The Best Deep Cycle Battery for Your Boat

If you look in my boat, you’re going to find the Optima battery. In fact, I have two of them, run in series. The Optima is a sweet battery in that it is both a deep cycle battery and a starting battery in one. I like Optima batteries because they are sealed and durable. I run one in my truck, too and let’s just say that it spends a lot of time off roading.

These batteries hold up and can take serious abuse, so rough waters will not affect your Optima blue top. Mountable in virtually any position. The Optima pumps out 900 cold cranking amps and it has a reserve capacity of 155 minutes for constant performance. This battery is more resistant to vibration for durability, and it works well as a boat battery or as an RV battery, which puts similar strain on a battery with all of the internal accessories. You add all of this up and you can see why I feel the Optima is the best deep cycle battery for your boat or RV.

My first interstate battery was one I put in my car while in college. My battery died on a Sunday while I was visiting a buddy, and his dad happened to work in the county road commission garage. He went down and grabbed a new Interstate battery that they used for the plow trucks. I paid him back for the battery and never had to worry about starting that car, even when it was well below zero.

These are great deep cycle batteries and pretty hard to beat for the price. No, they’re not the absolute cheapest batteries out there, but they are less expensive than many other mid-level batteries and are still under $100. A nice feature are the insert terminals that give you more options in how you attach your wires, while reducing the extra terminal space you find on other batteries.

Bass Pro’s line of AGM batteries gives you outstanding vibration resistance and impact protection, something you may come to need in your boat batteries. These deep cycle batteries are hybrids like the Optima in that they can work well to run your boat’s trolling motor and electronics, and it can work well as your starter battery for your boat motor, as well. These batteries retail for $179.99 to $249.99 depending on the size you need to fit your boat. They have excellent cold cranking amperage, and being from Bass Pro, you know it’s going to work. They have a great warranty that goes along with the battery, too, which is something you don’t hear much of when it comes to batteries.

Lithium-Ion batteries are making headway into most areas, and marine batteries are a great fit for the technology. The Banshee battery is extremely cool, but falls seriously into the not-cheap category. With a price tag pushing $800, this is a great pick for the serious angler looking to shave weight off the boat. At just 13.8 pounds, this battery produces 800 cold-cranking amps.

A traditional lead-core battery in that range would weigh in around 60 pounds. That’s a big deal for anglers trying to keep the overall weight on the boat below the maximum allowed by the manufacturer. It will let a tournament angler store more tackle and gear on the boat, which may make the difference between a win and not finishing anywhere near the leaderboard.

There is an older gentleman that lives nearby, who loves to fish from his small, 12-foot boat that he powers around with a smaller Minn Kota trolling motor. He and I have become pretty good friends over the years, and he often shares his leftover crappies and panfish with me. He’d power the trolling motor with the battery from his garden tractor, and I kept telling him that he ought to get the proper battery, or he was asking for trouble. All it took was the battery giving out on him, and he went in search of a better one.

The VMAX AGM Deep Cycle Trolling Motor battery is what he recently settled on, because of two reasons. One, it was relatively inexpensive at less than $90, and two – it is specifically designed for running a 36lb thrust trolling motor, which is what he runs. The VMax lineup is made of models specifically for different trolling motor options and brands. At low speed, the 36lb model will run for 3.7 hours continuously. Pretty cool if you ask me.