Electric Downrigging Makes It Easy

Early start on Friday morning, in James’ big, beautiful Blackwatch. Barely cleared the marina when we came upon this:

The yacht that sunk at its mooring two weeks ago has been raised, and towed to a nearby police mooring - where it sunk again! Down to the Valiant wreck, east north-east of Barrenjoey. Stacks of bait there – as there has been, pretty much all year – and we filled the bait tank quickly:

Second stop FAD 17, off Terrigal. With the water temp at only 20.5 I wasn’t expecting any mahi on scene:

But there were a few kings around the buoy. Undersized, but we had some fun:

Out to Texas Reef and, just like last time, we had the whole place to ourselves. Not surprising after days of dirty weather – and with a forecast of more, on Friday afternoon. My plan was to test an idea I’ve been working on – deep downrigging:

Here’s how I set it up. This system works on all our downriggers with the big plus being, you can use the electric reel for standard deep dropping – or deep downrigging:

Removed our downrigger boom arm
Which can be done by hand
Threaded on a reel clamp
Locked that in place with a stainless steel hose clamp
Connected our Dragon reel, power lead, small battery
Downrigged at 80 metres
Didn’t catch anything because there wasn’t anything to catch (!)
But it all worked great
best thing being the auto retrieve
You just press the ‘up’ button
And the motor cuts out automatically, when the ball is 2 metres below the boom head
Super pleased with how well it worked

But first up, jigging. With my best king of 2020 taken here on a jig two weeks ago, it would be crazy not to start out with that method. Kings weren’t showing on the sounder, but scattered patches of bait meant there had to be a few around somewhere:

And there was. Here’s our skipper James with a beautiful 105cm:

Weapon of choice? Our 250 gram knife jig. Make sure you have a few aboard:

250 gram knife jigs

The electric downrigger worked great. I spooled the Dragon reel with 30-pound braid, to keep current drag at a minimum. Only needed a 5-pound weight, to downrig at 80 metres. We didn’t get a strike on Friday, simply because there were so few kings around. But watch this space! Will be using it all summer long, on kings, mackerel, and marlin. So for $850 you get a deep drop combo complete - whose reel also fits on one of our downriggers. More here:

Red Dragon Deep Drop Combo

Send me an email or call if any more details needed? Very best wishes to you and yours for a wonderful Christmas
Andrew Hestelow

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