Replaced one of ours at the beginning of this season, the sticker said the battery was from '07, so that's 6 years on a trolling battery.

I love wal mart batteries.

Cass, One thing that has not been mentioned is the charger. Just because the charger shows green does not the batteries are fully charged. Get a hydrometer and test water in battery when charger shows all green or take to any auto parts house and let them check. Bad/dirty connections can & will affect chargers on/off condition. IMO the batteries should not be bad in 2 years if they have been kept in a fully charged condition.

I have been getting right at 4 years on average on my wally world batteries. I just charge them up when i get back from the lake and plug it in for a few hours once a week to top off. I will also top them off the night before i know i am going out. But always try to keep them fully charged no matter what. So far wally world batteries have been good to me.

Some of above responses are from boaters with 'digital' trolling motors and their battery time experiences are mostly unrelated.

5.5 + hours day is likely a normal full (50% SOC )discharge on your batteries running a older technology type of trolling motor.
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2.5 per week X 2 years = ~250 full charge/discharge cycles with some likely occasional over discharges.

Sounds like typical near end of battery life especially for use on a non-digital 5 speed motor needing higher voltages to run at speed.

Running lower speeds such as speed 2 or 3 is not necessarily good use of a battery for that trolling motor. That Unused power below speed 5 is still drawn and dissipated as wasted heat in trolling motor lower coils . Tends to cause you to stay longer and more often on trolling motor and thus more quickly over- deplete available batteries.

Possible solutions:

Replace with 'digital' TM
Replace with 36V TM
Larger (RC minutes) new batteries
Troll fewer hours in a smaller boat

Thanks for all of the info fellas. Much appreciated!