beckoning
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2010
- Messages
- 182
I've searched various forums and haven't seen any entries about this. I have had 3 brands of down riggers: 2 Old Electric Walkers that keep on working (Timex watch), 2 Manual Cannons never disappointed and sold with my former boat, 2 BigJon Electrics that are OK when they work, but a pain when they don't, which is now and then. Four times I've accidentally touched the up-down switch to down and it unspools until I can quickly turn it off. It takes the better part of an hour to get the cable untangled and back on the spool, and the whole time the cable's natural twist tries to tie it in knots. I wish I could relocate the switch. '
Here's my question: How to take out the self-twisting that occurs to stainless down rigger cable over time. My Walkers and my Cannons never had that problem. After my mishap of accidentally hitting the switch, all my cable is now back on the spool, but I think it has a memory of wanting to self-tangle. How to undo that memory? How to take the twist out of 250' of stainless steel cable? My idea is to take the boat out on Lake Michigan (where I fish), replace the 10lb weight with a 2oz weight and let out almost all the cable while moving at 2mph for a mile or two. Hopefully, that will allow the cable to naturally untwist itself. Alternatively, I could let out one rigger's cable without a weight and just let it untwist on its own without trying to keep it straight, then bring it in, and repeat on the other side.
And I'm not going to replace the stainless with braided line of some kind. Braided is a water flea magnet, and too risky for losing weights. Besides, as someone said somewhere, I like the sing of these cables. The sing tells me the trolling speed is good (1.7-2.7mph)
Someone out there must have dealt before with undoing this tendency to twist into knots.
Here's my question: How to take out the self-twisting that occurs to stainless down rigger cable over time. My Walkers and my Cannons never had that problem. After my mishap of accidentally hitting the switch, all my cable is now back on the spool, but I think it has a memory of wanting to self-tangle. How to undo that memory? How to take the twist out of 250' of stainless steel cable? My idea is to take the boat out on Lake Michigan (where I fish), replace the 10lb weight with a 2oz weight and let out almost all the cable while moving at 2mph for a mile or two. Hopefully, that will allow the cable to naturally untwist itself. Alternatively, I could let out one rigger's cable without a weight and just let it untwist on its own without trying to keep it straight, then bring it in, and repeat on the other side.
And I'm not going to replace the stainless with braided line of some kind. Braided is a water flea magnet, and too risky for losing weights. Besides, as someone said somewhere, I like the sing of these cables. The sing tells me the trolling speed is good (1.7-2.7mph)
Someone out there must have dealt before with undoing this tendency to twist into knots.