I go even easier. I use a stainless 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon. Poor it level with Part A, scrape out all into cup, then Part B the same way. The residual in the spoon (very little) guarantees an ever so slight less amount of Part B. I have the big bottles of finish about two thirds gone now, and they are within about a 1/16 of an inch of eich other. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
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I have hundreds of spiral downrigger and diver rods fishing the great lakes, including my whole 30 rod set. I have never seen any levelwind line stack anything but normal. Wire line, copper, leadcore, mono, or braid, it doesn't matter. I use 12 derees, 70 degrees, and 135. Works to either side of the rod. If you keep your first guide (from the reel) out between 21-23' from the levelwind, the
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I stupidly thought that by just dropping the rags on the floor under the bench, they would cure out and could be dicarded later at my leisure. Well, that is all fine and good, except that you then drop more solvent, more epoxy and the whole thing becomes a giant cesspool of unhealthy crud at your feet. The second trip to the E room was about a week after the first. I just went in the shop to c
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I developed a sensitivity to amines in my second full time season of building rods. It was mostly due to stupid, careless shop practices. Leaving cleaning cloths with epoxy on them piled under the bench, tossing solvent soaked rags on top. Poor ventilation, careless about getting epoxy/solvent on hands, etc.... All these things added up to a couple trips to the emergency room looking like I h
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Sounds fun. It is identical to our lake trout tactics, except no rocks, just sand. Yep, we pull Luhr Jense Dodgers with spin-n-glows behind, sometimes flys. Very cool, thanks for the info.
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The wire works well with dipsy divers at those depths. For lakers, we drag the divers literally pounding the bottom. They leave a debris trail that attracts the lake trout. What kind of bait or terminal tackle takes your fish? Sorry, off topic, but very curious about a technique similar to what we do here in Michigan.
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How deep are the Macks?
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How deep are the Macks?
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Do a search for a "Twilly Tip". They are designed for wire and can be used as either a guides on top or spiral setup. They are not pretty, but very effective on wire. Used on tons of Great Lakes wire line trolling rods. The All American tip also works for wire, but I have found it beneficial to wrap a 6mm SIC guide on the tube to keep the wire in the roller groove. Sounds like a La
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Oh, one other point about copper setups. Don't worry about any extra weight in these builds. With as much as 500 or more feet of copper line on a 800 Tekota or similar reel, weight isn't an issue. Aluminum reel seats are also a good idea because of the size of most copper reels which will almost certainly utilize reel seat clamps.
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As everyone else said, the Alconites will last forever in regards to the wire damaging them through abraision. Copper trolling wire is very soft and even cheapo store trolling rod guides hold up against grooving. Having said that, you really should use SS boat guides. Copper line terminations are normally either albright knots or tiny SPRO swivels. With repeated use and abuse, these terminati
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I have used lots of them on wire diver rods for Great Lakes King Salmon. These rods troll fully loaded at about 15# drag and take strikes from 20# plus kings all day long(trolling at 3mph), all summer long in a fixed rodholder at a right angle to the load and I haven't seen one break or crack.
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Jeremy, I build salmon trolling rods for the Great Lakes fishermen. Our diver setups are a very similar concept to what you are trying to achieve. I use mainly MHX surf blanks for diver applications, especially wire divers. MHX does not produce anything longer than 10' presently. In the past I have used American Tackle AXSU surf blanks with great success. They have one at 11', which could
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If they will be using the reel clamp, you may consider an aluminum seat. The fine threads on those clamps make short work out a blank underneath a graphite seat if the assembler gets crazy with torquing the screws.
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Exactly, too small of a market. Agreed on the Twilli improvements. Its horrific looks are what keeps me from pushing customers into them. That along with a few failures from my tourney teams. After about 3 seasons of hard use, they will groove out and the spring will fall off. Titanium could solve that issue.
