Dipsy Divers vs. Walker Divers Depth

[Finders Keepers]

Has anyone noticed that the new Walker divers don't dig as deep as the Dipsy Divers? This past week at one point I was running the Walkers on my wires out 450 ft on a #1 setting and 525 ft on a #2 setting in 120 ft of water without touching the bottom. Has anyone else noticed that the Walkers run a bit shallower?

[Billy V]

Tim,

We run Walkers exclusively any more and have found them to have a virtually identical dive curve to regular Dipsy Divers.

[Finders Keepers]

Hey Billy,

The reason I ask is that I was out on Woody's boat last week and we were running dipsies on his wires out less than 200 ft on a #2 setting and we were hitting bottom in 80 fow, whereas the other day we were running the Walkers on my boat on the wires out to 525 ft on a #2 and never hit bottom when we swung into 120 fow. Both times we were pulling echips/flies. Any thoughts? I thought it might be due to underwater currents, but we were going in all different directions at that depth of water.

[GAMBLER]

Are the reels from the same manufacturer? Is it the same brand of wire? Same pound test wire? Does on reel have backing under the wire? Does one reel have less wire than the other? The reason I ask these questions is ever brand of reel has counters that read a little different. If the reel is not full of wire, it will read different. Fleas gathering on the line will also pull the dipsy up in the water column. All things to think of with this one. The real way to test it is run one on one side with the same exact setups and see which one ticks bottom first.

[Finders Keepers]

Hey Gambler,

Yeah, I think we are going to try running them both next time out. I know Woody has the bronze colored wire and I have the SS wire (same lb test), he has 9' Eagle rods with ?? reels with full 1000 ft spools, I have Tekota's with about 900 ft of wire on the long 11' blue diamond single roller rods (I forget the manufacturer offhand), I don't think either set-up has backing, both had similar amounts of fleas...

When we swung into 120 fow and the 525 ft wire on #2 setting wasn't hitting bottom, I decided to try running one wire on a #1 setting out 450 ft to see if we could touch bottom, nope. I have always heard that Tekotas are fairly accurate on line count, so we were very surprised to not hit bottom. I would have played with them more to see how much wire would have to be out to touch bottom, but we were hooking up with fish so I didn't want to change our program.

[Billy V]

Tim,

What Gambler said! If one of you is running 30lb camo colored wire and the other is running 30 lb. silver colored line, there's about a .003" difference in line diameter (camo is thinner and is what I run). It doesn't sound like much but that alone can make a pretty big difference in achievable depths, especially when you're trying to get down past 100' deep. We've run the Walkers and Dipsy Divers side by side on my boat many times and have gotten the same dive curves.

[Finders Keepers]

Ok, that might explain it. Have you run the SS wire before and if so, have you found that the fish prefer the camo over the SS?

[Billy V]

I've run both before and we like the camo because it's a thinner diameter at the same lb. test. Lots of guys run 20# test because it's thinner still and will go even deeper. AFW Camo 30# is .012. Their 20# is .011. Their "bright" 30# is .015.

I'm not sure if the fish like one over the other, but we choose the 30# camo because we fish with charter customers and feel like 20# is just too easy for them to break off, etc.

[Jammer]

I have the Precision Trolling Big Water Edition and looking at the curves it appears that the 107mm Deeper Diver is closest to the No. 1 Dipsy without the ring. With the ring on, the Dipsy goes a bit deeper.

JAM

[Finders Keepers]

That's probably it then. Looks like a change over to camo is forthcoming for my wires...

[woody 184]

Tim I have the Diawa 47LC reels on the 10 1/2 foot eagle dipsey rods. One thing I found with my 47LC's that the counters are not super accurate. If I run the counter to 300 feet I may really be out 330 or 340 feet.. I think each reel's counter is a little different...When I had the Penn GTI reel on my dipsey rod I counted 10 feet on every pass of the line guide. This seemed to work pretty good for me and that set-up. Now your Walkers surprised me with running them out like we did the other day and we still did not bump bottom... I think we will have to test them on a #2 setting and run in to shallower water to get an accurate reading for the counter on the reels.....Woody

[Rich D]

I think you have to look at the size of the deeper diver to compare. Like was said they have a 107mm, and a 124mm. I just got one of the 124's and looking forward to using it this week. That could be where the differance is. Good Luck.

Rich

[Finders Keepers]

Sizewize, the Walkers and the dipsies with the ring are the same size or very close (holding one on top of the other). As stated earlier, the shallower depth is likely a result of the thicker SS wire. However, I am curious to know just where my wires have been tracking now!! Apparently they have been shallower than I have always thought, but they still continue to produce, so I guess what I have been running has been more important than how deep I have been running them!