I have been having issues with my scotty HP's not counting accurately, I even talked with Craig from scotty at the boat show and he sent me some new counters,
well that didnt fix it and I called him back and he said try stipping a 100' off, still was out so tonight I started stripping more cable and found that once I had only 200' of cable on the spool they read correctly
so any opinions on minimum cable lengths, should I cut it off at 200 and know how much is out or leave more and and not really know whats out unless I want to do some math everytime I drop the balls,
with the 400' I have on there now when I drop a 100 it reads 86ish feet
opinion anyone
Tim
I am curios are you using steel or braid. Does that make a difference?
If using different types of braid or steel with different diameter than what Scotty used for calibration it would also probably, make a difference.
There is certain logic that Scotty would have calibrated the new counters to one line type and a specific amount of line out and amount of line on the rigger. One assumes they would have tried to hit a good average for what they thought the majority of anglers would be using.
The farther you get away from what the parameters were when they did the calibration, the less accurate will be the read out.
If the spool diameter and width on the high speed riggers is the same as the normal speed riggers they may just have calibrated the new counters to read the same as the old manual counters which also would be less accurate the farther you get away from the parameters used for calibration. Over time we seem to be putting more cable on our riggers and it may be that originally the counters were calibrated for something like 200 feet of steel cable.
You are implying that the new high speed riggers may be less accurate than the old style riggers, if so that would suggest that they did recalibrate the new counters assuming other factors with the riggers are the same.
There are so many factors that effect what depth you are actually fishing from the depth on the counter including boat speed, current speed and direction of boat relative to current, weight and type of ball (pancake or ball, pancake with curved blade to steer the ball away from the boat – more drag lifts the weight) and braid or steel and anything else that effects drag and blowback including having a fair bit of weed on the cable.
If I am fishing Chinook in a place like Sooke I am usually more concerned about where my lure/bait is in the water column not how much cable I have out and trying to match my place in the water column with what I know about where the Chinook are (fish arch on sounder) or likely to be (winter Chinook just off the bottom) or where I was in the water column and the perimeters at the time I just caught the 30lber so I can get back to the correct actual depth fast not just the location on the chart plotter I want to be at.
In an area like Sooke (mostly safe bottom) and not on top of a rock reef I will sometimes put myself more accurately where I want to be in the water column by putting my finger on the up button, dropping the ball at speed until it hits bottom and then bring it up a couple of feet, wait for drag to raise the ball and set the angle of the rigger cable then hit bottom again and adjust upward that way I know I am say 20 feet off the bottom, not a bad place to be for large summer Chinook much of the time unless you are in very deep water or about to be going over a reef with a rapid depth change. But nothing stays constant, if you change directions, if the current slows down, if the bottom is coming up, you adjust.
I think the reason the best guides are so successful is that they have decades of experience with their gear and knowledge of local conditions and the various runs of Chinook coming through and their brains do these kinds of calculations and keep track of a thousand other variables automatically. To the rest of us and especially beginners, it just seems like magic.
