Minn Kota Ulterra or Terrova? Something else?

[Misterj]

Just a thought here.....have you looked at the Rhodan trolling motors? I have an Ulterra on my RiverPro and HAD an Ulterra on my saltwater bay boat. The Riptide Ulterra had tons of problems so I switched to Rhodan. Night and day difference in terms of operation, spot lock, tiny remote control and overall reliability. Price is very comparable when taking into account that Rhodan comes with the quick release bracket standard, not optional as with MinnKota. The auto stow/deploy is nice with the Ulterra but I will sacrifice that for the reliability of the Rhodan. My boat dealer in Ft Myers FL has totally discontinued handling MinnKota due to the numerous owner complaints. Just my .02.

 

[LDUBS]

Sorry I can't help, but I am following.

I would love to add iPilot. That is my ultimate enhancement, but not in the budget for now.

Yeah, I'm dying to have autopilot for trolling. I'm sure you know how it is keeping that boat straight in a bit of a breeze when you are trying to set lines on the riggers or catching a fish.. I can either find myself a new wife/girlfriend that likes to troll and fish with me or I can buy the i-pilot. I have a feeling the minn kota will be a cheaper option.

Circling back around on this. So, I'm trolling along under power of my outboard. I want to use the TM to keep me in a straight line as Jethro says above. Originally I was thinking the TM would cycle on/off to maintain direction. In other words, TM comes on when the boat veers off the selected vector. But now that I think about it, the TM is probably going to be running 100% of the time. Is that how it works?

 

[Scott F]

Yes, that’s how it works. If it’s on spot lock, it only comes on to move you back to the spot. If you just want it to make corrections to your direction while trolling with the gas motor, use the hand held remote to just bump you.

 

[LDUBS]

Yes, that’s how it works. If it’s on spot lock, it only comes on to move you back to the spot. If you just want it to make corrections to your direction while trolling with the gas motor, use the hand held remote to just bump you.

Thanks ScottF. I still like the idea of using the autopilot, or whatever they call it, feature. Jogging back on course using the remote works too.

 

[jethro]

Just a thought here.....have you looked at the Rhodan trolling motors? I have an Ulterra on my RiverPro and HAD an Ulterra on my saltwater bay boat. The Riptide Ulterra had tons of problems so I switched to Rhodan. Night and day difference in terms of operation, spot lock, tiny remote control and overall reliability. Price is very comparable when taking into account that Rhodan comes with the quick release bracket standard, not optional as with MinnKota. The auto stow/deploy is nice with the Ulterra but I will sacrifice that for the reliability of the Rhodan. My boat dealer in Ft Myers FL has totally discontinued handling MinnKota due to the numerous owner complaints. Just my .02.

Well, from what I have read, the general consensus is that the first generation of Ulterra was problematic and the latest gen is quite good. The auto stow/deploy is actually quite important to me, I am a trolling fisherman who spends a lot of time in the water when it's well below 40 degrees air temps and I want to be able to operate my motor from my fully enclosed cockpit without removing my bow enclosure. I also want the functionality of the Humminbird integration to set my autopilot and follow lake contours for salmon and trout fishing.

 

[jethro]

Circling back around on this. So, I'm trolling along under power of my outboard. I want to use the TM to keep me in a straight line as Jethro says above. Originally I was thinking the TM would cycle on/off to maintain direction. In other words, TM comes on when the boat veers off the selected vector. But now that I think about it, the TM is probably going to be running 100% of the time. Is that how it works?

This is one big reason I am spending the big money and taking the huge weight penalty of a 36 volt system. It will definitely speed up and slow down to maintain speed, but yes, it will run constantly. I have talked to big water trolling fishermen in the great lakes that use the system for this express purpose and with a 36v system they say they can fish an entire weekend easily as long as they use their kicker for thrust.

Yes, that’s how it works. If it’s on spot lock, it only comes on to move you back to the spot. If you just want it to make corrections to your direction while trolling with the gas motor, use the hand held remote to just bump you.

You don't have to do this with an i-Pilot equipped motor, it will auto adjust for wind, waves and current based on your chosen heading or waypoint. It's completely hands free for us coldwater fishermen who troll. You can set a heading as "North Up" and it will maintain that exact heading without any input from you. Gotta have the i-pilot with a heading sensor. This is the whole reason I am buying it, so I can have completely hands free autopilot so I can set my downriggers and land fish without being completely paranoid about the boat spinning a 180 in strong wind. In a 10 mph wind it is shocking how fast the boat can spin and when you are dragging 4 to 10 lines behind the boat with easily $600 in terminal tackle it's a real bummer to saw it all off with the kicker.

I will also be able to record and program my favorite trolling routes to run over and over. I'll probably only use spot lock in the summer when I'm fishing the salt for groundfish. Maybe late season lake trout jigging too.

