Electric Downriggers

Utah Fishing Reports & Discussion Strawberry, Scofield, Starvation Fish Report Arch
1

I’m Kicking around the idea of replacing my BigJon manual Downriggers for two electric downriggers. I have read up on Cannon and Scotty and have pretty much narrowed it down to one of these two brands. I would probably get the Cannon Mag 10 STX or the Scotty 1101 mostly because of the swivel mount.
I would like to hear the good and bad of each brand and model and any experiences you have with them. Are either easier to use or mount and connect to the boat? Any info wqould be appreciated.
Thanks, EA

4
5

I’ve been running Walker electrics for fifteen years now. When I bought my new to me current boat they came with 2 Scotty 1106 DR’s. Like dubob I decided to try them and I wasn’t able to adjust as well as I thought. When I sold my previous boat I did keep all 4 of my Walkers mounting them on current boat and I sold the Scotty’s.
My take on this would be is hitch a ride on other boats with different downriggers. Knowing what you experienced will help determine your outcome. Not all DR’s features are the same.

6

I would think about this, it works and will help you catch more fish
Cannon comes with this
Positive Ion Control
Emits a fish attracting field of positive ions around the cable. Your boat emits negative ions, which can detract fish from coming near. Positive ion control releases a field of positive ions around the cable to bring the fish back where they belong – on your line.

if you buy another brand I would think about buying a Black Box

7

I’ve never been a big fan of Scott’s, mainly because of the free fall down, like others I’ve never been able to adjust to it.
ive always used cannons, started from manuls, then got electric ones.
I have mag 10’s (one newer and one old one) and just picked up a used Mag5 HS to replace the older super slow mag10.

9

I have a small Scotty. It has been very reliable. I like the autostop on it and the simplicity of use. You an see the one I use in this video I made on Jordanelle. https://youtu.be/kv35Efi0EI0 at 9:15

10

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.

11

Looks like I will need to make a video of fish looking at my downrigger wire, I just got back from Flaming gorge
had the downrigger ball on the bottom, ON my fishfinder I could see lakers come and look at the ball

Kokanee that were 35 feet down I would see them come from the front of the boat get by the downrigger ball stop then go to the lure and get hooked. one thing that was neat was a kokanee down 50 feet went stright up fast hit the squid that was down 33 feet, he was only 8" long

12

I’m glad that the new fish finder is working out for you. Before long you won’t have time to fish with all of the equipment that you have to keep an eye on. :slight_smile:

13

Thanks for all the comments. I don’t know if I am any closer to which brand I should get though. lol

14
15
17
18

Fieh307.com sells all the individual piece parts for cannon, including the plugs. wrote:
Fieh307.com sells all the individual piece parts for cannon, including the plugs.

were/are your plugs the old style or the new yellow ones?

19
20

Downriggerer,

I sent you a PM.

22

Sorry for the slow reply. Work has been dawn till well after dusk the past couple days. I’m not sure how they do it. My guess is that since the spool is set back further into the downrigger, they are using an inductor to put a voltage on the wire. And, the auto-up feature detects when the ball is in the water by watching what the ground is doing relative to the boat. If you hook up a cannon downrigger to a battery that is otherwise disconnected from the boat ground, the auto-up feature is disabled. In fact, that’s how I disabled the auto-up before installing the Scotty electrical connectors and the braided downrigger line. I would assume, but can’t be sure, that disabled the “Positive Ion Control” as well, or at least made whatever voltage they are trying to put on the downrigger cable short to ground. So, between that and the math telling me that electrical fields don’t propagate well under water, I’m skeptical that the PIC or black box works. I think, and the math says, it catches fishermen, not fish.

