Powerboat electronics and rigging
The expert boat electronics rig
Quick answer
The expert boat rig is a nine inch networked chartplotter, a LiveScope system, a 36 volt bow motor on a lithium bank with a four bank lithium charger, a hydraulic shallow water anchor and a downrigger. It is the ceiling of the category, and most anglers should not buy it.
This is the performance ceiling, and it is worth saying plainly what that means: this rig costs more than a lot of the boats it gets fitted to, and a large part of what it buys is capability you have to learn to use.
The three things that genuinely separate it are live sonar, which shows fish moving and your lure falling in real time, 36 volts of thrust, which holds a heavy boat in wind that would beat a 24 volt motor, and a networked system where a GPS antenna, a heading sensor and multiple screens share one backbone.
What the three tiers actually differ on
The three tiers are genuinely different builds rather than the same list at three prices, and the expert rig comes to about $13,629.
Rule of thumb Boating and fishing convention rather than a published standard. Taught everywhere, useful, and not a specification. Nothing enforces it and no body publishes it.
| Tier | What it optimizes | Items | Approximate total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | Lowest total cost to something that works | 18 | $1,629 |
| Intermediate | The buy-once pick | 22 | $5,964 |
| Expert | The performance ceiling | 28 | $13,629 |
Totals are a snapshot of catalog prices at generation time rather than a quote. Items with no clean single price are excluded rather than counted as zero, and the page says how many.
What you can skip
You can skip the downrigger entirely unless you troll for suspended fish, and most anglers do not. You can skip the second shallow water anchor: two poles hold the boat against wind from one more direction and cost as much as a good fish finder. You can skip the 36 volt motor if the thrust calculation for your loaded boat does not call for it, and on a boat under about 2,500 lb it usually does not.
What to upgrade first
From here, the honest answer is nothing. This rig is past the point where equipment is the limitation. The next real gain is time on the water learning to read what the live sonar is actually showing you, because it is a genuinely different skill from reading a scrolling sonar trace and it takes a season.
Who should not buy this tier
Almost everybody. If you fish a handful of weekends a year, this rig is a large amount of money spent on capability you will not use, and a good seven inch side imaging unit with a 55 lb Spot-Lock motor catches most of the same fish. If you have not yet learned to read side imaging confidently, live sonar will be a confusing picture rather than an advantage. And if the boat is under about 2,500 lb loaded, the 36 volt motor is buying thrust you will never ask for at the cost of a third battery you carry every day.
The expert boat rig, item by item
28 items, grouped by what each one does rather than by what it costs, so you can see what is missing as well as what it adds up to. Buy this list and you can go fishing. Every line links to the product.
The screen and the network
$2,211Nine inches is where a three way split of live sonar, side imaging and chart is all readable at once rather than a compromise between them.
| Item | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Garmin ECHOMAP UHD2 93sv Nine inch touchscreen with the GT56 ultra high definition transducer rather than the GT54 the smaller units ship with. | $1,299.99 | Check price |
| Garmin GT56UHD-TM transom mount transducer A spare or second transducer. Ultra high definition ClearVu and SideVu on a transom mount. | $468.83 | Check price |
| Garmin GPS 24xd with heading sensor, NMEA 2000 An external antenna gets a far better fix than a unit under a console top, and a heading sensor keeps the chart oriented when the boat is barely moving. | $279.94 | Check price |
| Lowrance NMEA 2000 network starter kit Backbone, tees, terminators and power tap in one genuine kit, which is what the unbranded network kits get subtly wrong. | $73.79 | Check price |
| RAM Mounts fish finder and marine electronics swing arm mount Swings the screen out of the way when you are not looking at it, which matters more than it sounds on a busy console. | $88.49 | Check price |
Live sonar
$1,903The single most expensive upgrade in fishing and the one that genuinely changes how people fish. It also needs a mount, a pole and in practice its own battery.
| Item | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Garmin LiveScope Plus System with GLS 10 and LVS34 The GLS 10 sonar box and the LVS34 transducer together, which is what you need if you do not already own a LiveScope box. | $1,445.00 | Check price |
| Garmin Perspective Mount, black The heavier duty genuine perspective mount. A four figure transducer hangs off this bracket in moving water. | $119.99 | Check price |
| LiTime 12V 100Ah Xtra Mini LiFePO4 battery A dedicated battery for the live sonar module, so its draw is not competing with the motor bank. | $338.39 | Check price |
Thirty six volts of thrust
$2,831The point at which the boat carries three batteries permanently, and the reason lithium stops being a nice upgrade and starts removing about 120 lb.
| Item | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Minn Kota Terrova 112 with Spot-Lock and MEGA Down Imaging, 60 inch shaft 36 volts with MEGA Down Imaging in the shaft, which removes a separate bow transducer. Published maximum draw is 52 A. | $2,399.99 | Check price |
| Minn Kota foot pedal for Terrova and Riptide Terrova The genuine Terrova pedal. | $205.99 | Check price |
| Minn Kota RTA-62 quick release bracket The current generation quick release bracket. Check it against your model rather than assuming an older part fits. | $190.00 | Check price |
| Minn Kota MKR-27 circuit breaker The 60 A breaker Minn Kota specifies for its own motors, which settles the sizing argument without any arithmetic. | $35.00 | Check price |
The power system
$1,862One 36 volt lithium pack in place of three lead acid batteries, a four bank charger with a lithium profile, and a shunt so you know what is actually left.
