Impurities in lead cannonballs

[wolf]

Yes Malcom is awsome for finding fault on your boat but any knowledge with a volt meter and you can as well!!! but he isnt going to help you catch more fish...LOL
I remember having seen him down at the marina checking everyones boats for a small fee and most were ok .then he came to me and asked if I wanted to pay the $$$ and i said no thats ok and offered him a bevie and we chatted he looked over my boat and asked why I have certain things on it with down riggers and the back of my boat with grounding wires etc so I explained it all to him why and why not, I said i was taught at a very young age about grounding and certain metal which work in the water from a ex commercial fisherman. he laughed and said well i see you will never need me as you have figured it out good on you kid. if your natural reading is from 5 to 7.5 you will be ok as ive said before dont hold to much into it...

When I first started guiding I was hammering springs at will with this old lodge boat which was a wiring nightmare so im figuring in my head it must be bang on..... NOPE it was almost a whole volt going down the wire and it didnt seem to matter at all as I still was getting a lot of salmon ..... and that was where there were just our lodge boats in upper knights inlet all 6 of us and we didnt fish together very often as we would all branch out to different holes..
Remember they bite hooks not cannonballs LOL LOL

 

[profisher]

There are two readings that are involved, your hulls reading and the magnetic field it creates around your boat and your line readings. While this topic is about cannonballs, they are only a small part of the electric equation.

 

[Last Chance]

There is something to it. I ran a black box back when I ran braid, and I can say it made a very small difference. However, the difference it made was not worth the loss in 15 pound balls breaking the stainless line after humping them up and down 200 feet a couple hundred times a day in WCVI swells. There is something to the elctrical "charge" issue. As far as fiberglass boats, this is a problem as the engine downrigger and bilge pumps will share the same ground. You will also get current leakage through your brass hull plug, and thru hulls.

 

[chris73]

Ok, here is my belief: In South Africa at some of the most dangerous beaches (Big Whites) they replaced some years ago the formerly common beach shark nets - to keep the sharks off the public beaches - with small electrodes anchored into the ocean floor. They just give up tiny voltage pulses now and then but it freaks out the sharks and they stay clear off the beach. No more net replacing/maintenance after storms or wear or tangled fish or dolphins etc... Huge improvement. Proves the fact that fish are very sensitive to voltages.

Now, do I believe that you will catch more coho if you set your black box to 0,65 V and only springs at 0.58 V? Nope. I think that is obsessive. As few here said, as long as you have your voltage within the salmon comfortable range then you are ON. As I agree with Wolf, if you fish Possession Pt at its peak time with 40 other boats then might as well not be too picky with your voltage setting on your black box as it will be one charged up soup down there...lol.

 

[profisher]

I agree Chris..if your voltage falls within certain ranges you are ok. However if you are outside that range then trouble can happen, I've seen it too many times. Malcolm has agreed to come talk at the seminar so it should be informative to hear from an expert on the topic.

 

[scott craven]

Why not just use braided DR line, then you don't have to worry about it ?
(that should sir the pot)

 

[Seafever]

I switched to braid......and I catch just as many fish if not more than before......and I had a black box before too.


Black box reading off the wire can be affected by salinity in water... if you are fishing near a river mouth it will throw the voltage......I know from personal experience.

If you have a brand new wire on one side and an old aged one on the other this will throw the box voltage off too.

If you are running one wire at 50ft. and the other one at 200ft. off the same box, you will have a hotter wire on one side than the other and good luck trying to balance them out.

If you have one wire with a clip insulator on it and the other connected directly metal to metal your voltage will be screwed up.

I know one guide that uses wire and the only time he worries about the voltage is when he isn't catching fish.

I greatly respect Malcolm Russell........but there is a lot of holes in the black box game that they are not telling you about.

Even if your boat and everything else on it is 100% correct......you will almost never get even voltage on both sides unless
you run both wires at EXACTLY the same depth.

I was opting to run a separate black box on either side to get more individual control of voltage.......however the makers do not recommend this ( for electrical reasons that apparently can't be compensated...according to them).

I like wire because it is tougher as far as abrasion went......If they came out with a new low drag material that replaces braid AND wire....I'd buy that too.

I think black boxes were designed to take care of electrical problems on large commercial boats...so that they can catch fish normally....
I don't think they are a cure-all for sporties.

Big fish are more sensitive to voltage than smaller fish.....so if you are dialled in at .61 for Chinooks, you may be getting all kinds of teenagers while the big hawgs are turning up their nose at your lure.

If you are running an insulator clip and a large piece of seaweed gets snagged on your cannonball and wire and makes a direct connection to both......your voltage will be off.

Let me ask a question:.......how many people here run a black box and have ACTUALLY ever bothered to install the common bonding wire inside the hull which is necessary?


Some of these big commercial boats especially aluminum hulled have more dissimilar metals exposed to saltwater than you can shake stick at.........so they'd better have there voltage leaks and whatnot taken care of and nailed down to a science.....but on the other hand, way back in the day,many an old commercial boat was going out there with enough dissimilar metal on it to start a scrap yard...and they were still catching fish.

 

[Seafever]

Well if you run one side braid and the other side wire off a black box....you have a much better chance of dialing in voltage, because the box readout only has to deal with one wire.

Problem is when you run two wire lines off one box.....you get the OVERALL readout of both lines because two lines are feeding into one box. And the box doesn't make any distinction about what depths you may be fishing differently on both sides.

At best the black box is a calculated guess as to what the actual voltage is on a line due to several other influencing factors,

I ran braid on both sides this year and it was one of the best years in ages. Although I would be tempted to go back to wire on ONE side with a black box, actually I did that last year before I took the wires and box off......I didn't notice much difference for me though.

But like you said:- different strokes for different folks.

But to get back to the original poster's question:- yes, the metals in a cannonball can have an effect on voltage....especially when you are running a black box.