Joey Antonelli made the biggest upgrade yet to his 26-foot Yellowfin Hybrid the day before opening day of East Coast recreational red snapper season. He had owned the boat for about six months. Three 12-volt batteries had been running his trolling motor the whole time, and they had to go.
In their place is a single 36-volt, 105 amp hour MillerTech lithium, plus a MillerTech lithium charger and the rugged battery tray to hold it all down.
Joey isn’t fishing a quiet cove. He’s working offshore structure out of Jupiter, and a lot of his day is spent sitting on a spot with the trolling motor fighting current.
“Sometimes we’re literally anchoring in the Gulf Stream with incredible currents for hours and hours and hours, and the smaller batteries just aren’t cutting it,” according to Antonelli. “So that 105 amp is going to give me the power I need to run all day, or two trips or three trips, and just be confident that I have the power to do what I want to do.”
That’s the job. Hold the boat in the Stream long enough to put a bait in front of the fish you came for, and do it again tomorrow without wondering what’s left in the tank.
Wondering is the other thing he got rid of. The MillerTech connects to his phone over Bluetooth, so battery life is a glance at the app instead of a guess. With the old lead-acid bank, guessing was all he had.
Then there’s room. A center console doesn’t give you much of it, and Joey’s had been swallowed by batteries and a charger.
“Here’s a look inside my center console. This was all batteries,” he said. “Every single bit of this was batteries and charger. So I’m going to be able to free up a lot of space in here.”
One battery takes up a fraction of the footprint three did. The tray lets him mount it solid wherever it fits best, and the space that used to belong to the power system is back in his hands for storage.
He expected the install to take up a good chunk of the video. It didn’t.
“I thought I was going to have more to show you for the install, but it was just so simple,” Antonelli said. “The wires were already there for the trolling motor. So all we had to do was mount the charger, mount the battery tray, strap it in, and connect four wires. It was literally that simple.”
Four wires. That’s the whole conversion.
After some time in the app that afternoon, Joey pointed out the part of owning a MillerTech that doesn’t show up until you need it. Every battery carries a 10-year warranty, and if something ever goes sideways, our support team can access the battery remotely, troubleshoot it, and tell the owner exactly what needs to happen. Nobody has to haul a battery anywhere to find out what’s wrong.
The next morning was the real test. Joey ran offshore with Captain Matt from Jupiter Fishing Academy into 3 to 4 foot seas at seven seconds. Red snapper season had already been canceled once, and with only two fish allowed per angler, the day was about quality, not quantity.
Matt put the first one in the boat, a red Joey figured at around 15 pounds. Joey had to work for his. He had one slurp the bait right off the bottom and another pull the hook on the way up before a solid snapper finally made it to the net. Then a flatline bait got crushed late in the day and stripped about 100 yards before the fight went to the bottom, where things down there were looking for a meal of their own.
“I am freaking pumped. Red snapper season 2026,” he said. “It got cancelled once, but we got out before they canceled this one.”
Not once did the trolling motor come up after they left the dock. That’s how it should be. The battery is supposed to be the one thing on the boat you don’t have to think about while you’re holding a spot in the Stream with a limit on the line.
Watch Joey’s full install and opening-day snapper trip on his YouTube channel