 

[LDUBS]

Thanks Jethro & ScottF. I kinda hijacked the thread, but do appreciate the info.

 

[jethro]

Got my Ulterra mounted, it's something else, let me tell you! I'll be trying to get it wet later this week.

Helix 9 is on order, hope Amazon can deliver it this week but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[handyandy]

Jethro if you could live with the 7" screen scheels has a good deal on a helix 7 g2n I just ordered one and got it within four days. I'm planning on linking it with my terrova when I install both soon.

 

[jethro]

The 9 will be here Friday! Super excited. But the Scheels deal is very good. 7 with SI for 500 is a crazy deal.

 

[BigTerp]

Fished for 4 straight days last week on my buddies boat. We gave his new Ulterra, Helix 10 MEGA+ SI and Helix 8 MEGA+ SI a workout. WOW!!! What a sweet setup that is. I mostly river fish, so don't get much of this, but it was the first time I've used electronics to locate fish and actually catch them. We did that several times as well as locating deep (10'+) cover/structure to fish and finding fish there as well. The spotlock and autopilot were a great upgrade over a traditional trolling motor. We didn't use the follow the contour feature much. Pointing the head parallel to a shoreline we wanted to fish and engaging autopilot worked better for us. The jog feature is also extremely convenient. The imaging on the Helix 10 & 8 MEGA+ is phenomenal. I could go on and on. But overall I cannot think of a single con with the setup described above. It totally changed the way we fished this particular lake, and all for the better.

 

[jethro]

I finally got to put my 36v Ulterra and Helix 9 to work yesterday. Unreal. It's a total gamechanger not having to deal with boat control anymore! It was blowing 10 with gusts to 20 and I was on a very big lake. The motor did not have a single bit of trouble with the conditions. First thing I did was find the roughest, windiest spot on the lake and test the spot lock. It kept me 10' off the rocks with a hard wind in my face and big waves. That is just incredible. Then I trolled using my gas kicker to push, it was flawless. Autopilot with cruise control! I trolled for about 6 hours and I don't think the battery bank showed any drop in voltage from when I started, at least using the ipilot remote as a gauge. I can control from the head unit which is great because I spend most of my time looking at that screen anyway.

No fish, surface temp was 40.4F so its gonna be slow fishing for a bit. This lake only iced out 5 days ago.

 

[jethro]

Gonna post an update, I've had a lot of trolling time on this system. I have some minor complaints, one major one, but for the most part it's just an amazing system so far. The biggest test for me was a 2 night, 3 day off the grid camping trip to the Western Maine mountains area. With the Covid situation, I can't rent a cabin or even a hotel/motel, so to get my spring ice out fishing trip in I had to go back to basics and primitive camp. This means no recharging of my 3, group 31 deep cycles at the end of the day, I'd have to stretch the batteries for the entire trip. I was able to troll using my kicker for thrust and the Ulterra for auto-pilot and cruise control for almost 2 full days of trolling. I'm talking 10 hours of solid fishing a day. By the end of the 2nd day I was nervous that the batteries wouldn't have enough juice to stow my motor, so I went old school and back to steering the boat with the steering wheel again which was miserable. I can't tell you how much of a game changer the system is for fishing, especially fishing by myself. No matter what the waves, wind or current is doing, I no longer have to drive the boat. I can fish instead of drive. I don't have to worry about the boat spinning out of control and tangling my lines while I am setting up a downrigger or catching a fish or whatever I want to do. The downside, that I discovered, is that I no longer have any desire to troll without the auto-pilot. Using a steering link between my 500lb V6 outboard and the little 6 horse kicker, which wasn't an issue before is now totally miserable. Maybe ignorance really is bliss. It's not a huge issue since my days of remote primitive camping are definitely limited.

I only have one real, major complaint. I would really like Minn Kota to tell me why on earth there are two cables coming from the control head. There is one huge, coiled wire that anyone with a trolling motor is familiar with, then there is a much smaller, not coiled wire that is for networking the unit to my Helix 9. This isn't really an issue for any of the manual stow motors, but with the Ulterra, that smaller ethernet cable get's all munged up within the coil when you stow or deploy (sometimes). They tell you to run it down the center of the coil, then zip tie it loosely at the bottom of the coil only. So when the motor is deployed and at a low setting in the water there is about 50" of the ethernet cable flopping on the deck. When I go to stow the motor often that cable often gets fouled in the main coil. This is a severe design flaw. You already have the biggest wire you have ever seen with the coil, why is the ethernet cord not also enclosed safely within the coil? Really, a Minn Kota engineer should get fired over this absolute major design flaw. I am shocked at how dumb this cable management system is, and the Ulterra has been around for a long time now.

I also had a major complaint about the i-pilot remote, which is a touch screen, when it was hanging around my neck and the auto-pilot, cruise control operating, the remote swinging around my neck would sometimes turn off settings. I hate touch screens. But I didn't realize I could lock the screen. Gotta read the manual dummy!!

