jekyll

The BWD 1101 7'0" medium power 2 piece is a nice factory rod for copper as long as it will pass your splices or swivels in your rigging.

No problem. The eyes are larger than level wind guides. Reels can be the limiter on swivels and splices.

I switched to 7 foot Ugly sticks Medium action for my short coppers. Much easier to fight a fish with as the fish has much less leverage on me.

Goop it all up with liquid electrical tape and it should be GTG.

Big Jons have a slow stop, they keep going a bit. Mine go for 2 feet after releasing the switch. I run 15 lb balls on tournament pros. Wire up with 10 AWG wire and it may cure your breaker problem. I had the same issue running with 12 AWG but, 10 cured it.

PM sent

Fished it Monday and found good browns between smoker and alcan. 25 to 40 FOW down 15 to 20. LOTS of bait everywhere under 50 FOW. Surface temp was 56 and 52 degrees was about 15 down. That was after the big blow over the weekend. We found a good green zone extending out about 1/2 mile. Bait and fish in the green but not the blue. better winds this week likely cleared up the green zone though.

I don't really care about the exact depth.  I put the balls above the fish and use my electronics to fine tune my spread.  If the X4D says the rigger is at 90' and the rigger shows below the fish, what good is it doing me? 

Well, if the FF marks fish at 90 feet, put your probe down till the depth sensor says 85 and you will be just above them. At this point, your cable and FF may be showing 100 feet due to blowback. The point I made is that the X4D depth sensor is pretty accurate (at least mine is). If it says 90 feet down and the fish are marking at 90 feet down, I know the ball is at the same depth as the fish and I can adjust from there.

If you put your cable out so the counter and FF are showing the ball at 85 feet, your ball may only be 70 feet down. The ball lifts with blowback but the FF will still show it at the 85 feet you put out because it is showing the hypotenuse distance to the ball, not the vertical leg of the triangle (depth).

Speed changes really show the ball depth on the sensor rising and settling however; the FF shows the balls staying the same depth. My FF will show my balls moving under the bottom when deep and close over a soft bottom. 

I run 15 lb torpedoes and I can put out 115 of cable and not hit bottom in 100 FOW at 2.4. It is a good indication of ball lift with blowback.

Hmmmm...  I have no problem with my cable.  Oh wait, thats because I run a Fish Hawk X4.   

Yeah, I upgraded to X4D this year and haven't been happier!

I hear there a lot of used Depth Raiders for sale now.

I haven't eaten a serving of fresh salmon in 2 or 3 years even though I caught over 1500 of them last year between the lake and rivers. Some go back in the lake during spring and summer but, August fish go in the cooler. I release most river fish. I have more salmon-eating-friends than I can shake a stick at. I smoke several each year for myself. Also, I provide salmon and trout for an annual fish fry with a group of friends. They buy monk fish for me and I supply the salmon they love. I take up to 20 buddies fishing each year and they take the catch home. Also, a lot of Amish eat fish from my boat. The people I give fish to don't seem to care if it is a river fish or a lake fish. They enjoy whatever I give them.

I tied mine to the spool. Through the hole in the spool and then a knot to keep it from pulling through.

Make sure you don't crimp the cable when attaching to the downrigger spool. This causes 95% of all failures.

Fish finders tell you how far the ball is from the transducer, not the surface. 100 feet of cable is still 100 feet away from the transducer at any normal trolling speed, however; blowback varies with speed. I have an X4 and the depth sensor is pretty much dead-on. I banged bottom with mine in 90 FOW on the FF and the probe said 90 feet. The cable said 116 feet. 

The CG is tasked with enforcement on all waterways that can be navigated to from the oceans.

You'll be happy.

Never had a problem running a partial copper down the chute using a twilly tip. Don't need to mark the backing, just count passes on the level-wind, if so equipped.

Yeah, I should have said I run 30 lb PP with about 40 feet of 30lb Big Game at the end. The slide diver stays on the PP. This method gives the benefits of both PP and Mono without the disadvantages or either. I use about 10 feet of florocarbon leader in front of the bait.

