i have tried to pull double duty, and did for a few years with some daiwa med-light rods. they worked OK but they tore the hooks out of the fish's mouth in winni too often. In my opinion you really need 2 sets of rods i am sure some get away with 1 set like i did for years but from experiance i couldn't get it to work out and eventually bought a bunch of the eagle claw sf407 noodle rods for winni and left the others for ontario.
i also did double duty with daiwa sg27lca reels spooled with 17lb. test and then i just tied a piece of 6lb. leader on when i was at winni. This worked OK as well and i used this method for many years but i found that those reels didn't have the drag flexibility i wanted and if just your pinky finger touched the drag lever it would tighten it up too much and tear hooks or break line.
some rods that i found to be better for double duty are the eagle claw sf400 7'6" 8-15lb line rated.
and the cabelas depthmaster DM86 it has some good noodle to it with some backbone too it ain't too bad.
you would need something the size of an Okuma Magda 30 for double duty the 15 and 20 are too small.
As far as Winni goes I'm still learning from you guys.As far as Lake Ontario goes For down riggers I use a 8 footers in med action.Alot of charters and people I have fished with are starting to go to shorter rigger rods(7 footer 1 pc)In med action When I need to replace rods that is what I'm going to do also.They are easier to store and do a great job handling big fish.For reels you need a reel that can handle 300 yards of 30 lb test line.I use Daiwa SG47LC spooled with 30 lb line.The reason I use that heavy of line is 1.The fleas(I can explain later if any one doesn't know what there are)in the summer are realy bad any lighter line and the fleas will attach to it and make your life miserable.2.I have not seen a big difference in the # of fish caught on big line compared to lighter line but that's just me.As was said in an earler post about speed I am looking for a higher speed reel with a line counter but i havn't seen any yet.
The big thing now in the Great Lakes is using wire line for dipsey divers.I bought some 9.6 foot Daiwa heartland rods med heavy for dipsey this year and they worked awsome.I only paid $29.00 each for them.I caught more fish on the dipsey than the riggers this year.Out of the 24 fish I caught this summer only 5 fish came on riggers.The wire line allows the divers to get down to 100 feet(3 to 1 ratio 300 feet/100 feet down)I use the same reels as the riggers but spool them with 1000feet of 30lb mason 7 strand wire line.This is just how I fish the big lake but every one is different.My book is always open to any new ideas also.
Erin,
I also fish with dipsey divers and want to go to wire line but I am unable to find any line over 100 yds. Where can I buy line on line or catalog? Next year I want to fish Champlain more and have had good luck with 2 downriggers and 2 dipsey divers, but want to get down more than 40 ft. Any help would be great.
If your do a search for mason wire you might be able to find bigger spools and it's cheaper but this is where I buy alot of my Ontario stuff there prices on flashers and divers are good hope this helps.