All in all I am really happy with my investment. I've bought entire boats that cost less than this system all said and done, but this setup is completely worth the money so far. Hopefully it will continue to be trouble free.

 

[Wallyc]

Couple of things to think about.
# 1 when I had an old i-Pilot it had a cable that went through the coil what I did was used rod sock type sheathing on the cable inside the coil. Then at the base of the coil and the motor I left about 10 inches and coiled the slack of the cable and zip tied the coil in two spots on its self loose. It allowed enough pull to not mess anything up and kept the slack at bay.
#2 you might want to look at the micro remote . It won’t do everything but it look will give you basic control of the motor . So you don’t have to have a smart phone hanging around your neck

 

[MrGiggles]

Gonna post an update, I've had a lot of trolling time on this system. I have some minor complaints, one major one, but for the most part it's just an amazing system so far. The biggest test for me was a 2 night, 3 day off the grid camping trip to the Western Maine mountains area. With the Covid situation, I can't rent a cabin or even a hotel/motel, so to get my spring ice out fishing trip in I had to go back to basics and primitive camp. This means no recharging of my 3, group 31 deep cycles at the end of the day, I'd have to stretch the batteries for the entire trip. I was able to troll using my kicker for thrust and the Ulterra for auto-pilot and cruise control for almost 2 full days of trolling. I'm talking 10 hours of solid fishing a day. By the end of the 2nd day I was nervous that the batteries wouldn't have enough juice to stow my motor, so I went old school and back to steering the boat with the steering wheel again which was miserable. I can't tell you how much of a game changer the system is for fishing, especially fishing by myself. No matter what the waves, wind or current is doing, I no longer have to drive the boat. I can fish instead of drive. I don't have to worry about the boat spinning out of control and tangling my lines while I am setting up a downrigger or catching a fish or whatever I want to do. The downside, that I discovered, is that I no longer have any desire to troll without the auto-pilot. Using a steering link between my 500lb V6 outboard and the little 6 horse kicker, which wasn't an issue before is now totally miserable. Maybe ignorance really is bliss. It's not a huge issue since my days of remote primitive camping are definitely limited.

I only have one real, major complaint. I would really like Minn Kota to tell me why on earth there are two cables coming from the control head. There is one huge, coiled wire that anyone with a trolling motor is familiar with, then there is a much smaller, not coiled wire that is for networking the unit to my Helix 9. This isn't really an issue for any of the manual stow motors, but with the Ulterra, that smaller ethernet cable get's all munged up within the coil when you stow or deploy (sometimes). They tell you to run it down the center of the coil, then zip tie it loosely at the bottom of the coil only. So when the motor is deployed and at a low setting in the water there is about 50" of the ethernet cable flopping on the deck. When I go to stow the motor often that cable often gets fouled in the main coil. This is a severe design flaw. You already have the biggest wire you have ever seen with the coil, why is the ethernet cord not also enclosed safely within the coil? Really, a Minn Kota engineer should get fired over this absolute major design flaw. I am shocked at how dumb this cable management system is, and the Ulterra has been around for a long time now.

I also had a major complaint about the i-pilot remote, which is a touch screen, when it was hanging around my neck and the auto-pilot, cruise control operating, the remote swinging around my neck would sometimes turn off settings. I hate touch screens. But I didn't realize I could lock the screen. Gotta read the manual dummy!!

All in all I am really happy with my investment. I've bought entire boats that cost less than this system all said and done, but this setup is completely worth the money so far. Hopefully it will continue to be trouble free.

They do sell a micro remote that is more like a key fob. Doesn't have all of the functions on it, but has the necessities.

 

[jethro]

I do have the micro remote as well but it doesn't have any autopilot or cruise control functionality so I don't use it for coldwater trolling. I will probably like to use it when I'm targeting smallmouth or groundfish/stripers on the saltwater.

 

[LDUBS]

Couple of things to think about.
# 1 when I had an old i-Pilot it had a cable that went through the coil what I did was used rod sock type sheathing on the cable inside the coil. Then at the base of the coil and the motor I left about 10 inches and coiled the slack of the cable and zip tied the coil in two spots on its self loose. It allowed enough pull to not mess anything up and kept the slack at bay.

What I have is pretty basic compared to Jethro's 36V Ulterra, but I still understand his comment about that cabling that runs through he coil. I like your idea to manage it using the rod sock. I might have to give that a try. Thanks.

 

[jethro]

A rod sock is a brilliant idea!! Gonna give it a try, thank you Wallyc!

 

[Wallyc]

Jethro I have a 2018 bt terrova with the i-Pilot remote and a micro and yes it doesn’t have cruise control but it will do spot lock and turn autopilot on and off.