GPH While Trolling

[RMB]

I took my new to me boat out to the lake yesterday. Spent the majority of the day trolling. Boat is a 15' Smoker Craft with a 50 HP Force by Mercury (1998). The wind was fairly stiff, and the motor has a trolling plate. Most of the time we were running 1300 - 1800 RPM to fight the wind and maintain 1.5 MPH - 2.0 MPH.

I ended up burning a little less than 1 GPH which seems pretty high. My last long trip with my 14' Lund (with 9.9 HP Honda) I don't think I used 10 gallons all week, and I easily did 20 hours. Is 1 GPH less efficient than I should expect? I'm going to try without the trolling plate next time and see if running a lower RPM makes much of a difference.

 

[Ithica DB]

Re: GPH While Trolling

You spelled out two things Honda is a 4 stroke and a force is a 2 stroke big difference. The Second is if you are fighting wind trolling plate prob. not needed. I also have heard that Honda has a trolling mode for gas savings but don't quote me on that one.

Not to mention the Hp diff.

 

[crablegs]

Re: GPH While Trolling

Also force motors arent good on gas at all!

 

[notop]

Re: GPH While Trolling

Someone told me that the rule of thumb for 2-strokes was that WOT GPH = Horsepower divided by ten. So your 50-horse should gulp about 5 gallons per hour at WOT which I'm guessing is somewhere between 5000-5500 RPM. So at 1500 RPM, one could reasonably assume you would be using up to maybe 1.4 GPH (1500RPM divided by 5250 RPM, times 5 GPH). The fact that you're getting just under 1 GPH is cause for great celebration! Only way to improve it is to get a kicker.