1mainiac

I don't know about grounding the riggers but you have a serious ground problem somewhere. For best over all setup all 12vdc grounds should go to the water this includes the radio. Any electrical mismatch that puts voltage between the hull and water will cause electrolis (sp) this is what eats your Zinc's and on a Aluminum boat the hull as well. Once properly grounded you should see improved radio performance as the ground is part of the antenna you could also see better fishfinder performance and you should never see voltage on the downrigger or any other cable entering the water.

best spread for me last year was a 11 in Pro Troll Blue Bubble flasher with a green fly on my deepest rigger about 10ft behind the ball. Clean spoon with a slider on other rigger above and behind that. Divers with flasher fly combos and soons and 300 copper with the copper taking a lot of fish outside of that setup would be various other core and board setups. While my diver program was not as hot last season it seemed to bring fish into the spread, The deep rigger with the big board and fly got a lot of late morning fish and the 300 copper was hot most of the season once the water warmed up.

Never ran the red but have ran both yellow and green and saw no difference however I liked the yellow much better as easier to see the line and keep it out of other lines. I will be buying more Yellow myself.

Thanks but the unfortunate fact is they won't work on my riggers they won't handle the current to run the motors. The standard captain pack riggers draw around 7 amps mine as setup draw around 30 amps the original motors drew around 50 amps. The new setup I am considering was designed for the new Brute ES and requires a change in my motors to work. Because Big Jon is a great company and they knew my intended plan for the riggers and the upgrades they are giving me a break and willing to redo the motors if I do the other upgrades. They were not kidding when they named these things Brute's while many riggers use windsheild wiper motors these are more like what you would find on a winch. If John is correct the new clutch system will solve all of my problems the auto stop is just real high on the wish list as it is nice to just hit the switch and know the ball will stop on it's own however as fast as these are having to hold the switch for a few seconds to bring the ball up is not all that bad. 1 other thing with the new setup is Soft Start which is part of the speed control it allows you to make small adjustments and also lets the motor start out slow and build speed as it runs so rather than dropping the clutch at hole shot speed it starts out slow and then steps on the gas.

Well I may not do the auto stop system as that is currently about another 300 bucks they will upgrade the motors at no charge and the new clutch system is about 20 bucks a rigger. I may even decide to just do the clutch upgrade and keep the current motors as they do haul butt. The upgraded motors however are slower 200fpm and have less current draw which is nice. SO I may stick with the smoking fast riggers and fix the only major issue I currently have which is the clutches slipping. The auto stop setup however would be very nice as it would make it much simpler to run the back of the boat but as fast as these come up it does not take much to bring up the ball.

I thought I would give a little info on my old Big Jons they are about to go back and get another update which I am hopeing will be one of the last. First I want to say thanks to John Williams and all the staff at Big Jon they are a fantastic group to work with and the only place I will ever buy downrigger's from as the result. About 5 years ago I picked up a old set of Big Jon Seniors at a yard sale they were missing a few peices but looked to be in good shape. A couple of calls to Big Jon had the missing peices on the way and they were working great. I had a few issues with the switchs and they would kill my battery big time if I used them a lot so the next fall I called them back and learned that the motors mine had were rated for 50 amps ea and I did not have enough electrical system on my old boat to run them. They agreed to update them to what at the time would be the same as Brutes for 70 bucks ea so I sent them in and also bought rod holder bases for them. This solved most of my problems but actually created a new one as now they were able to get enough power to run full speed which is amazing but hard on the clutchs and sometimes cause my gear to tangle going down. In discussion with John about this last year we discussed a new setup which would give me auto stop and speed control along with a soft start which would be easier on my clutchs. Right now hitting the up switch on my riggers is like dropping the clutch on a dragster sometimes the ball is flying up and others the clutchs slip. I got a better explaination of that this morning as John explained to me that my riggers as they are currently setup are running abot 245 fpm up speed and even faster down. However the price of the speed control and autostop setup we talked about last season has gone way up. Based on this I have to call him back next week as he is trying to see if they can just do a autostop system and change my motors to the newer Brute ES motor which will run slower 200 fpm up and also convert my clutch system to handle the load better. If we do everything we talked about this morning I will have close to 650 bucks into the pair of riggers and with the new features they should out preform in some ways the new Brutes. Also I sold my side riggers so I will only have the 2 riggers on the boat this season as I am using the money form the 2 side riggers to buy more track and rod holders and to update the Big Jons. So I hope to have a more versitile setup this season with little to no money out of pocket to do it.

