I'm in the market for a new trolling motor for my pond boat and am debating between 40lbs vs. 54lbs of thrust. Boat is an 11'3'' Sun Dolphin Pro 120 and I primarily fish a 40 acre lake. I'm looking at Motorguide Bulldog TM's. Is there much downside to 54lbs of thrust vs 40lbs in terms of battery life? Is 40lbs enough power for this boat? I would hate to run out of juice while fishing because of the bigger TM. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Even though 54# is 35% more than 40# in thrust, you will not get 35% more maximum speed, maybe get 10% to 15% more speed with 35% more battery drain using 54#. Also your maximum speed will be considerably less as you get within 20% of empty. A deep cycle battery that weighs about 50# (group 27)will last maybe 2 hours to dead at maximum continuous speed with the 54# thrust, only maybe 1.2 hr at freezing temps. Not good to drain a lead battery down near empty or to leave it sitting at less than full charge for more than a few hours.

PM

The 40# would be fine but I have found over the years I keep going bigger with my TM and am happy every time I do.

Get bigger battery's and/or carry more than 1 which I usually do when I fish alone and can stand to have the extra weight.

I have a 55lb on my Bass Hunter EX and its great.

The thing with draining your battery is this, top speed does the damage. It drains the battery way faster than lower speeds. So get the 54 and dont run it on max unless you need to and you will be fine.

I like the extra speed when I need to get to a boil, get out of the way of bad weather coming or a dumb boater who thinks hes king of the lake bcs he has a 200hp motor and I have a 10 foot plastic boat ha ha.

With the 55 and just me in the boat I can get close to 5mph. Thats 1.5mph faster than my 40 did.

In summary, if you get the smaller motor, when it goes bad in a few year, you will get the bigger one and wonder why you were not running a bigger one the last few years.

I ended up getting the 40lb and am really happy with it!

Wanna race?

Do you usually fish alone?

Up to around 8 hp gas motor can be used for speed or power considerations.

PM