For those of us that fish late at night in the dark, a good boat light can be worth its weight in gold. Night time boat lighting is one of those things that is better to have and not need than to need and not have.
If you are looking for boat lighting and electrical power options there are a lot of things on the market available to use. Your lighting options are better if you can take advantage of standard 110 volt lights. Today’s power inverters that convert 12 Volt battery DC power to AC power allow you to take advantage of standard household and utility lights. There are a lot of different approaches for tapping a boat’s trolling motor batteries to obtain a power source. Trolling motor batteries are a good source of power but if you don’t want to drain your trolling motor batteries another good source of power is a portable battery pack. I use a Black and Decker Start It Jump Starter that provides a standard 12volt DC outlet. Plug a small 100 Watt power Inverter into the power pack’s 12V DC outlet and you’ve now got standard household current available and can run just about any light fixture you want to use.
The trick to using portable battery power is to not use high wattage lights or electrical equipment. For battery life less wattage is better. For lighting options the greatest thing going is the new low wattage florescent bulbs. You can get the illumination equivalent of a normal 100 Watt light bulb from one of today’s 20 watt florescent bulbs and that bulb will give you several hours of run time on your battery pack. Early and late in the year when the bugs are not bad I run a 23 watt bright white florescent bulb that puts out the equivalent of a 100 watt bulb. It lights up the whole boat and out about 6′ all around the boat. When the bugs are bad in the heat of the summer I run a low wattage amber bug light that still gives me plenty of light but keeps the bugs down to a minimum. By using the low wattage bulbs you can run lights off and on all night if you want and have power to spare.
One of the best overall night lighting options for your fishing boat is a standard clamp-on utility light. They are inexpensive, can be moved quickly and easily, and can be stowed in any small boat compartment. They accept any standard size light bulb so they give you plenty of flexibility for lighting. When looking for utility lights try to find one with the longest cord possible and be sure to get the aluminum shade that screw on the light base, this shade helps to provide a bright and focused light. On my pontoon boat I run two utility lights and they just clamp right on the bimini top and light up the whole pontoon from bow to stern. It only takes a few seconds to move them around if I need more light for any reason.
In order to provide the best light coverage for my fishing boat I made a 6 1/2′ light pole that fits in the front casting platform seat socket. I just mounted a standard outdoor light receptacle on a 6 ½ foot piece of PVC pipe. The PVC fits into an extra seat base that I had available so it fits right into the seat socket on the casting platform.
I wired the light socket using a cheap 15’ extension cord that I snipped off and wired into the outdoor light receptacle. The pole light is rigged up so that from my fishing seat I can just reach out and snap it on. When fishing for flatheads, after all the rods are rigged, baited and in the water I will usually turn the light off but snap it back on as soon as I detect a bite. When drift fishing for channels I leave the light on all the time. When drifting I use the light to watch my rods, the locator and and GPS so I can keep track of drift lines, drift speed, and other boats that may be out.
Once you have AC power in your boat there are several other things that you can use to make fishing easier.
#1: You can now run a standard 110 volt AC aquarium air pump. Plug in the air pump and run the air hose into the live bait bucket with an airstone attached. This type of air pump is whisper quiet and it keeps your bait alive and perky.
#2: You can run an electric knife off the power inverter and it makes cleaning fish or cutting up bait a breeze.
#3: Life doesn’t get any better than this – you can power a small TV and actually watch some of the Twins games while out chasing catfish in the dark.
#4: The portable Power Pack will provide you backup battery power for those emergency situations. More than once I have turned my motor crank late at night and had the battery groan at me and fail to start the motor. The power pack is handy to have available when this situation comes up.
#5: If you rig up a light pole it will help you out coming and going. Here is a picture of the light pole – you can see how it lights up the boat. It is really nice when it is time to pull the boat out late at night at the boat launch. Just swing it around so it throws the most light on the bow of the boat and on the trailer winch. It really helps speed up getting the boat out of the water after a long night of fishing.
Good Fishing!!