I agree Mike the new X4 is a major improvement my first response was to Scottb as to why anyone would buy a differant model. When I bought mine there were only a couple of choices I did not like the display of the Sub Troll thought it looked ugly still do. The 840 was big and bulky and knew several people who had them and complained about the battery hassle and that they were killing a battery every trip. The Depth Raider has a small display unit looks nice and works great yep the coated cable is a draw back. But the price and long battery life were the things that sold me. I average well over 200 hours of trolling on a 9 volt battery. Had the current X4 been in production when I bought mine I would have given it more consideration because it has a long reputation of working and I freely admit I took a chance buying the Depth Raider but I don't regret it.

I guess it depends on how many batteries you use in 5 years the reason I said that is based on friend of mine who chartered with one for many years and had to change 9 volt batteries every trip. We talked about back when I bought the Depth raider he was the one who convinced me to try the Depth Raider as he said he went thru roughly 150 9volt batteries a season.

Because I paid 395 bucks for my Depth Raider it is about to enter its 5th season and use less than a battery a year my first battery lasted nearly 2 seasons and was still working when I changed it. Never even unhooked the probe from the rigger untill the cable broke about the end of the second season. My fault for not checking the crimps and connections. Bought a new probe and started taking it off and on but the first 2 seasons it was attached and sealed to the cable. My bet is there are guys out there with the 840 units that have spent more on batteries alone than I have in my entire system including the second probe. If the new cannon system works it will be my next probe because of the actual depth feature rather than just guessing how much blowback effects it. Not knocking the new X4 it is a great unit but close to dbl the cost of other units that will do the job just fine and say what you want it is because of the Depth Raider the prices have came down and the unit got upgraded. Prior to the Depth Raider you pretty much had 2 choices both ugly and both expensive.

Like I said in my first post Jim it ain't that hard getting the drive alignment correct is the only issue. The rest is just nuts and bolts and is much easier than pulling a 350 out of a chevy truck.

It will work sort of however you are not accounting for blowback or the change in water density. I have ran a full core off the ball at 180ft I doubt the lure even got to 200ft and that was with a 15lb ball. I will say it is funny to wacth some one run and grab a rigger and after a battle realize they still have a full core to deal with. Call it a Super SWR or Super PITA is about the same. If you need to get deep you need longer cables on your rigger and heavy balls. I put 400ft cables on my deep rigger and am getting a 20lb pancake weight for it. I just sold 2 of my riggers including the one I had a probe on so see me at the swap meet I will have a slightly used 400ft cannon cable for sale since I have to pull it to install my probe cable on the rigger. Will make someone a fair deal on it.

2 color and 5 color are 2 of my favs 2 color great early and as a SWR ran below a deep rigger 5 color great early and a late season steelhead setup this would leave you a possible 3 color setup off one full core. early season 8 would be too deep and late summer would be too shallow

It is a easy job do the heavy work yourself then take it to get aligned. The drive can be off in 15 min with a way to pull the engine setup you should have the engine on a stand in under a couple of hours easy. You can buy the shaft to do the alignment yourself if you want or do like I did on the last one I pulled leave the drive off and go get it aligned I had a new gimble and boots done at the same time. I have a friend who will come to your place and do the alignment if you want or he can do the whole job it is what he does for a living.

