Magnum Metalz Downriggers Review

[Gator]

Here's my early report on our new Magnum Metalz downriggers: they are smooth as butter. We opted for the 150 ft per minute flavor, not that you could tell since they're up in a jiffy and down as fast. I was worried about the probe since they don't have an autostop, but the clutch is so slick in combination with the Dubro button/spring - I was bringing one up when we had a second rod go and I forgot to hit the down button, looked over, and the rigger was spinning away, not a care in the world. Another benefit of the clutch is that there's no jerk when you raise or lower the ball briefly, like when you want to get it back in the water to save your gel coat under bumpy conditions. The clutch seems to buffer all movements with our 15 lb torpedo type ball. We are running the Amish Outfitter snubber cables, but I'm not sure it would be necessary honestly. We will see how they fare over time, but as of now, they are heads and tails better than the Cannons we ran for the past 30 years.

 

There are a couple of things that could be better, too. The switch is jumpy. It has three positions for down, rest, and up, and in the chaos, it's easy to go from up to down, for example...something that would worry me if they riggers were jerky. This is minor though. Additionally, the spool is very small, and so you want to keep tension on it at all times so it doesn't begin to unravel. I'm no engineer, and it's magic to me how the cable goes perfectly from side to side, layer by layer, without a line guide as it's coming up, but I bet the small spool has something to do with it. Hence, this may be a plus as well as a minus. It wasn't a problem once we figured out that you need tension at all times, even when redoing the terminal hardware. 

 

Finally, Tommy rewired the leads to match the Cannon outlets, and he was impressed with the build quality. Everything is metal (duh, it's in the name lol), but even the small things like silicon in all of the screws was a confidence builder. The thing is put together right. They're much smaller profile than Cannons and the booms are we're running are shorter, but that suits our style of fishing perfectly. I would say that they should be first on the small boat owner's list and definitely in the running for larger boats as well. 

[KennyC]

Thanks for the review.  I was looking at these over the winter.  How long are the booms you run?  One question I had was can you lift the boom to bring the downrigger weight in?  

[Gator]

Yes you can. We don't because we run them off the corner of the boat with two sections to the boom, and the Scotty releases are within easy reach for us. But they lift up and lock with pins in both the up and down positions.

[BRsnow]

I just received a pair as well. The craftsmanship is something else. I ordered booms to make 37”. The machining exceeded my expectations and so far impressed with the product.