Electric Downriggers

[Downriggerer]

I have Cannon Mag 10 STX.  My next boat will have Scotty Dowriggers.  Cannon has terrible cutomer support and the electrical connectors are garbage.  I cut mine off and replaced with Scotty connectors and no problems since. 

5 years of electrical engineering school tells me positive ions are marketing.  The "black box" is a term in Engineering for something someone else makes and you only know the inputs and outputs and nothing in between.  If your boat is properly grounded, you won't have a problem. 

I also hate the auto up on my Cannons because I stack on my downriggers.  I replaced the cable with 400 feet of Scotty braid downrigger line.  No more auto up.  No more humming.  No more lost stacker releases.  No marketing with positive ions. 

I take my boat to the PNW every year and fish on the ocean.  It's closer to the Scotty factory, I admit.  But guess how many of those boats, that run in the salt every day they go out use Cannons.  I've seen 2 in 8 years.  They all use Scotty downriggers.

Plus, if you need one tiny little part, they can send you a tiny little part.  So when the screw on the front end of your Cannon base falls out because of the cupped washer, you have to order an entirely new base just to get the screw.  At Scotty you can get every individual part and a lot of times, they send them to you, postage paid, for free.

Cannon is popular here because it's on the shelf.  But that's the only reason.  I'm not going to buy new Scottys for the boat.  I've adapted my Cannons enough to do the job I want them to do.  But, like I said at the beginning, my next boat will have Scottys.

I'm a degreed electronic engineer and have over 40 years working on electronic equipment.  You and I could go round and round on what is, and what is not, the truth with regard to ion voltages on downrigger metal cables.  But I won't debate you about it on here because it wouldn't prove anything, neither of us will change our position, and others would just be by it all.  Lets just say that you and I totally disagree on the concept and the application and let it go at that.

You like Scotty's - I'm happy for you.  I like Cannons - I'm happy for me.  There are good and bad with either one.  If you were to go back and fish on any of the Great Lakes, you would find Big Jon outsells all the other brands combined on the thousands of charter boats running every day of the season.   There simply isn't a single brand of DR out there that is all things to everybody.  Tight lines to you and have a great season even though your are forced to use what you consider an inferior product.
 

You're free to disagree on the "ions" created by supposedly running  milliamps of current running down a wire at 3V or less.  If you're happy with the black box, that's fine.  The math tells me it's a gimmick.  Also, taking off all the wire and seeing that the wire was crimped through a hole in the spool and was not otherwise connected to anything tells me, they aren't even running current down the wire unless they have an unreasonably large inductor inside the downrigger they would need to induce a current in the stainless steel downrigger wire, which is not a great conductor on a relative scale.  Not to mention what happens to electric fields when you put them in water.

I'm not saying fish aren't sensitive to electromagnetic fields.  I just have a hard time believing the downrigger or the black box is doing anything to create one.  And, serious question, because I don't know the answer, what are the ions they say they are creating?  Ions of water?

I painted my downrigger ball bright pink.  I can see fish coming up to them on the fish finder as well.  I have a plain lead ball and I see fish coming up to them on the fish finder too.  Kokanee, in particular, are curious fish.  So, we can agree to disagree.

But you seem unhappy that I criticized Cannon.  Other than the black box, where we agree to disagree, where was I wrong?  My electrical connectors did corrode.  I couldn't get parts for my downrigger, even simple ones like the mounting screw.  I had to buy a whole base for just the screw.  They have a chincy cupped washer to hold the screw in as it goes down the road which means the screw falls out.  Where am I wrong?  How are these not legitimate criticisms?  I had new screws machined at a shop so I could put C clips on them and prevent them from falling out, which is how it should have been done in the first place.  I know that people have cracked the spool on Cannon downriggers by using braid which applied too much pressure to the spool and cracked it.  Again, how is that not a legitimate criticism?  How is that not helpful to the OP when the criticism of the Cannon downrigger is legitimate? 

Also, I'm sure there are lots of people who like Big Jon downriggers.  I don't know much about them.  But, the Great Lakes are not the ocean and do not require the same durability as salt water.  I don't think anyone would argue that saltwater tests fishing gear more than any other type of water.  If that's true, why do people who fish in salt water choose Scotty?  Why do charter boats fishing for salmon in Alaska use Scotty and not Big Jon or Cannon or Walker, or anything else?  The answer is pretty plain to me.

All that said, if you are happy with the Cannons, that's great.  If you haven't experienced any problems with them, I envy you.  If you've never lost a fish because of their failures, I envy you even more. 

My Cannons work now that I have fixed the problems I had with them.  But, I do believe I bought an inferior product with inferior customer service because it was sold here in Utah.  And, I think the OP should know that.

I appreciate the good wishes, although I believe they are in cheek.  I sincerely hope your downriggers continue to work well for you and that they bring many fish to your dinner table and many days of enjoyment to your leisure time.  After all, I think we have more in common than we have that separates us.  By the way, what kind of electronics did you work on?  I did a lot of soldering in school on PCBs for home automation.  It was a great job.  I haven't soldered anything in probably a couple of years but you never forget the smell of flux burning on a nicely soldered processor.  Simpler days that I probably should have appreciated more at the time.

See you on the water.

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Does either Scotty or Canon allow you to raise the ball and then stop partway up say to release a shuttle Hawk and then continue raising up from there. I see that all of them have automatic raise to the water level but do some of them allow you to stop Midway?

With Cannons and the stainless steel wire, you have to watch for the stop point and push down on the lever to cancel the automatic up.  Scotty allows you to stop any time.  But, my understanding is, you have to hold the lever in your hand while you are bringing the ball up and then release the lever when you want it to stop.  So, there is a tradeoff.