Fishing Gear – Portable Generators for Fishing Trips

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You can do just as your ancestors did and go fishing with nothing more than a thorn tied to a piece of plant fiber attached to a bamboo pole. But you'll do a lot better if you let modern technology help you get everything you can out of the experience. But that requires electricity and it's a little hard to find extension cords long enough to stretch to the middle of the lake or across a forest to the rivers' edge.

Portable generators to the rescue!

Whether you like to ice fish, cast at the water's edge or head out to sea for a full day of marlin hunting a portable generator can supply you with all the juice you need. They can power portable stoves, lighting, a small electric heater and more. A portable generator that provides over 2,000 watts can even power a microwave oven or a toaster oven.

You may want to take your laptop out on the boat. You may have to receive an email about a great spot to try, get a weather report from an Internet site or just let your spouse know you won't be home for three days because the fish are jumping. But laptop batteries have a way of dying just when you need them. You can plug into a portable generator just as easily as you would the wall outlet at home.

There are two basic categories: fuel or battery.

Fuel generators use either gasoline or diesel (sometimes, though rarely, propane) and tend to come in larger sizes, both physically and in terms of power output. They range anywhere from a few hundred watts to 5,000 watts. You can power everything in the average home with about 4 kilowatts or 4,000 watts, but essential items typically take no more than about 1.4 kw. Sometimes the requirements on a boat are a little higher, though, than powering just the basics at home during an outage.

Battery-style generators don't usually go by that name. They're more often just called power supplies or battery backup units or UPS systems. They're similar to the one you may use on your computer at home in case the power drops temporarily, only they provide more power for longer periods.

But apart from the name they serve the same purpose: to supply electricity. They do so by stringing together a set of (usually lead-acid) batteries in series. Some units supply as much as a gasoline or diesel generator, but they tend to be fairly expensive and heavy. But one that will recharge weather instrument batteries, power a laptop or even supply a small stove are available for a few hundred dollars.

Though they may provide more power, fuel generators are much noisier than a battery system. The engine noise they produce may or may not be significant on a boat, but in a forest at the edge of a lake they can be very disruptive. They also produce noxious fumes that require good ventilation for safety.

Batteries, though, can add up to considerable weight pretty quickly as you add more to the total system. On a boat that can be a significant factor. Onshore it may be even more so, since you have to cart the unit at least to the back of a pickup truck in order to have it with you on the trip.

Whichever type of generator you prefer to take on your fishing trip, the same basic criteria apply. They should be easy to use, indestructible and supply the amount of power you want for years and years.