| Item | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| LiTime 36V 100Ah lithium battery with 25A charger A full day of a 112 lb motor from one box, and roughly 120 lb lighter than the three lead acid batteries it replaces. | $1,044.99 | Check price |
| Minn Kota MK-440PCL onboard charger, 4 banks 10 amps Four banks with a lithium profile: three for a 36 volt motor bank plus the lead acid cranking battery. | $389.99 | Check price |
| Victron Energy BMV-712 smart battery monitor with shunt A shunt counts amp hours in and out, which is the only honest state of charge on lithium because the voltage barely moves until it collapses. | $131.09 | Check price |
| Blue Sea Systems HD-Series on/off battery switch, 500A Rated for 500 amps, which is the switch a 36 volt motor bank and a big cranking battery actually need. | $79.00 | Check price |
| Blue Sea Systems Add-A-Battery kit, 120A A switch and an automatic charging relay together, so the electronics cannot flatten the battery that starts the engine. | $175.34 | Check price |
| Blue Sea Systems ST Blade fuse block, 12 circuits with negative bus Twelve circuits, which is what a boat needs once the electronics, lights, pumps and charger each want their own fuse. | $42.00 | Check price |
Stop the boat where you want it
$3,456A hydraulic pole drops far faster and quieter than a screw driven spike, which on spooky shallow fish is the whole point.
| Item | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Power-Pole Pro Series II shallow water anchor, 4 ft The hydraulic Power-Pole the flats boat world runs on, and considerably quieter into the water than a screw driven spike. | $1,649.99 | Check price |
| Minn Kota Raptor shallow water anchor with Active Anchoring, 8 ft The hydraulic Minn Kota, for a boat already on the Minn Kota system. | $1,805.90 | Check price |
Put a lure at a known depth
$657The only way to fish a precise depth and stay there. The counter measures cable rather than depth, which is what the blowback calculation is for.
| Item | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Cannon Magnum 10 electric downrigger The Great Lakes standard: long boom, fast retrieve and the capacity for the heavy balls deep water needs. | $536.93 | Check price |
| Extreme Max coated pancake downrigger weight, 10 lb A pancake weight tracks with far less blowback than a round ball at the same weight, which is free depth. | $41.95 | Check price |
| Scotty 1002 stainless downrigger cable, 150 lb test, 400 ft Four hundred feet of 150 lb stainless, which is a full respool rather than a patch. | $55.02 | Check price |
| Cannon offshore line release Built for heavier tackle than the universal release, which pops too early on offshore gear. | $22.99 | Check price |
Safety at this level
$709A bigger boat going further means the radio and the ground tackle both have to be real.
| Item | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Uniden UM725G fixed mount marine VHF with GPS Built in GPS, which is what makes the DSC distress button actually send a position rather than just a call. | $158.75 | Check price |
| Icom M25EVO floating marine VHF radio A genuinely good handheld as the backup, because a fixed radio is useless once you are off the boat. | $161.90 | Check price |
| BLUESTORM Arcus 40 automatic inflatable PFD with manual ripcord, USCG approved Forty pounds of buoyancy, which is the offshore specification rather than the inland one. | $179.99 | Check price |
| Lewmar anchor rode, 5 ft chain and 100 ft rope with shackle A spliced rode from a ground tackle manufacturer, which is the part of the system nobody should improvise. | $207.95 | Check price |
Rig total
$13,629
28 items across 7 groups. Prices move constantly and this total is a snapshot rather than a quote. Nothing here includes the boat, the trailer, registration, or the labour if somebody else does the install.
Frequently asked questions
What does the expert boat rig cost?
About $13,629 across 28 items at the prices in our catalog when this page was generated. Prices in this category move constantly, so treat it as a planning number rather than a quote.
Do I have to buy the whole list at once?
No, and almost nobody does. The list is grouped by function rather than by price precisely so you can see what is missing as well as what it costs. The order that makes sense is sonar first, then power, then propulsion, then everything else, because a boat that can see the bottom catches fish and a boat with a beautiful motor and no sonar is driving over structure blind.
Why are the two ladders different rather than one list at six prices?
Because a powerboat and a kayak are constrained by different things. On a boat the binding limits are console space and budget, and batteries live aboard permanently. On a kayak the binding limit is weight against a manufacturer capacity figure, every time, and it decides the answer before the budget does. Telling a kayak angler to fit a three bank charger is wrong, and telling a boat owner that weight is the constraint is worse.
Is a kayak rig cheaper than a boat rig?
Not reliably, and that is worth saying plainly. A rigged pedal kayak with a bow motor costs as much as a used aluminium boat with the beginner boat rig on it, and the boat is more capable in more conditions. The reason to choose a kayak is access to water no boat reaches, and quiet, rather than saving money.
How were these products chosen?
Researched from manufacturer specification sheets, published engineering and regulatory figures, and the recurring themes in verified owner reviews. We do not test equipment in person. Each item is matched to a real thrust rating, a real published draw, a real capacity or a real conductor size rather than to a price bracket, and the unbranded flood in several of these categories was deliberately excluded.
Get the complete rigging shopping list
Every item in the beginner, intermediate and expert rigs for both a boat and a kayak, with running totals, in one printable list. No charge.
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Researched, not professional advice. This page is compiled from published engineering and regulatory figures, manufacturer specifications and owner-review consensus, not hands-on testing. Figures described as a rule of thumb are boating convention rather than published standards, and they are labelled that way wherever they appear. Marine electrical work is not house wiring. Use tinned, finely stranded marine cable, size it for voltage drop and for the ABYC E-11 ampacity table rather than one or the other, and put overcurrent protection within seven inches of the battery positive terminal, because everything between the post and the fuse is unprotected. A lithium battery needs a charger with a lithium profile. Never load a boat past its capacity plate, and remember that canoes and kayaks carry no federal capacity plate at all, so their stated capacity is the manufacturer own figure. Wear the life jacket, and treat early season water as the hazard it is: cold water immersion takes your breath and then your hands long before it takes your core.