How easily do your releases slide down with a dive bomb? I have a couple I've never tried. Heard that's a problem with them. They dig in and the copper takes forever to move out to the side.

Dive bombs add some pull to the rig for sure. I find that actually helps the release slide out on the board line. I use shower rings and rubber bands. The more weight on the line - the easier it slides out. Nothing worse than trying to get a light surface mono line with an Evil Eye to move out on the board line. I don't even use big boards until I start running copper or cores. Light mono lines don't like to slide out so, I stick to in-lines for shallow trout fishing.

I've used them a lot, mostly for browns. I use them as a stealth rig therefor, I only use clear. I switch the the standard weights out for the heavy weights and add rings. I find they dive deeper than #1 dipsies and approach mag dipsies but, they are more difficult to deploy than regular dipsies. I learned the hard way to never deploy them on the same side with a regular dipsy. They take a bit of time and fumbling to install properly so, I keep them on dedicated rods. Get the Light -Bite version.

The depth sensor is worth the money, IMO.

My understanding form Fish Hawk communications is that both are here to stay.

I just added the X4D this year and am very happy, to say the least. I screwed with Cannon and Depth Raider for a number of years. As said above, X4D does not have surface speed. It uses the surface speed location for ball depth. I use my FF for surface speed but, I really don't much care what the surface speed is. The depth sensor was the trigger for me. Mine is pretty much dead-on. I was over 90 FOW with the depth sensor reading 88.  A minute later, I saw the boom bounce and found the FF was saying the depth was now 88 feet. No guessing about how blow-back affects ball depth. It tells you the actual depth of your ball. It is well worth the extra cost to me.

Don't have many events where a fish takes an outside inline board down to tangle with a dipsy. More frequent is when a dipsy fish rises up and out, into the board rig. Run your inlines out farther. More frequent tangles come from running 2 or 3 lines off big boards because your inside lines will be closer to the dipsy and not as far back.

If your fishing your dipsies shallow, say 50 feet down, your board will likely be to far out for a fish to tangle your board line into the dipsy. More risk when your dipsies are stretched out to 350+ feet. In this case, switch to mag dipsies and shorten the set back for the same depth.

300 is a good length to start with. Buy some dive bombs in various sizes (they are cheap). They add 5 to 8 feet of depth per ounce, IIR. I find I use my 300 and 450 with dive bombs versus longer lengths. This cuts down on the number of rods you need to buy and carry and gives shorter runs to retrieve. Dive bombs give you the flexibility to run from 60 to 100 down on a 300.

I lost an in line with a 10 color when I broke the line popping the release to retrieve a few years ago- board just sank.

Instantly set a way point, come back around with your balls down and dipsies out and deep. Pass over the waypoint at 90 degrees and you have a good chance of picking up the core, copper. The board may not float the whole wieght but, it will float some of it and will be suspended. I saved a 600 copper and a TX-44 board using this method this year. Of course, you can't do this over 600 FOW but, you can in under 300 feet.

I've also saved several cores/coppers that broke by immediately popping the dipsy on that side and letting it float up into the sinking line. Dipsies can run close (side distance) to a copper or core due to the different sink rates. Your dipsy will be 90-100 feet down 300 feet behind your boat while a copper may only be down 35 feet at the same distance as a result of the board being set back behind the boat. Gentle turns keep them clear of each other. I get rather few tangles from dipsy fish climbing up into the nearby copper/core and those usually are only a once-around deal. Kings usually go down and smaller fish move behind the boat before they can rise into the copper. It doesn't hurt to run the board out farther when fighting a dipsy fish on its side.

You can keep your snap swivels installed but, you must add a leader directly to the plug. I rig my J's with a leader about 2-3 feet long, tied directly to the hook chain. I put an simple overhand loop knot at the other end which I put through the snap swivel. This allows rapid change of the J by opening the snap and sliding the leader out of the J. I started using heavier flourocarbon for the leader for added abraision resistance against teeth. Tied directly is fine, just a bit slower to replace plugs.

Depends on how deep you need to fish. Last I heard the temp break from Oswego to Mexico was down 95 so, mag dipsies or #1 with mag ring are a good tool.