Motorcycle Safety & Driveability: 1994 big bear yamaha four wheeler, water ingress, safety advisor

Question
what does it mean when it backfires and does not run smoothly? i emptied the fuel tank thinking it might have water in the gas, refilled with clean gas but now it will not crank i have a battery charger on it
now because trying to crank it i continue to run the battery down. i was riding it and it was running fine and it just happen backfiring and sputting.

Answer
A little outside my expertise, I'm a road safety advisor here in the UK. I would suggest though that you check all of your ignition leads, (HT and LT) and the coil/ignition module for damp. Tracking from water ingress is a common problem and a lot easier to identify when you could have a look inside the distributor cap and look for the tell tale black marks!
It does sound like a damp ignition fault to me though.
I hope this helps.