Down speed Help

[dieselhp]

I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I need someone to make sense of down speed to me.

I am told it is the speed of the lure at that depth and can be slower or faster depending on current.

I can not see how the lure is traveling at a different speed then the boat. If the lure is going faster then the boat, after a period of time it would pass the boat. It can not go slower then the boat because it would have to get further away from the boat.

The only thing I could see happening down below if the current is doing something, it would be making the wheel on your probe go slower of faster.

Can anyone tell me different?

Thanks for the help

Rick

[ray koziatek]

rick when you put a lure in the water its like majic and they come alive sometimes they refuse to swim thus slower, other times they feel spunky and swim right past the boat ,,the only real way to tell is put a mask on and have someone hold your feet and watch your spoons... hope this helps ,or it could be currents.

[Has Been]

Wind can make the water on the surface& maybe down 10 feet trvel faster than the water below it . If your boat speed over ground is traveling 3mph on your gps, & your surface paddle type speed indicator on your depth finder says 2.5 , your lure down70below is travleing 3mph speed over ground. assuming there is no current down there , if your optumum speed for that particular lure you have on is 2.5 accorrding to your surface indicator you are going 2.5speed on water but your lure is traveling 3below spinning out of controll. Down currents can happen you don't know about witchcan affect your catch succes. To me once you are on fish Speed of the particular lure you choose to use is criticalMore so than color. The above is just one example of the affect of down current. The guys who have figgured this part out are usually the most succesfull.

[LongLine]

Einstein said it best: "It's all relative." (But what his brother-in-law had to do with it is still being debated.)

From the perspective of someone standing on the shore, both boat & probe are going the same speed and direction. The probe neither gets in closer nor further away from the boat.

The paddle wheel on the down probe spins faster or slower (into or with the current) than a paddle wheel on the surface. Picture this: you're driving your car down the road at 20 mph holding a flag inside the car with your windows rolled up. The flag doesn't flap around. (just like holding a lure in the boat...no action)

Now hold the flag out of the window. It flaps like a "sun of a gun" behind the car. (dragging the lure behind the boat...it has lots of action) Now imagine this: you're riding the brakes to only go 20 mph with a 50 mph tailwind & you hold the flag out the window. The flag flaps ahead of the car. If there's only a 20 mph tailwind, then the flag won't flap at all. If there happens to be a crosswind then the flag will flap across the car.

In all these cases your car and the flag are traveling down the highway in the same direction and speed, especially to the cop watching you and trying to figure out if you're drunk or just enjoying the summer festival, however the flag is flapping at different speeds & directions relative to your wrist which is probably real sore from holding the flag out the window.

The trick is to find which "flap speed" attracts the fish best.

HIH

Tom B.

(LongLine)

ps maybe a better example would be to watch the pennant flying from your boat in different wind conditions (tail wind, headwind etc)...however it's getting a little late to retype this whole thing.....

[ray koziatek]

Tie the flag to your rigger ball.

[momay4000]

Rick,

Tom's analogy is very good - in fact it's excellent. Remember your boat GPS is tracking speed over ground (sog) based on distance travelled over the bottom of the lake in a certain unit of time. If you put a GPS on your lure down 20' or 200' it would read the same GPS sog as your boat.

Remember the probe is tracking "speed" from the little paddle wheel (I have a Subtroll) on the unit and it is measuring how fast the PADDLE WHEEL is spinning, not how fast the probe is moving as Speed over Ground. Then the device converts the speed at which the paddle is spinning to "speed" on the readout in mph. Although the readout is in mph and we typically think of mph as linear speed, the "mph" is really arbitrary. It's not really how fast the probe is moving through the water, it's more like how fast the paddle wheel is spinning. It basically just gives you a reference point to make sure your lure has the best "action".

For example, in a "perfect system" not taking into account water friction, if you had a strong deep water counter-current going 2.5 mph in the opposite direction of your boat going 2.5 mph on the surface, then your probe would still be travelling 2.5 mph through the water, but the wheel on the paddle would be stationary and the readout would say "0" mph on your display. Obviously the probe is still moving in the water, but the paddle isn't spinning.

For me, the probe is simply a starting point and a reference point to replicate good lure action and another way to read underwater current. In my experience, I don't think my Subtroll downspeed has been that far off (typically only 0.2-0.6 mph) from my surface speed, so I'm not sure that the underwater currents are super fast.

Also - one thing VERY IMPORTANT - every spring I drop my Subtroll probe about a foot down and take a speed reading just below the surface (usually 2.2-2.4 mph). Then I put various lures in the water at the side of the boat to see how they behave at that speed. This way I'm sure that my probe is "calibrated" for what action I expect when my probe reads 2.2-2.4. Sometimes the wheel can get a little sticky and it reads much lower (1.6-1.7 mph) and the lures are acting fine, but I'll have to add a little vaseline to the side or spin it around a bunch to get it going.

Hope this helps,

- Chris

[ray koziatek]

huh? you better get a mask.

[momay4000]

Ray,

I don't get it....

[For Fun]

wouldn't a 2.5 mph current going in the opposite direction yield a 5 mph sped at the probe ??? A 2.5 mph current flowing in the same direction of the boat would yield a 0 mph reading ...

[momay4000]

For fun,

You are absolutely correct - I should have said "deep water counter current going the opposite direction of your PROBE", not "BOAT" (or in the same direction as the travel of the boat) . Consequently, that would make more sense b/c if you had a strong current going in the opposite direction of your boat than the probe would read 5.0 mph, not -0- mph.

Sorry about that,

- Chris

[LongLine]

FF - Yes. Trolling 2.5 (GPS) into a 2.5 mph down current will give you a down reading of 5 mph. If you're trolling with the current, your down speed will go to zero. That is why you'll generally find guys trolling faster (GPS) going down stream than up stream. Also, that's how you tell if you're traveling with, against or across a current. IE different downspeed readings with a constant GPS speed.

