downrigger

[bob@reefcatfishing]

Thanks Toerag, unfortunately not too many battleships in my neck of the woods. Most of my downrigger fishing will be around underwater reefs, and if you can see the lead on the sounder it will make life much easier. I'm also going to use them for deep drop fishing, saves having huge weights on the main line.

 

When i eventually get them fitted I'll post a report on here.

[Guest bennyTHEBASS]

I use a downrigger with live eel over my local inshore wrecks (150-200ft) with no probs at all but i have a counter on them so its just a matter of using counter with electronic depth ie; sounder; exellent!! at this depth you need at least 10lb of lead at 1-1.5 knots. i use sash wieghts so if u lose em it dont cost

[Guest PhilB]

Here's my homemade downigger. The line is 50lb dacron marked at 10 foot intervals with colured wool. Other lines are fishing mini-dipseys and lead-cores. This is all rigged for char fishing.Happy to answer any Q's but I am away on holiday for a week..............

[Salar]

What speed/depth/weight combination can you manage with a home-made rig like yours? I've been toying with a similar idea for a while but not got round to making it. I have a clip-on Shakespeare Line counter that might be easier to use than marking the line. Any tips welcome!

[Guest PhilB]

The line counter is a good idea but the depth can be checked from the fish-finder since the weight is usually under the boat. Have caught fish down to 100 feet but we usually fish 40 - 70 ft. Speed is about 2 km/hour - this is quite slow but is a good speed for char fishing with small spinners. We could fish deeper and quicker but the cannonball will start to rise to a greater degree, it would also disappear off the fish-finder screen as it would be further behind the boat. A line with lower drag than dacron would help - "Fireline" would probably be better but we havn't tried it. It is good for the fishing line tho'- I use 8lb BS for char. We tried single strand wire on the downrigger originally but it curled up after passing over the roller tip ring at the end of the "rod". We also didn't fancy losing a finger end if we had an accident with it!!! The reel has no handle - it is wound up with an electric screwdriver. Hope this helps...FF2

[chrisarvor]

i like the home made downrigger ff2 and the electric screwdriver very ingenious. on the line marking is it possible to mark the line with a waterproof dye? i was thinking of trying this with a material dye on some 60lb braid when i get set up.

[MainBassMan]

try this baby!!

 

 

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[Guest PhilB]

You should be able to mark the line with indelible felt-tip pens. We usually use black on the last few feet to (hopefully) make it a bit less conspicuous. We originally tried those highlighter marker pens in pink, green, orange etc. but it all washed out first time! The beauty of dacron is that you can thread different coloured fluorescent flosses thro' it with a darning needle and then tie a couple of overhand knots in the floss to keep it in place. The lead weights were made by casting a lead sphere with an aluminium fin in a 2 piece concrete mould made from a hard rubber ball about 3" in dia. It's amazing wot you can make when you put your mind to it innit? It was cheap as well! I will post up a photo of the bottom end of the rig with the release clip etc. as soon as I can dig out the bits and a camera.

[Guest PhilB]

Here's the business end of it. The release clip (which is open)is a Black's from Cabelas. There are loads of types, a crocodile clip with rubber tubing over the jaws works OK but is not adjustable. The hole in the downrigger fin can be used to attach it. Have fun!

[Elton]

When we upgraded the forum software for Anglers' Net a few years ago, many of the links from the old forum were broken. Part of my 'job' for early 2009 is to fix these, which I have done so for this thread. I haven't checked the destinations, I've just made them 'clickable' to the address that they used to go to, so please PM me if you find any that have moved, giving as much detail as possible. Some of the links may have been 'unclickable', if it was impossible to work out what they should have been.

 

The only way I can spot relevant threads is a report in the server logs that somebody has recently tried to click a broken link. For that reason, I'm tagging this post onto each thread that is affected, as it may be that the member who clicked it will want to try again.

 

I'm hoping that the threads may be of interest to other members, though, and some old discussions may continue.