Chuck Smth

We weathered the storm pretty good - had lots of boat beneath us. No lightning thankfully. When that starts it's time to get out of Dodge. Been fishing Lake O since 82 and never saw one come up this hard and this fast. The USCG put out a security call about 1 minute before it hit. We were saying we better pull lines and then we were in it almost immediately. Had a full spread with boards, copper, lead and dipseys so it's not a quick deal to get back into cruise mode so we rode it out. Chuck

The answer depends on how far forward you mount it. If you mount too far forward with a short arm current and wind can take your line into the prop. As a very general rule, the downrigger shouldn't be mounted an further forward of the transom than the arm length, but there are exceptions to every rule. The bigger the boat, the more you can get a way with. Small aluminum boats tend to be blown by the wind and are the most troublesome. On a 40,000 pound boat you can get away with a bit more.

I also remember the old tick-tick-tick sound they made.

Wow, an X15. I haven't seen one of those in 35 years! They were an amazing piece of technology in their day. I had one back in the day. I don't think they sell paper or styluses for them anymore. Ah, the smell of an X15 or a Sitex, that's fishing in the 80's.

We boated (and released) a nice king this year that had been caught before, so thanks to whoever released it before we caught it. Chuck

Truth is, I don't get too hung up on being millimeter-perfect on depth. The dang fish are 3 or 4 feet long, so a couple of fish-lengths either way won't matter. Given my choice, a little high seems to be better than a little low. Just be in the ballpark and you'll be fine. It's not a situation where you'll catch fish at 52 feet but not 50 or 54. We catch as many fish on lead and dipsy's as we do riggers and they're up and down all over depending on turns, speed, current, etc. Heck, I've seen fish come up 30' to hit a bait. When you think thermocline you need to remember fish are cold-blooded. They can be at any temp with enough oxygen to sustain them. They just don't like rapid changes that require them to adjust to their surroundings. Kings (in my humble experience) like to stay in the most stable temps which are generally around 49°F in Lake Ontario where the oxygen is plentiful, but will certainly leave it briefly to chase a meal. In other words, I've found down temp and down speed is more important than the actual depth. As far as distance from the transducer, meh. Even for a 50° cone the largest error can only be 10% ( d/cos(50°/2). That's not enough to worry about, especially if your transducer transom depth isn't considered. For a 20° cone it's really insignificant. All IMHO and YMMV, and that's totally cool, Chuck

Coho