Ray -That's what started the flasher craze. Someone tied their shivies to the cable using stacked offshore releases. or...maybe...that was "buffy" fishing?

Chris - Thanx. Vaseline might work. Any idea how long before it washes off?

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[dieselhp]

Got it!

Let’s say your GPS is showing 3.0 mph and your down speed is showing 2.5 while you are heading north.

Your boat is going 3.0 mph and your lure is going 3.0 mph, but the lure is acting like its moving 2.5 mph. while heading north.

Right?

[LongLine]

Yes, the lure is acting like the speed the probe says it is.

Now if both units are calibrated exactly the same, in your example you are trolling with a 0.5 mph current. The way to verify this is simply to turn in another direction, maintain the gps speed and see what the probe now says. i.e turn back to the south & your probe should show 3.5 mph. (note: this won't be as exact with a surface paddlewheel speed indicator as there are surface currents, boat drag, etc, also that there are arguments over the accuracy of GPS, boat bouncing up & down & all that good stuff)

No system is going to be perfectly accurate so as has been said, the important thing is to realize what your lure is doing at the speeds that your probe is showing (regardless of the scale or calibration) & be able to repeat that reading when the last fish hit.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[dieselhp]

Thanks!

Makes more sense to me now!

But you really don’t know what your lure is doing because if the current is not going straight behind you or with you it will change the lure action.

Sometimes you hookup while making a turn, Is that because the speed changed or because the current is at a different angle and changing the lure action?

[larry]

Some of the factors not taken into account for speed are listed below for your entertainment.

Changes in lure speed and direction will trigger fish to hit, dipsey's, copper, leadcore, the junk lines, have the biggest propensity for speed and depth changes and will get hits when the riggers aren't mostly because they create an erratic action on the bait closely resembling a weak or wounded bait at a wider variety of speeds. When you straight-line troll it is important to be at the correct speed for the baits your running.

Just remember that before you

get out bed to go fishing your already traveling at the speed of light.

you're on a planet that's evolving

And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,

That's orbiting a sun nineteen miles a second,

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day

In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,

Of the galaxy we call 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.

It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.

It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,

But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.

We go 'round every two hundred million years,

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding

In all directions,

As fast as it can go, at the speed of light,

Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

[Has Been]

I would say the simplest explanation would beto say That what is going on down there may not be the same as whats going on on the surface.

[LongLine]

Yes, it is true that you don't know exacty what the lure is doing all the time. Sometimes you really need to borrow Ray's mask.

The advantage to the probe is that it is down there where your lure is. It's the closest thing we have to measuring & monitoring the speed of the lure and that's what we're trying to catch a fish with.

The answer to your last question is "all of the above." I run my probe off the port side rigger. I have my surface paddlewheel mounted on the starboard side. When I'm trolling the bays and turn to port, my probe speed decreases slightly and my surface speed increases slightly. When I turn to starboard the exact opposite happens. I can also see the rigger cable angles change slightly.

Out on the lake, where you have currents and sometimes multiple depth currents, IMO, the best way to troll is the old zig-zag type pattern (especially with rigg'rs). Simply becasue one side speeds up & the other slows down. Changes in you boats direction in relation to the current direction out on the lake will add to the effect. I.E. really speed up or really slow down.

Through out all of this you have to remember what Einstein said about being relative. Lure action or the way a lure wobbles is always in relation to it's speed relative to the water it is in. It can be standing still but the water flow past it can give it action. If you're standing on the Hamlin State Parkway bridge over Sandy creek after a heavy rain and dangling a flatfish in the creek, chances are that it will wobble like crazy. In relation to you it is not moving at all. In relation to the water it's going a million mph because the water flow over it is traveling at a million mph. (driftboaters do this all the time)

Out on the lake, if you change your trolling direction into the current, you lure's action will increase as the speed relationship between the water and the lure increases. If you turn and go with the current, the lures action will decrease as the lure's speed relationship with the water decreases.

The easiest way to think of it is that the probe speed is actually a resultant of both the boat speed and the current speed.

Larry - But if you're looking at if from the Andromeda galaxy, we're standing still.

Good night,

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[larry]

Thanks Tom, relatively speaking though, I,m glad fish don't fly or this speed thread could get surreal.

[momay4000]

Tom,

Every year in my driveway before I launch the boat for the year, it seems like the grey wheel on the probe has a green dried algae like film on the sides. I actually take a piece of paper with a little vaseline on it and rub it between the wheel and the inside of the housing. As I recall, it was hard to get anything on the steel shaft because the space was so tight.

It probably washes off with water, but who knows. I'm afraid to spray it with anything like W-D 40 b/c I'm scared it will ruin the thing....

- Chris

[LongLine]

Larry - you mean you don't want to know if a fish swims at 30 mph through the dense water then jumps into the less dense air then back into the water, how high does his splash go????

Chris - Might be algae, might be mold, might be something leaching out of the plastic but I'd bet mold from humidity & temp changes. I would not spray it with WD-40. WD-40 has a solvent component that will attack plastics & rubber over time. A silicone lubricant or even graphite might protect it over the winter though. (I take mine off and store it in the house over the winter)

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[ray koziatek]

so larry my actual trolling speed is 186,002.5 miles per second

[LongLine]

Ray - Only by classical calculation and if your headed west. GPS would give you a blank spacey stare...like the rest of us.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[Jeff J]

Rick,

It could be both.

Lures speed up or slow down according to the direction of the turn. Inside lines on dipseys and boards normally will slow down and the outside ones speed up changing the depth and presentation.

Current can also change because you turned.

Jeff