23
25

Bob, you can’t “do” physics. You can do the math that explains the physics. You know good and well that physics doesn’t mean anything without the math to explain it. The physics is the concept. The math describes it. Saying that it’s “not math, it’s physics” is disingenuous and you know it.
Oh hogwash. Physics is the scientific study of matter and energy and the relations between them. Nobody needs to use math to understand the relationships; they only need math to define or measure the relationships. In the case of the PIC, one only needs to know that controlling the ions to a desired level (in this case + 0.6 vdc) is better than a negative voltage or a significantly higher positive level. I don’t have to do any math at all to know and understand that concept. And neither do you. Show me one single bit of math that you were required to do to understand that principle.
And no one has argued that water doesn’t conduct electricity and the more free conductive minersals in it, the more electricity it will conduct. But you are talking about running .6v down 40-80 feet. The electrical field that creates is virtually zero, like approaching zero as the limit of the water’s conductivity approaches infinity. That’s less than your two AA batteries, which I might also note is a test run in salt water with sharks, which is more conductive than water in lakes, for the most part. Whatever field there is, is gone, real quick.
I don’t care how much cable you let out – the voltage you measure between the cable and the boat will be + 0.6 vdc with the Cannon PIC. And you don’t have a clue as to how big the electrical field is or how far away any species of freshwater fish can detect/feel/sense that field. If, by chance, I’m incorrect and you do have a clue, show me your math that shows me exactly how big the electrical field is an how far away a kokanee salmon can detect that specific field.
The reality is that my downriggers were not directly electrically connected to anything when I took the steel cable off. That can’t be argued. There were no connections between the electronics in the downrigger and the cable. That’s not to say that an inductor or a magnet couldn’t be in the downrigger body itself. But, there is no direct connection. That you are aware of.
As I said, even assuming that there is electricity on the cable, their explanation is plausible for how the auto-up works. The auto up is also defeated NOT JUST BY SUPERLINES but also by using another battery NOT CONNECTED TO THE BOAT’s electrical even with the stainless steel cable. Fact. It’s how I’ve run my boat for years, specifically to defeat the auto up. And it is likely because I shut off a negative return through the water. But, again, so what? That doesn’t change anything I’ve said. Not only is it likely, that is exactly why it didn’t work.
The bottom line is that I catch hundreds of kokanee a year. I have shown people on this forum how I do it. I built my own rods to make a better fishing experience and to land more fish. I make my own lures. I have specific hook setups that result in more fish in the boat. I have caught them with and without the “positive ion control” nonsense. I have caught them with superlines and without superlines. I have caught them pretty much every way there is to catch them and I usually have to quit catching them before I’m done catching them because I have limits already.
Everything in my fishing experience says having 2 more lines in the water on a stacker FAR outweighs the value of whatever voodoo electrical nonsense. Everything in my electrical experience says Positive Ion Control catches fishermen, not fish. And, painting my downrigger ball with the superlines has resulted in no change to my fishing success either in terms of the number of hits I get or the number of fish in the boat.
It ain’t voodoo electrical nonsense. The electrical current flowing through the water produces an electrical field around the current flow and perpendicular to the direction of the current flow. This is a condition of the physical world we live in that is measurable. Its already been proven and requires no doing of math by any of us. I know it exists without doing any math.
I, too, ran braided line on my previous Cannon downriggers to eliminate the cable hum. I had no trouble at all catching limits of kokanee at the Gorge and Strawberry using braid. When I bought my new boat in 2017 and ran 4 Scottys on it, I found a voltage level of +0.9 vdc measured between any of the 4 cables in the water and the boat. Still caught salmon, but it took longer, on average, to catch a boat limit. It was taking me 3 hours or longer to get a 6-fish limit at the Gorge when friends using Cannons and essentially the same color flashers and squids were catching 6 salmon in under an hour. I now run Cannons with SS cable and can catch a limit in 90 minutes or less on good days.
Use whatever downrigger brand you want. It’s a free country and you are the only decision maker when it comes to what you want on your boat. Just stop trying to convince others that PIC and Short Stop offered by Cannon is bull crap and worthless.
Cannons are generally available in utah at the sporting goods stores. That’s why I bought mine.
Really? That’s the reason you bought Cannon – because it was available in a Utah store. Ever hear about Internet shopping? You can almost always find stuff cheaper to buy in the Internet than you can in a retail store near you. And you get to buy exactly the brand you want.
But that doesn’t make them the best downrigger, which is a mistake I made in buying them.
I made my case. The OP can do whatever he wants. But, at least through this process he can see the pluses and minuses of each type of downrigger.
To the OP – Either downrigger brand (Cannon/Scotty) will work to get your lures down to where the fish are congregating on any day, be it 5 feet down or 150 feet down or any depth between. I’ve run mine as shallow is 2 feet down. Both have features that the other does not offer. Both have cons. They are very close to each other in price. I recommend Cannon as the better choice; he says Scotty fits his style better. If you don’t like what you buy after using it for a season, put ‘em on KSL at the start of next season and sell ‘em. Took me less than 2 days to sell all 4 of my Scottys after one season’s use and sold them for about $75 less than I paid for each one.

26