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John, I have a prototype rod I was playing with a few years ago. I took a tiny SIC guide and wrapped it on the tube of a @#$%& spiral tip top roller. It actually functions quite well, but is getting dusty now with my new ones and the Torpedo tips. I talked to the owner of the company that makes the Torpedo tip a while back, he showed interest in modifying the tip to accommodate a spiral wrap s
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I agree with John on smaller rods. On my boat, I run 7' low divers under 8' high divers. My out and down riggers only have 3' arms, so the 7' rods reach around easily. Also, the farther ahead of the rigger the divers are placed, the easier it is for shorter diver rods to reach around the riggers. Lots of things come into play with diver rod length, so getting a good photo of how this fisherme
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This is one place you can get the Torpedo Tip. .
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The twilly tips can be found in most big lake tackle shops. Otherwise do a google search for them online. If you can't find them give me a shout and I can send some to you. Lately I have been using Torpedo tips for my wire rods that don't utilize a spiral wrap. It is a swivel roller tip very similar to the Aftco but has a tiny SIC line guide that keeps the wire on the roller at all times. Yo
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Buzz, I build lots of these rods for Lake Michigan salmon boats. The DR1086 and RDR100H will be too soft for wire diver action utilizing a mag dipsy or Walker Mag diver. The AXSU100H is a great blank for wireline diver action. I have used lots of them in the past, but have now switched to the MHX surf blanks. They offer a 9' that fits nicely inside the 10' model for perfect low/high diver set
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I use all aluminum seats for anything that will use a large frame reel. These reels come with clamps that have ultra fine threads. I have seen more than one rod with the blank broken right underneath a graphite seat due to the reel clamps being tightened down too tight, crushing the blank under the seat.
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Mike, my email has changed. It is eyefullsportfishing@gmail.com
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I have 200 plus downrigger rods fishing Lake Michigan from the last 5 years. The MHX is the absolute best blank I have used to date. It has a nice soft tip section that you can literally load until it touches the water. The bottom end has enough power to pull 30 pound kings up from 200 feet plus. Like I said, the tips are soft enough to see Lake Trout bites with the cannon ball dragging botto
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Exactly what John said for me also. John, I have wrapped a tiny 6mm Silicon Carbide single foot on the tube of the @#$%& roller and it works similar to the Torpedo in keeping the line on the roller.
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Thanks, the guy really wants me to build the rod on a TCX 4 piece. I don't see any reason why it won't fish nice for him. I don't build a lot of fly rods, so I am not real familiar with how those blanks are. I know the guy throws a lot of wet flys and floats on the Little Manistee. I don't see any reason not to build it on that blank, the blank has no idea that it isn't a 4 piece spinning rod
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I have a customer that is dead set on wanting a Sage 7wt 9' two piece blank to be used as a spinning rod targeting steelhead in Michigan. He showed me one that he has had for years, but the problem is that Sage only seems to make 4 piece rods now. I tried my darndest to convince him to use a standard "steelhead" blank which are available in infinate numbers, but he is dead set on a Sa
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The new MHX DR845 is totally a fish killing machine on a rigger. Soft enough tip to read lake trout bites while bouncing the ball on the bottom, and enough power to pull 25# kings up from 200' down with authority. The best rigger blank I have fished to date hands down.
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I agree with Don, the MHX DR1024 is a great rigger blank that I have dozens of fishing the Great Lakes on both charter and tourny boats. You can easily cut three inches off the tip and the butt and still have a balanced two piece rod. These blanks have a perfect soft slow action for downrigger duty, but still have plenty of power in the butt to bring up big fish.
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John, talk to Todd Vivian at Mudhole about their MHX1086DR blank. It is 8'6" two piece. As is, the blank doesn't have enough spine or power for diver action, but if you could cut say 7-8" off each end, it would definetly make it an altogether different beast. Todd would be able to tell you if the blank will withstand that type of modification and potentially how it would perform. A
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98% of my rod builds are for Charter Captains on Lake Michigan, about half of those are diver rods. I think that many above are right, you may be overthinking this. The very small amount of difference the spine can make on a lighter duty rod is totally thrown out with 20# or more of drag required to just hold the spool while trolling as to not creep line out. Once a fish hits, again, that smal
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