cannon ball size for HT - Forums Archive

bent fin

2013-03-17 15:59:57

how do you determine what size to use?

Salty

2013-03-17 18:03:35

Depends on a seemingly infinite number of factors. I think if I was to seriously do it I would have some 20 and 30 pounders. More importantly I would have red banana leads for my sport rods.

I fish mostly 60 and 35 power trolling, but do have some 70 and 30 pounders on board. Casey probably could give better advice because he is still doing it.

I would probably retire if I had to crank again. A power permit is only $30,000 or so, a set of good used gurdies are available now for $1-2000. Interest rates are really cheap. It is my experience that the difference in production on one good bite will pay for the payments on both.

On the other hand you can't use rods with a power troll permit. Can't even legally have them on board while power trolling. (Probably the most violated fish and game rule in SE Alaska. Think taking little rods away from kids.) Anyway, now that you can legally use hand crank downriggers while hand trolling during the winter season in SE Alaska there should be a resurgence in hand trolling.

I guess I have beat this horse to death probably because my elbow and shoulder hurt every morning. Granted, some of that could be from some of those other uses like humping, chumming, and conking kings and coho all these years. If you are some kind of wiry tough beast then I would recommend 35 pounders as that weight seems to keep the gear pretty straight down to about 35 fathoms depending on the number of spreads, flashers etc. Also, I don't recommend hand cranking with abe and al or Nootka flashers. The drag will add a lot to the hand crank burden.

Finally, think about limiting the amount of gear per line. It is a lot of work stopping to deal with leaders if you are hand cranking by yourself. Of course the ideal hand crank set up is like one guy who hand trolled for years in SE, including for chums. He just drove and had his wife do most of the cranking. He has a different kind of marriage than I do.

Kelper

2013-03-17 18:39:12

Bent fin,

25's and 30's will work just fine. If you want to fish deep, some guys go to 35's in the winter. It's a low volume deal in the winter fishery, so 35's ain't gonna kill you. You get so worked up when you get one or two to jump on in the winter, that you don't remember the crank in. I found my production picked up a bit when I slowed the heck down, so again you can get away with lighter weights.

Let your angle on your wire basically tell you how much weight to use though, If you are hanging way back, bump up the weight a bit. If you are the same bent fin on aod, you'll be fine with 25's fishing arboleda, santa cruz, diamond, tree, cape and all those other spots in that area you know will have kings. I did very well on kings trolling 6-8fa in those spots and the bigger boat's don't dare to get in there.

akfisher1978

2013-03-17 19:21:07

Question about Salty's comment about sport rods on Power Trollers. I was reading the FAQ's on the ATA website and one was on this topic and says that having sport caught fish on a troller in areas closed to power trolling is illegal? That sounds like it is legal to fish and have rods on board! I would appreciate if others would read those regs on the ATA site on see if maybe I am just interpreting wrong.

Salty

2013-03-18 02:03:29

I guess the quick and simple answer is that the rules are not always totally clear and that just because a specific activity is deemed illegal it doesn't make some closely related activity not mentioned legal.

I went through my regulation book, the ATA FAQ and the Department regulation website: http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/folioproxy.asp?url=http://wwwjnu01.legis.state.ak.us/cgi-bin/folioisa.dll/aac/query=[JUMP:'5+aac+47!2E041']/doc/{@1}?firsthit.

Basically, it looks to me like the department tried to make it so you could sport fish, like a kid spin casting off a seiner for black bass, while you had salmon on board in areas open to salmon fishing. But, you couldn't do it in areas closed to commercial salmon fishing.

Sport fishing from a commercially licensed vessel,while commercially caught salmon are in

possession, is illegal in waters closed to commercial salmon fishing.

There are enough other rules so that if you were sport fishing off your troll vessel for salmon while you had salmon on board you could be busted:

5 AAC 47.041. Sport fishing from commercially licensed vessels; charter vessel registration

(f) A person may not sport fish and commercial fish for salmon from the same vessel on the same day.

Here is another one:

(c) In waters closed to the taking of coho salmon by troll gear, a person may not use a salmon troll vessel to take salmon when coho salmon are on board that vessel.

And another one:

(1) fish harvested by one gear type are offloaded, landed, and documented on a fish ticket before operating any other gear type;

And another one:

5 AAC 29.120. Gear specifications and operations

(c) A salmon troll vessel may have a fishing rod equipped exclusively for taking bait or a gillnet for taking bait of a mesh size of no more than two and one-half inches and made of no greater than number 20 gillnet thread.

If you are not confused already then you are really smart or work for the Department.

I sport fish a lot off my power troller. I violated the "a fishing rod" rule for many years because I had two boys and sharing one rod to jig bottom fish when we were anchored did not work too well. I kind of looked forward to getting dragged to court over that one.

I wrote the proposal allowing us to sport fish salmon off our troll vessels. Before that we had to do things like get a charter license, wait to register our trollers commercially until late June etc.

I never sport fish since the boys grew up and moved on when I have salmon on board. I always immediately remove the dorsal fin when we are sport fishing salmon.

In any event I don't think the Department is busting people for having a couple of rods for their kids. I also don't think guys are "sport fishing salmon" and then trying to sell them. If you have a salmon on board your licensed troller when you are fishing in areas closed to salmon trolling, or when you are using sport poles off a power troller in areas open or closed to salmon fishing then that salmon better have its dorsal removed.

akfisher1978

2013-03-18 02:52:44

Wow that is a lot of info! Too confusing to be fair really! One thing thats even scarier I have had one Trooper on my boat tell me I am ok with something and the next week another say something completely different! If they dont know the rules how are we supposed to!

JKD

2013-03-21 04:06:06

Back when I started hand-trolling I used 30s on my "heavies" and 25s on my floatbags. Back in the early 60s you could run 4 lines hand-cranking. Like others have mentioned, bigger flashers will drag back your lines so it will take some experimenting to determine what combination of gear and leads will work best for you in your particular situation. Good luck.