down speed question

[JC heir]

I do not want to hijack the previous thread, and I have a question, not a comment. I am thinking about buying a fish hawk, and don't currently own one. How much difference do you normally detect between your down speed, and gps speed? I guess what im wondering,is, is it usually just a few tenths with an occasional heavy current causing large deviation, or is a big difference the norm? also, how important do you feel the depth feature is on the x4d since its attached to your rigger and you should already know the depth pretty close? I run 12 lb balls, and don't feel theres yoo much blowback, but again, could be wrong here too. thanks Lane

also, new here, so gonna attach a pic just to try out the feature.

[fisherdude1]

Fished with John O a few years back and he explained why he runs a Moor when fishing. Said the wind and under current and really vary from what your GPS reads. Said without one you really don't know what your lure or spoon is doing. With a strong current your GPS speed says 2.2 and your spoon could be doing 1 or less and not having the action to draw fish. After the trip out with him bought a Sub-Troll for mine.

[LongLine]

General current on the south shore is from west to east, with some really interesting things occurring off Braddocks/Sandy.  Daily speed of current varies greatly.  Don't get too wrapped up in knowing you're exact speed.  What's important is being able to duplicate the previous catch.  What are the chances of your GPS & probe being calibrated exactly the same and you're not always in some kind of current?  Yesterday with my GPS holding at 3.7, my sub-T held fairly steady at 2 3/4 but also went from 1 1/2 to 4 quite a few times.

 

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[skipper19]

With the fishhawk, if you lower the unit just under surface, running in clean water, not in prop wash, and compare the reading to gps, you can calibrate the fish hawk to the gps reading. Surface water will be your most stable water without a lot of current. You can double check with your surface speed on the sounder triducer as well as calibrate the water temp to read same as your sounder, if you know that the sounder readings are correct.

As far as depth at the fish hawk, I can't say from experience if it is a real advantage. Generally speaking with the downrigger weights you use the amount of blowback is always going to have a different depth than your counter is saying. In my case I can always see the weights on the sounder unless a really strong current or speed is pushing them back. Usually on depths over 80 feet. In that case maybe depth would be an advantage. For me, I just go deeper if I'm marking fish that match the downrigger depth counter. Just another guess but mostly intuitive.

Mark

[Sk8man]

Tom hit the nail on the head when he said not to get too wrapped up in "exact" speed.  Despite the belief of some folks down speed measured on a Fish Hawk (or any other device for that matter) is still a RELATIVE measure because you are not accounting for your lure, its action and the trajectory of it on your line behind the boat.  For example if running a light flutter spoon way back it may in fact be up much higher than your downrigger weight depth and with varying current within the water column  could be running at a much different actual speed than your probe. So again as Tom mentioned the important thing is to be able to REPLICATE the relationship that catches fish on your particular boat with your particular equipment given similar conditions (also dependent on species of fish....for example if a laker is caught  at a certain depth and speed you may want to come up higher and troll faster if targeting rainbows)

[Smart Troll]

Tom hit the nail on the head when he said not to get too wrapped up in "exact" speed.  Despite the belief of some folks down speed measured on a Fish Hawk (or any other device for that matter) is still a RELATIVE measure because you are not accounting for your lure, its action and the trajectory of it on your line behind the boat.  For example if running a light flutter spoon way back it may in fact be up much higher than your downrigger weight depth and with varying current within the water column  could be running at a much different actual speed than your probe. So again as Tom mentioned the important thing is to be able to REPLICATE the relationship that catches fish on your particular boat with your particular equipment given similar conditions (also dependent on species of fish....for example if a laker is caught  at a certain depth and speed you may want to come up higher and troll faster if targeting rainbows)

 

 

JC,

 

Sk8man X2...

 

The lures and DR ball will often NOT be in the same current. But if you get the unit that measures depth then you can slowly lower the downrigger and monitor down-speed at different depths in the water column. At least that way you get a snapshot of the current and your lures will most often get hung-up in the fastest current because they cannot punch through like a DR ball can.

 

Some captains don't attach a line to the downrigger they are using for that purpose so they can frequently raise and lower the DR ball to monitor the current at different depths. Otherwise, if the current changes your ball might be below the current layer so it wouldn't detect it.

 

You could do the same thing with the DR line counter but it will be less precise due to counter inaccuracy and blow-back.