I’m sure this has been covered extensively, but…
When it comes to my trolling motor batteries what is the best route?
Leave em in the boat hooked up and have the charger plugged in all winter.
Take them out and store indoors where it’s warm.
I’ve heard of people leaving the on-board charger plugged in all winter, for some reason this makes me a little nervous. It would be at the cabin so it can only be checked on about monthly.
What do you guys do?
I yank them and put them in the basement for the winter. I put a 2×10 down and put all 3 of them on it. It’s kind of a pain to lift all 3 out and drag them down the stairs but I believe it helps. I’m with you on leaving the onboard charger on, sure it probably works and many people have done it but it just doesn’t feel right for me.
Who the **** knows. They all seem to work. I brought my trolling batts in for the winter like I have for 15 years. I left my starting battery in to see how it works.
I hear ya Mike, I’ll probably just bring em in and trickle charge them when I’m up there.
Mine stay in the boat with the charger plugged in all winter. If something happens and it burns down my storage barn, I’m insured. I’ve done it that way for 15 years on 4 different boats and never had a problem.
Been through this with Interstate engineers. Regardless of leave them or pull them, make sure they are 100% charged up. Needing to set on wood for the winter is a myth.
Most quality on board chargers will drop down to a mAh which is very close to the dissipation rate of power from the battery
I for one have no access to my boat when stored for the winter so maintenance charging is not an option. My starting batt was full when I stored it last week. We’ll see how it looks next time I check in April.
There’s only one good reason to pull batteries (besides making the owner feel better) and that’s because it darn near forces the owner to clean the terminals. 
There’s only one good reason to pull batteries (besides making the owner feel better) and that’s because it darn near forces the owner to clean the terminals.
Yea but we don’t all have catfish slime on our batts like you do!
Not to mention the drool from people pulling in huge sturgeon. Your boat must be a mess! lol
charge all batteries up leave them in the boat unhook the terminals and will see them in the spring been doing for many years never a problem.
I leave mine in the boat with on board charger plugged in.
FYI, if you have a radio in the boat and it has “memory”
to save the radio stations for you,
it needs to be disconnected(1 month is too long) if not using a charger.
This was killing batteries until I figured that this
was the culprit.
Batteries were only lasting me a couple of years
and this more than doubled when I started powering down both hot leads to the radio.
I have left the batteries in boat for the last five years. Charged them 100% and unhook the power lead just incase a rodent would get in and chew on the wires it will not cause a short and start a fire. Ever start bat in the back and AVG in the front no problems with leaving them in all winter
ALeb
Needing to set on wood for the winter is a myth.
Fun fact on this myth of needing to isolate batteries from concrete. It’s actually true! Or rather was true at one time.
Battery cases used to be made from highly vulcanized rubber that was hard like today’s plastic. Other than glass, it was the only material they had back in the pre-plastic days that resisted battery acid.
The problem was that rubber became slightly porous and when kept on top of cool concrete it would cause a slight acidic condensation to form that would stain the concrete.
All this ended with the advent of modern plastics, so by the 1960s no one was using batteries where this mattered anymore. But old habits die hard.
Grouse
I pull the batteries out of the boat and camper, set them on wood in the unheated garage, hook them up in a series and occasionally thru out the winter put one of them trickle charges on them.
Which ever you do make sure you check the water levels. The plates (at minimum) must be covered with distilled water if they are exposed.
yep!!!!!!!good point.
This legend is historically based in fact.
The first lead-acid batteries consisted of glass cells that were enclosed in tar-lined wooden boxes, a damp concrete floor could cause the wood to swell, breaking the glass inside.
The Edison cell (i.e. the nickel-iron battery) that preceded the rubber-cased battery was encased in steel. Those that weren’t isolated in crates would discharge into concrete quite easily.
Later battery cases used primitive hardened rubber, which was somewhat porous and could contain lots of carbon. A moist concrete floor combined with the carbon in the battery cases would create electrical current between the cells and discharge them.
Modern batteries have hard plastic shells and concrete is generally an excellent surface on which to place a battery bank. The electrolyte in a battery sitting on an extremely cold floor with very hot air around it could stratify, causing damage from sulfation; concrete provides good thermal mass to buffer any temporarily extreme temperatures in the battery compartment.
You don’t want to know why I would ever need to know all this. Just some more, once thought useless, factoids from another life.
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