Trolling with twins

C

CDory23

New member
I have twin yamaha 40's on my 22 and I do a lot of trolling usually between 1.6mph-3mph depending on what I"m fishing for. My general technique is to shut one engine down at a time and rotate them to keep the hours and wear/tear the same. I get annoyed by constantly having to spend time adjusting the throttle to get to that perfect speed I want. It takes a lot of time away from fishing.

I found a product called Trollmaster which looks like it would work great, but its hard to justify buying two of them so I can troll with each motor. I'm just wondering if anybody else has come up with a solution to this problem. The regular buyer for this prouduct would be a setup with a main and a kicker thats used for trolling. I don't really want to just buy one and put all of the trolling hours on just one motor.

Any solutions and/or different products I could look into?

http://www.trollmasters.com/
 
Hi!

Trollmasters are cool. I haven't dealt with the issue you are faced with, however I don't believe that you can set up one trollmaster for two engines, even if you are only using one at a time. The company may make a unit that is just for that purpose.

I understand the desire to keep your engine hours similar, and to have the ability to fine-tune RPMs on your trolling motor, but I think you have to decide whether you want to have similar hours on the engines, or save some $$ to make trolling more fun.

I've heard the argument that you will increase wear and reduce the longevity of your engines if you are frequently running one and switching between them during the day. The idea is that you are using your starter more than necessary, and running the engine to temp, then letting it cool, and starting it back up repeatedly during a day. So the advice I always got was to split them up and run on one for a full day, or for as long as you are running with no extra shut down/start up just to keep engine time similar.

It's entirely possible that someone who does solid marine wiring could then rig a setup that would allow you to switch the control from one motor to the other, saving you the need to buy two trollmasters, HOWEVER, you will probably find that once you pay a marine electrician to fabricate this circuitry, you'll have exceeded the cost of a second trollmaster.

To me, that's part of the downside of having twins. You need to buy a lot of things in pairs, including accessories and things to make life easier.
 
From some quick reading on the installation on the Honda 20 (biggest motor I saw in the guide), and googling the servo motor (common type). I don't see any reason you cannot use a single control unit, with two servo motors. You will have to build a switching system--manual probably best--A double throw, 3 pole switch will allow selection of the correct servo for that outboard you are currently using. The servos alone are in the $15 to $20 range, not sure about the other parts, but not rocket science. A 3 to 4 pole switch is in the $20 to $30 range. I would guess for less than $100 you can rig the setup with one controller, and two servo's. Give them a call and ask.
 
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