Re: Down Riggers and poles
Hi,<br /><br />I just use a regular 7 ½ foot medium action spinning rod with my downriggers. I use a Penn 4500 spinning reel that holds about 250 yards of 10 .lb test mono. To me, that is one of the advantages of downriggers, that you can use lighter tackle. I dont know what you are fishing for, but you may need a reel with more line capacity, as previous posters have mentioned if you are talking great lakes type fishing. Im in Maine so typically I am targeting landlocked salmon or lake trout. For landlocked salmon 7-8 .lbs is a big fish and for the lake trout here 10-15 .lbs would be considered a nice fish too, so the tackle I use is great for these conditions. We dont have anything like a king salmon in freshwater here that will spool off 100 yards of line before you can blink. Me and my son usually fish 4 lines, 2 on downriggers and 2 on lead core trolling rods. I have a Cannon and a Scotty downrigger. In my opinion, the Scotty is a much better built and engineered setup, which is why I use the Scotty and let my son use the Cannon, hehehe. I never used a Big Jon, but I have heard good things about them. One more thing, if you are regularly going to fish say deeper than 75 ft or so, you might want to start thinking electric instead of manual.