THF'ers,

Putting this in the Migratory Bird section hoping some fellow duck hunters will have some advice.

I have 75hp 2 stroke Mercury optimax on my duck boat. I hunt up North and sometimes in very cold weather on big water. I am looking to replace my cranking battery and am wondering if anyone has any input. It seems like the CCA ratings are going to be the most important but I have heard mixed reviews on the "top of the line" optima batteries.

My opinion is all batteries will last you about 2-3 years...buy Everstart or Stowaways that you can get exchanged easily at WalMart or Academy. Then when you do have a bad battery it doesn't hurt as much as a $200 battery will.

there is always a Wally World fairly close,and open 24 hrs.
i prefer the sealed AGM batteries cause you never have to worry about adding water.they charge faster and hold a charge longer.
if all you are doing is cranking(no accessories drawing power) i would just go the Wally World route!

I only run the Blue Top Optima Battery

The only electronics the cranking battery would run would be the nav lights (just standard stuff)and depth finder. I run spotlights off a deep cycle trolling battery.

I run my lights and everything off the Cranking Battery just like my Pickup runs everything off the Cranking Battery.

This will be the 8th year for mine. I wish I would have purchased two when they were alot cheaper. Great Battery!!!!!!

Gary I know a guy that can pick up those Optimas CHEAP. Not sure on the blue tops, but I know he can get red and yellows for like $70 I think it was. Maybe even cheaper.

This probably isn't totally relevant to the discussion but I'll share anyway.

On my bass boat, I used the trolling motor HEAVILY and I got tired of buying a new battery every 10 months or so. Guys that I knew that fished more than me were going through trolling batteries twice a year.

I finally put an Optima behind the trolling motor. It cost nearly 3 times the going rate of a standard battery... not quite but almost. When I sold the boat, the battery was about 4 times older than the batteries I was replacing every 10 months and still going strong.

But that's not why I tell the story. The problem with a trolling motor battery is you get peak performance (more speed / more torque for windy days) at the beginning of the day and then it slopes off throughout the day. As the battery gets older, your peak performance is not what it once was, and the sloping off to "empty" effect is faster. So you didn't really get 10-12 months of great performance, you got something like 3 months of great performance, 3 months of ok performance but you didn't really notice it yet, and then a slow slide into worthlessness.

With the Optima battery I bought, I can't say for sure it was going as strong as the day I bought it when I got rid of it, but I hadn't noticed any large performance degradation yet.

So yeah, they're more expensive, but they seem to hold their peak performance longer and outlast the cheaper batteries even after you factor in the increased cost.