Ok, I’ll admit it… this thing is pretty awesome.  His name is Rover.  He can do quite a bit when we’re on the lake.  Let me show you!

What I’m referring to is our new Minnkota Ulterra with iPilot.

First off, there’s this handy dandy remote control.  This is pretty much what I use to tell Rover where to go.  Want to head at 240º?  Rover can do that.  Want to stay in the same place?  Then Rover will set you an anchor point.

Why did we name him Rover?  We haven’t even named the boat yet!  Well, we use this a lot to set anchor points so we can stay in an area for a little longer (I only have 1 pole, so I’m switching lures all the time!).  In order to stay in one location, the trolling motor will suddenly turn left and right (or front or back) to keep us in that one location.  It reminded me of how our dog would always turn his head quickly when anything made a noise.

Yes, there’s a foot pedal, and that would ideally make a LOT more sense when you’re fishing (difficult to maneuver while you have your line in the water).  But for some reason, I can’t seem to get the knack for it.  I’ll try again once I actually start CATCHING fish.  🙂

Another one of the fabulous features of this model is the auto stow / auto deploy feature.  With the click of a button, I can get Rover out and going in just a few seconds after Gary shuts the engine off.

And finally, I didn’t have a good idea of how long the trolling motor would last, but we were out last week at Lake Shelbyville in some pretty strong winds, where we had to keep Rover at around 5mph to stay in one place.  We were out for several hours, and it didn’t really put much of a dent in the 48V system supplying Rover – pretty sweet!

For fun, here’s a video of seeing Rover “going to sleep”