Your plotter should have connections or wires marked NMEA out it may also have NMEA in you need to run the NMEA out from the plotter to the NMEA in on the AP. This allows the plotter to send info to the AP. If you have DSC hooked up to your radio it will be the same out cables to the radio and yes you can share this connection with multiple devices. If you radio has NMEA out you hook those to the NMEA in on your plotter these are usually not shared though I am not sure that they can't be but don't know of a reason other than to share radar with the plotter where you would need to share the input to the Plotter. Most of the Radar systems I have looked at don't use NMEA to connect to the plotter but some could. Hope this helps

most of time more action hole best to pull it alongside the boat and see how it behaves they can get pretty wild depending on your speed. I find myself running more Pro Trolls this last year.

In 3 to 4 ft waves you don't see the board till you reel it back in you listen to the clicker to tell if it has a fish on it. Ask anyone who has been out late season Steelhead fishing with me we haul butt and are constantly trying to see the boards however when the bite is on we fill the box. I am actually going to run braid on my 3 and 5 color rods as they are so far out you can't get the board to trip due to line stretch.

I have several Diawa Wilderness rods that I got for 14.95 ea they have caught dozens of fish ea with no problems I also have a couple of Diawa Firewolf ML rods that are blast to catch fish on I think they were 19.95 ea I use the Firewolf rods on my riggers and run core off the Wilderness rods mostly. There are many low budget choices out there that all do a good job.

If it were my choice Frank I would get the Garmin I like my Lowrance but would likely not try another one too many horror stories. Garmin is a solid company as far as I can find out and will be around a while.

Was just discussing that with my FIL about heading up to the river tommorrow. This time of year working deeper hole with plugs like Hot N Tots works pretty good or drifting spawn or small flies thru these holes will often bring a fish or 2 out of most runs. Look for fish in long deep slower runs and work them slow and steady Start at the front of the run and work all the way thru it several times being very carefull at the tail out. Esp if pulling plugs as often you will back the fish up in the run and when they hit the tail out they have 2 choices hit the lure or move out of the run. Good luck if I end up going I will leave a report.

Depending on who you talk to 45#copper will get you between 80 and 100% deeper than lead core for the same amount of line out. Copper rises and falls much faster in the water it will also change direction differantly. Lead core has it's own action as the sheath is bouyant and this causes it to vary in action as it passes thru differant temp zones and currents. The one big advantage to copper is getting deep without as much line out the disadvantage is it takes a big reel to hold it. but generally 150ft of 45# copper will get you in the same depth range as 300ft of lead core.

I don't know what your budget is or what you expect but there are a lot of options. I like my Lawrance 525 CDF and I also like my friends 797 Humming bird they are both about 800 bucks and currently out of production. Actually the still make the 797 but is a differant version than my friends not sure if they still offer a 525CDF or what would be similar I had a cuddy and my friend has a open boat so mine has a seperate GPS antenna and his is built in.

Before I got the second set of downriggers I sometimes ran 3 divers per side Mags on wire 107's on braid set on 2 and #1's on mono set on 3. Worked good most of the time only knitted a sweater a time or 2. Keep in mind what you run behind them affects how they run so a low diver pulling a Flasher fly will not be as deep as you think and could end up in a high diver pulling a spoon.

I have 6 of em bought 4 and got 2 in the Shootout grab bag they work great I have heard guys say they leave em on and fish with them but that I have not tried.

I only run my wire divers on 1.5 and high divers on 2.5 when running a high diver and copper get the copper away from the boat as far as possible. It is not unusual for me to have my boards nearly out of sight in the distance I never fish the pack and have often ran my outside board 600 or more ft from the boat generally I try to keep my copper board at least 75 to 100ft from the boat. And I try and keep the boards at least 50ft or more apart so when I am running 4 boards per side I am covering some acreage.

Mike it has taken them over a decade to take over the river and there really are very few rivers that offer the conditions they need to spawn effectively so my bet would be that we have a lot of time left our kids on the other hand it does not look good for. We have more to fear from having the great lakes turned over to the UN then the carp but that would likely start a major war.