor.

 

[Melvin Hatcher]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

On another forum, I was advised to use power from the starting battery.<br />My thought was to use my 12/24 volt three prong trolling plug for a source for twelve volts. I sure hate to try snaking wire from the starting battery, which is located at the rear of the boat, all the way to the bow.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

A battery is a battery. Your electronics will work just fine off one of the trolling motor batteries.

 

[Rudy Brown]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

Yep, I have mine wired like Upinsmoke says. No pics though. Only prob with mine is I pinched the transducer cable once or twice in the bow mount. After I fixed it, I decided not to do that again.

 

[Rudy Brown]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

On your Minn Kota(mine is a All Terrain 55AT) I assume you have a 3 wire plug? A hot Yellow, hot Blue and a ground Black? I just pig-tailed into the yellow hot on mine and grounded it to the Black. I have a battery meter on the bow of my boat with a ground block which made it easy.

 

[Melvin Hatcher]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

I assume you have a 3 wire plug? A hot Yellow, hot Blue and a ground Black?

I have the three wire Minn Kota plug. My plan was to tap into it for a 12 volt power source for the fish finder. The folks over on the other forum said that my screen would go blank whenever I powered the trolling motor or that at a minimum I would get a lot of interference from the TM. <sigh>

 

[Silvertip]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

You seem to have a couple of different forums working on your non-issue! There is one way to find out if you'll have a problem - try it. You won't damage anything provided you don't accidentally feed the unit 24 volts instead of 12. If you tap into the plug-in, make darned sure you tap into the POSITIVE wire coming from the same battery as the GROUND wire. If you don't you will in fact feed the locator 24 Volts. Just do it my way, fuse the POSITIVE lead and forget about it. The closer to the battery you make your connections, the less likely it is there will be an interference problem.

 

[LubeDude]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

Mine is powered from the trolling batterys also, even when the batterys get drawn down the finder still works fine. Just remember to turn it off when you are done, that has been my only problem.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: Fish Finder on Trolling Motor

Here's how it's done. A picture is worth a thousand words.<br /><br />