# Down Rigger Cable



## BROWN BAGGER (Sep 13, 2007)

Those of you who own or fish with down riggers: Have you switched over to cabelas dacron line from the aircraft cable? I have run it on a home made rigger and it makes a big difference. The line runs through the water with out that hum, even at 80 feet. It has less drag through the water; But I have noticed that the line is fraying and I only use a 8 lb weight. I just bought two scotty down riggers and I want to run 10lb pan cake weights, now I'm affraid of loosing the weight because of the line breaking or the knot coming undone. I have been priceing those pan cake weigths and they are 35 bucks a piece; that's 105 smackers with a back up. Also if any one has a scotty with the dacron line, have you had any tangling problems or line breakage? I would know better about this, but the rigger I run now is a cannon with ion control, and there's no way the current is going to run down a dacron line :roll: Just jones'n for the kokes at the gorge -|\O-


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## Digi-Troller (Jan 12, 2008)

I've stuck with the steel cable because of the reasons you listed. First, I dont trust that dacron will hold its breaking strength over the long run (and I dont want to replace my line every year... or ever for that matter lol). Second, I like having the ability to not only neutralize charge problems around my boat, but to also attract fish using positive ions. You lose this when you go to dacron. 

With that said, you listed a couple of positives to the braided line. It has less blow back, or drag in the water. And you dont have to listen to much, if any, "wire hum." 

But, for me, the advantages of the braid are outweighed by the above mentioned disadvantages.


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## BROWN BAGGER (Sep 13, 2007)

thanks for your input


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Geeze BB, if you got your cannonballs snagged using dacron, seems like it would take a long run to stretch the line until it breaks. That might be a bad thing in rough water.

Is this a new trend? Sounds interesting.

Hey, I've been using the fish-shaped weights. Paint them to look like small Kokes. It's been working real well for me. I'll try to send a picture.


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## BROWN BAGGER (Sep 13, 2007)

yeah, I have been wondering if it would be worth picking up one of those fish weights. do you use an air brush, magic marker, canned spray paint to doctor those up? On my old boat, I had scotty riggers with those pan cake weights, they tracked awesome and at 10 lbs ran pretty straight down. The cannon I have now says it is only rated for 8lb. the only 8 lb weight on the market is round, lots of drag. Have you noticed the humming noise from those fish weights? swing back from the drag? (because of the shape of the weight). what brand of rigger to you run? I have already bought and used the dacron line on a hand crank rigger I made; it does work great. total silence through the water, and retrieval is easy. The silence is nice when you are trolling shallow. Now I bought some more scotty riggers (electric) and I was trying to decide weather or not to take off the cable and put on the dacron. I'm jones'n to get those scotty's mounted. I bought a mount from walker downriggers because it had a wide enough throat to fit the boats transom. that's where the cannon is going. so now i can remove the cannon at any time without any mounting holes or fuss. When all said and done, I'll have a cannon out the back with ion control and two scotty's out the sides. If I didn't have the kicker motor, I would put the other one I made out the back too....back to the snagging, ever done that. I would suggest having wire cutter handy for cable. you can always cut dacron with a knife. I once got a ball stuck in horse shoe bay, we had to take our shirts off and wrap them around our hands to saw through what ever was down there. learned then to make sure I have cutters on hand.
took like 40 min to do it :roll:


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

I use Cannon Mag 20s on my big boat and Cannon mini trolls on my cartoppers. 

I recommend that you make sure your wire cutters do their job, try them out at the start of each season. 

Paint Fish:
I take a hole punch and punch an "eye" indentation. Then spray paint them 2 coats of flat white, then a medium green (or hot pink, or blaze orange, even silver, or just leave it white) down the sides, followed by a black streak down the back. I paint the eye gold, or use a stick-on doll eye. 

Let all dry for a couple of days. 

Then I mix glow-in-the-dark dust or silver sparkles in rod finish and apply two coats to the downrigger weight. wait 2 or 3 days between coats. 

They are cool. The kokes will sometimes follow the orange ones up to the boat and try to mate with them during the spawn.

For deep mackinaw and/or nightfishing I like all white glow-in-the-dark paint. I always put eyes on them.


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## BROWN BAGGER (Sep 13, 2007)

that sounds great, gona have to give it a whirl.....


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## BROWN BAGGER (Sep 13, 2007)

check this out...in the cabelas bargin mail ad I recieved last night, it had a 7 inch screen fish camera with 100 feet of cable for 149.00.(longest one I have seen so far) Have you ever attached one of these camera's to a rigger ball, then put your offering close enough to the release, so you could see the TAKE...?


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## BROWN BAGGER (Sep 13, 2007)

If you can't tell "I GOT THE FEVER" doctor doctor tell me the news, I got a fish and released a few !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! O|*


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