Lights, batteries and such....

Ok, so we're talking about rigging a deck and lighting to the boat.....We're worried a little bit though batteries. For those of you that bowfish after sunset, how do you keep the lights running? Just really good marine batteries? Do you have some sort of inverter or charger hooked up? What's the scoop?

 

Christine and Kendal have a generator on their pontoon. I think that would be pretty much Standard Equipment for lights.

 

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking as well.

 

What size boat?

You can either get 12 volt lights and run off of deep cycle batteries

Or get 120 volt lights (like found in parking lots or just halogen worklamps) and run them off a generator


Depends on what you are going after? Lookin for bigheads still? Genny is a NO go, you'll rarely see one.

If bigheads/silvers are the priority (keep in mind gar commons buffs etc can be spotted this way as well, I reccomend getting one good battery, and a corded 12 volt spotlight. Take turns spotting and shooting, and get ready to shoot quick on the bigheads, they dont hang around in the beam of light.

I run both systems out of my boat, just depending on what my goal is for the night.

 

We use two Yamaha 2400 watt generators on our boat. We run the troller off two batteries that are also connected to the generators via a pair of 12 volt converters. That way we can run the troller all night long without running out of battery charge and the gennys also run the lights.

We have 10 500 watt halogen light fixtures on the boat. The 500 watt bulbs have been replace with 225 watt ultra bulbs. We can run the converters and all 10 lights at the same time without over taxing the gennys. (generally you don't want to pull more than 80% of your generator's output for extended periods of time)

The Yamahas are quiet and fairly light. They're pricey tho'. We used to use the cheapo Champion type generators but we fried three in a row and suddenly they didn't seem so cheap anymore.

Trevor is correct about the bigheads. If you're after them, use a spotlight and/or a hawglite on your bow.

We do use the gennys for jumping silvers but we're not trying to sneak up on them.

 

Another option is to use 120V lights run off batteries through inverters. My brother started out this way for night fishing. Problem is it takes a bunch of batteries. But you will never like the drone of generators after you try it.