Fishing with Downriggers

I have a love-hate relationship with downriggers. The concept of presenting a livebait or lure at a depth where the fish are far more likely to be makes a lot of sense, but I just seem to have had a bizarre run of experiences with these devices. What follows is a summary of my downrigger antics to date.

Event No.1

Four years ago I was lucky enough to visit the ZipoloHabu fishing lodge in the Solomon Islands. This was in the early days of this resort’s existence - there wasn’t the famed ‘fish while you dine’ restaurant, nor had the wharf been built at that stage, which made the twice daily trip to and from the boat a case of ‘wait for a break in the sea snakes - then go for it!’ Our group had a week’s outstanding sportfishing, which included numerous giant trevally encounters and a deficit of lures I have only recently made good.

One day, returning from an outer reef, we decided to give the boat’s downrigger its first swim and proceeded to attach a wire-rigged long-tom (like a piper with teeth) about 10m behind the lead ball. Although we were within popper-casting distance of the reef edge, there was over 100m of water below us so the downrigger was lowered to about 20m and we trolled slowly along occasionally throwing lures towards the white water.

After about five minutes of slow trolling the fiberglass longboat suddenly stopped dead in the water. In unison we all turned towards the stern and, at exactly the same moment, the downrigger clutch started releasing 200lb steel cable, screeching like a gnarly old school teacher dragging her fingernails down a blackboard. The stern dipped about six inches on the downrigger side and the crew’s expletives could probably be heard in Bougainville about 60 miles away!

The ride probably only lasted about five seconds but during that time everyone on board arrived at the following two conclusions: a) the boat wasn’t moving yet the downrigger was still charging out and, b) 20m of downrigger cable won’t snag the bottom in 100m of water!

Then, as suddenly as it began, the screeching stopped, the stern lifted and we regained our forward momentum. Everyone ‘bags-ed not’ to be the one to go to the back of the boat and wind up the downrigger – the loser timidly wound the handle. The long tom, wire rig and trace were all missing, but we did have something that resembled a lead ball still firmly attached to the cable. When I say resembled, if you remember that scene in Jurassic Park where T-Rex grabs the guy sitting on the dunny, I think his head would have finished up looking something like our downrigger ball. It had deep holes all over so that it looked like a multi-finger bowling ball.

The consensus by ‘those in the know’ was that we had just had a visit from a huge dogtooth tuna. Wow! Was I impressed – I needed one of these downriggers on my boat back home.

Event No 2.

A year or so later I happened to run into a keen fisherman whose father had sent him out an old downrigger from America. Since he didn’t have a boat at the time, he graciously offered me the use of it, which I accepted without hesitation. Kingfish - watch out!

They say that you learn by your mistakes. The first of mine was to mount the downrigger at 45 degrees off the transom. Just like those swept-back rocket launchers, it looked great. The problem was, I had to lean out to reach the lead ball, and with two hands needed to attach rubber bands or clips, this made rigging quite an adventure even in good conditions.

This done, however, I was ready to give ‘my’ downrigger its first swim. One fine Saturday found me out from Mangawhai at a place called Sail Rock. This place screams kingfish, so I decided to deep-troll a CD-18 Rapala off the new downrigger. I rigged the 10lb downrigger ball by attaching the 15kg main line to a shiny new $50 Aftco roller-troller and releasing the clutch. The ball zoomed off into the depths, a bit fast I thought, so I applied a little more clutch to slow the descent. This was the moment that I discovered that my somewhat corroded downrigger cable tested out at approximately 9.9 pounds! Time to buy a new cable, ball and roller-troller!

Event Number 3

Time to give the trout a go.This time on a southern hydro lake where I elected to pull a black Toby on 3kg spinning tackle. I decided to slow-troll along the lake edge following the 20m contour so I lowered the downrigger to 15m, tightened up the clutch, and started to chug along parallel to the shore. Things were looking really good immediately with heaps of fish sign on the sounder - possibly a little too good. All of a sudden, the boat lurched to one side and the downrigger clutch screeched as it slowly let out cable. The boom shuddered, bent over, and finally, with a crack like a rifle shot, shattered and fell into the lake!

I slowly wound up the still-snagged downrigger, pulling the boat backwards in the process. When I was directly over the snag I looked down and right at the limit of my vision I saw the reason for my demise – I’d trolled through the middle of a submerged forest! (Underwater trees look VERY fishy on the depth sounder.)

Right now a smart angler would be saying to themselves, “downriggers are really interesting but I’m not sure they’re for me.” I went out and bought a new one, and I’m going to damned well catch something with it this summer if it kills me!