Dragging Balls can mean alot of things. If you don't want to spend money then yes fish 20 ft off bottom. But if you want to catch fish in certain areas its required to drag your balls. Depending on the current, Tide and how heavy your balls are. Lets say you are fishing the flats in Oak bay in 100 ft of water on sounder. In order to hit bottom you could have out 99 ft - 125ft of Downrigger line depending. In my situation I always hit bottom, come up 3 ft, leave for 5 minutes, then go back down hit bottom, come up 3 ft and leave and adjust for depth on Sounder. The Angle of the downrigger line is usually 5-10 ft more from the sounder depth for sure. So even if you put your rigger to just Sounder depth you will be fine unless your fishing in a really rocky area. You will lose Cannon balls for sure if you not familiar with the areas. But Winter fishing and Oak Bay Flats usually require fishing bottom to be successful. Summer fishing, fish are much higher in the water column for sure. But in Oak Bay I still ride the bottom as that is where the feed normal is sandlance in particular.
