Super User burleytog Posted January 28, 2007 Super User Posted January 28, 2007 My friend and I decided to hit the water today. Nice warm day, albeit a bit on the windy side. But def. a great Jan. day to at least wet a line. Decided to take his boat as the lights on my trailer have been on the fritz. Unload, lower the TM, no power. Yep, battery dead. Had been on the charger for a good while. About 3 years old, so it's gone. Switch the TM over to the cranking battery and decide to fish for at least a while. Had to break through 1/2" ice to get out into the main body of the lake. Fished the sunny bank for a while with little success. The wind made it quite difficult to fish as slowly as we needed to. Headed up the lake just a bit, both main forks were covered in 3/4-1" of ice with some open water along the edges. Water temp was hanging around 37*. Wind started picking up to the point of almost creating whitecaps. Figured we'd better head in. At which point the cranking battery died. :'( Electric only lake, but we tried the gas motor. Not enough juice to turn it over. So we broke out the paddles and started paddling into the wind. 30 minutes later we made it to the somewhat sheltered shore. Where we found 1" ice from the bank out 20 yards. Grabbed a dead tree and used it as a push pole. One on the stern with the pole, the other on the bow with a paddle breaking ice. That lasted about 20 minutes and we moved about 50 yards. At that pace we might have made it back to the launch by 9PM (I had to be at work by 7). We gathered all of our gear, tied the boat up, and headed back to the truck. Went from there to Wal Mart, bought a new battery (hoping it had a good charge), came back and put the batt in the boat. Had just enough power to run the TM for 45 seconds. Just a surface charge. Sat there for a bit considering our options. Thought about driving the 20 minutes to my place to get one of my batteries, but then it dawned on me. Try the new battery as a cranking battery. It didn't have enough juice to run the TM, but it had enough to start the motor. Took a while to warm up and then we were off to the ramp. Took us a total of 2.5 hours to get back after the battery died. Crap happens. And the year can only get better. Quote
craigaria Posted January 28, 2007 Posted January 28, 2007 Been there before and I feel your pain... I was at Lake Bennett and the boat ramp there is at one end of the lake. It was in the high 30's that day and the wind was around 25-30 mph. we let the wind blow us down the lake all the way to the very back. Finally we decided to head back to the ramp and guess what??? Dead battery > We had a paddle, but it was useless trying to go into the wind. There was no one else there fishing to help either. We ended up paddleing to shore, and had to pull the boat with a rope all the way back to the boat ramp. Cold, wet and tired, we limped back home. Next trip we had 2 new batteries, and I have always taken a spare battery since. Quote
Super User KU_Bassmaster. Posted January 28, 2007 Super User Posted January 28, 2007 Seems like there is always that "one" trip every year. Looks like you got yours out of the way safely. Quote
Super User T-rig Posted January 28, 2007 Super User Posted January 28, 2007 Let's just hope there won't be another day like that one! Quote
Guest avid Posted January 28, 2007 Posted January 28, 2007 That's why I like a canoe, seriously, I miss out on alot of big water fishing, but life is soooooooooooooo much simpler. good luck and have fun avid Quote
Super User burleytog Posted January 28, 2007 Author Super User Posted January 28, 2007 Seems like there is always that "one" trip every year. Looks like you got yours out of the way safely. Luckily I didn't have 'that' trip last year (came close once) and it something that won't happen again. Time to find room in my boat for a spare battery. Quote
Super User burleytog Posted January 28, 2007 Author Super User Posted January 28, 2007 That's why I like a canoe, seriously, I miss out on alot of big water fishing, but life is soooooooooooooo much simpler. good luck and have fun avid I do enjoy floating the river in my Old Town, but when it comes to lakes, I like to fish standing up. And while my Discovery is quite stable, it ain't quite that stable. Quote
Super User roadwarrior Posted January 28, 2007 Super User Posted January 28, 2007 That is a tough story. Things can only get better. Quote
Super User Alpster Posted January 28, 2007 Super User Posted January 28, 2007 This is comming from a guy who grew up in the South and HATES cold weather. Next time , when you have to break the ice with a hammer to get the boat in the water, that's a sign of trouble. LOL Just kidding! Glad you didn't lose anything more than time. Ronnie Quote
TheBeast Posted January 28, 2007 Posted January 28, 2007 Being the friend that Burley is reffering to I can gaurantee that we will have 2 new trolling batteries on the boat from now on, the one I bought yeaterday and another I will get this week. Thank god for the MinnKota all terrain breaking through the initial ice heading in it took quite a beating. Am really looking forward to the trip to Georgia at the end of April. And as we realized yesterday the can only get better from here. Quote
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