OPINIONS ON DOWN RIGGERS - please

[roz]

Just a quickie.

I am thinking of adding down riggers to my V-Sea, I do a lot of mack trolling when up north & have been for a lot of years.
Sadly I am finding the spanish population is not what it used to be, so I am looking for ways to improve my catch rate.

I have never used a down rigger before so there is a bit of a learning curve (I thought I knew everything), I see the pros using them so that is a good indicator.

I tow pre frozen baits that I catch off Coffs H., when I get the chance to get out. I then take them up to Agnes & fish around outer rock which is located off Bustard H.

Info on reliable brands and methods of attachment would be greatly appreciated...& any other advice.

Many thanx

Cheers Roz

[Spaniard_King]

Forget the down rigger, bought one used it for a while then sold it for a better method!!!

we now use snapper leads and heavy tackle rubber bands

pull 8-10m of line off with your bait. then put the rubber band on the snapper lead of choice (current pending) we use up t0 16oz then wrap the band 5-6 times around the line and put the lead back through the loop of the band. Try varying heights. Engine just in gear we usually run one 20ft off the bottom one mid water and one on the surface
we get back 9 out of 10 sinkers, just break the band when the fish is close to the boat.

You can spend a lot on sinkers and bands before you get to the cost of a downrigger. Also price what a downrigger bomb and re attachment kit will cost as you WILL loose a few bombs

[Noelm]

Down riggers are very common down this way, just like the Spanish up north, the Kingfish down here are pretty scarce now (well, big ones anyway) a down rigger will get you fish when everyone else is going home empty handed. They work extremely well with live baits, don't use trolled dead baits down this way much. Scotty seems to be the best brand, but plenty use the cheaper ones too.

[honda900]

Last september, no down rigger, hard bodies.. we dropped a least another 5 or so, the two other boats (including rebait) beside us towing baits did not do as well as we did, not all on the table were ours but 6 were.

We mixed up the depth that the hard bodies were on so running 10m, 6m and 2m in the water column.



Regards
Honda

[scottar]

Like any bit of fishing apparatus, sometimes they are hot - sometimes not. I have two cannons. One manual, one electric. We do predominantly troll live baits but I see no reason they wouldn't work with deadbaits - you may simply need a bigger bomb for the higher boat speed. They also open up other fishing opportunities - try trolling hard bodies in 60 metres for snapper without one. This is something we have done on occasion when the fish have been shutdown to other methods.

The manual is obviously a cheaper option but the electric is so convenient - one button and the bomb is back at the surface. We tend to troll the livies a couple of metres from the bottom so it is not uncommon for other species to get in on the act

[gofishin]

Interested in what you use on the d/rigger Scottar, wire or braid? I believe a lot of people use braid these days. Strength & type of braid?

We used d/riggers extensively in PNG, with mostly dead baits (livies would mostly just result in sharks), but also with Rapalas and big bibless minnows.

Macks loved them, but also the doggies and plenty others. Most often, with 1 rod on the d/r and 3 - 4 up top, the d/r would still catch the most kg's of Macks, and nearly always the first.

I still have my Penn Fathom Master (from 1986, still nearly as good as new despite a lot of use in PNG ), and have mounted the bracket on my current boat, but have only used it once .

Roz, I see these are available pretty cheap on eBay, so might be an option?

Have often thought how they would go trolling lures for snaps offshore, sounds like it works ok Scottar?
Cheers
Brendon

[scottar]

Just running the standard wire Brendan. Mainly due to chasing toothie critters with it and the chance of getting the bomb cut off if I am a bit slow (interpreted as lazy) with the manual one getting the bomb up. Certainly hasn't seemed to put the fish off. I would say on some trips the baits on the downriggers account for 80% of the strikes (have had 100% days but only one or two fish for the day doesn't really count in my book for those sort of statistics).

The snaps offshore is still a work in progress but the few times we have tried it have resulted in fish every time - not necessarily lots or of any great size but they have turned absolute shut down or high current days into days we actually managed to catch something.

As for mounts, I coudn't bring myself to drill holes in the gunwales of the Victory so I use rod holder inserts - also makes the manual easily portable if I want to use it elsewhere.

Regards

Scott

[odes20]

I have a Cannon Mag electric with auto stop.
its awesome and it has to have cable for the auto stop to work

[BeastMaster]

Hi Roz , long time no talk ,I usually troll dead baits on the surface early in the morning , as the sun gets higher in the sky I usually deploy a downrigger on each side . I use Scotty downriggers , they have a digital counter with a feet read out. Ive replaced the wire with 300lb braid(the wire will rust out eventually and you will loose more balls due to rusted wire than being hung up on reef. )The area you mentioned has a couple of pinnacles that come up to about 5m by memory, so the depth gauge comes in handy to set your depth, this will save your ball from being hungup but not necessily your baits.Depending on how much money you wish to spend the skys the limit, you can get electric models that can be linked to sounders , these can be programmed to automatically lift and lower balls to track the bottom .The cheapest option is A large barrel sinker 10m up your line with a slip stopper knot -when a fish is hooked, the knot slips out and the sinker slides down to the fish, unfortunately you cannt set a trolled sinker at a in your face depth but it is very effective at getting your baits down.
Regards
Neil

[PROS]

Forget the down rigger, bought one used it for a while then sold it for a better method!!!

we now use snapper leads and heavy tackle rubber bands

pull 8-10m of line off with your bait. then put the rubber band on the snapper lead of choice (current pending) we use up t0 16oz then wrap the band 5-6 times around the line and put the lead back through the loop of the band. Try varying heights. Engine just in gear we usually run one 20ft off the bottom one mid water and one on the surface
we get back 9 out of 10 sinkers, just break the band when the fish is close to the boat.

You can spend a lot on sinkers and bands before you get to the cost of a downrigger. Also price what a downrigger bomb and re attachment kit will cost as you WILL loose a few bombs

Any reason why not using a swivel (where you attach the rubber band normally) and sliding weight set up above the swivel either inline or attached via small clip?

Max

[PROS]

The cheapest option is A large barrel sinker 10m up your line with a slip stopper knot -when a fish is hooked, the knot slips out and the sinker slides down to the fish, unfortunately you cannt set a trolled sinker at a in your face depth but it is very effective at getting your baits down.
Regards
Neil

great info Neil, I will try this for sure
http://www.animatedknots.com/slip/#ScrollPoint

[Spaniard_King]

Any reason why not using a swivel (where you attach the rubber band normally) and sliding weight set up above the swivel either inline or attached via small clip?

Max

If you chase mackerel enough you will loose a lot because of the friction of the swivel on the main line wen the fish runs

[Noelm]

Sinkers and stuff might be OK when using a down rigger in shallow water, but once it gets deep, you need the "bomb" to keep the bait down, a couple of big snapper leads, or a barrel sinker is useless in more than about 20m of water, even a tiny bit of current at very slow trolling speeds will see a bait up near the surface in no time.

[Harmytage]

I bought a down rigger from this guy about 2 years ago, while i haven't had a great deal of success, mainly by catch and grinners i think this is more operator error than the fault of the equipment, i also bought a 10 pound bomb of ebay as the smaller bombs were not heavy enough in deeper water with current running.
Anyway you can never have too many boating or fishing accessories in my opinion!
Good luck
https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&r...19745492,d.dGo

[joffo81]

I have a downrigger but havnt actually used it yet! How much line would you recommend to put out behind the bomb? Will it depend on depth or species or both? For example Scottar, are the snapper more shy than the macks so let more line out behind the bomb??
Joffo