Is your Trolling motor 24V?

 

No it is 12 VDC, but it will be a separate system from the lights.

 

More details needed for a complete answer...like Realtree asked, is your trolling motor 24v?

Based on the info you provided, looking at just the light setup, I would go 12V. With 4 50w LED's on a 115ah battery you can run for 5 1/2 hours. The only thing going with a 24v setup will give you is the ability to run smaller gauge wire and run time will be about 11 hours.

 

Thank you GPierce. The Optima battery I am looking at only holds 55 Ah. Is this going to decrease my hours? Sorry I know nothing about electronics/wiring.

 

Yes it will as "ah" is amp hours...you would only get about 2 1/2 hours out of it. Most of your deep cycle trolling batteries will be around 100ah. Group 27 (90ah), Group 29 (105ah), and Group 31 (115ah)...this if off the top of my head, and some manufacturers maybe be +/- 5ah on those group sizes. The 55ah battery you are looking at is probably a starting battery, which has more CCA (cold cranking amps), but less amp hours...it's a sprinter, not a marathon runner.

 

If everything on the boat is 12V then I'd hook them all your batteries together and pull from the same bank of batteries. Running in a parallel circuit will increase the capacity of the battery bank. The positive terminals of all batteries are connected together, and all negative terminals are connected the same way.

 

I probably don't run batteries as hard as many folks on here but back during gator season we went out most all night for 9 nights in a row. I have a 24v bank that I run both my trolling motor and LEDs on. I went with 4 Trojan T125 6V batteries. I could comfortably get a couple of trips out of the set up but honestly, between running the motor & trailering the boat, the Stealth charging system keeps them topped off. For my 12V house & starting I went with a pair of Duracell 31DTMAGM's from Sam's Club which is a great battery for the price. Yes, that's a lot of weight but they're sitting in a 21x8.5 aluminum 85" wide flat bottom.