I’ve purchased a pump handle set up and have been looking at “dive chart info”. The best that I have come up with is a walleye chart/system that states a 50-50 ratio... of sorts. You let out 50’ and snap a weight on, then another 50’ and then the board. For every 1 oz of weight that equals 7’ of lure depth at 2.0 mph. Therefore, a 3 oz weight will get 21’ feet down. Does anyone have any opinions on this? Obviously an approximately 2.5 mph I will not see 7’ down, but I’d like to have a starting point....
Great Lakes Fishing
Pump handle dive chart
Thanks to everyone for responding. The Russell video is great and I subscribe to all his videos. I have a bunch of cannon balls and at the present time, I’m not very interested in running the torpedos. However, at some point I might end up doing that just to give it a try. I find his 17’ lead interesting as I feel that’s pretty short. Obviously he has way more experience in this than me, so I am going to mimic his set up....
I had to look up pump handle fishing... I don't troll, so I never heard of it... did find a decent youtube with some good information on rigging and some depth guides using Torpedo Diver weights.. also found the website for those weights, has charts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izt5fdIdOx8
https://torpedodivers.com/torpedo-divers .... has downloadable PDF files of depth charts
one thing to note about safety and the Torpedo Weights is mentioned in the rigging video
Here’s something I found a while back that might help.
The numbers along the left side are the depth, numbers along the bottom are feet of line to let out. It shows the dive curves for five different weights up to 16 oz, at a speed of 2.5 mph.
Don’t know how accurate it is, but it beats guessing.
hntesox -
Check the link I listed below. You can change all kinds of parameters to get you some ballpark guesses. Obviously, pulling a flasher fly will probably not go as deep as a standard sized spoon, etc.
For example, a 2.2mph troll (assuming no currents) with 30 lb power pro (0.011" diameter) with an 8 oz weight and 75 ft out will get you down about 43 ft. What you'll see is that speed is a huge factor. Even keeping everything the same and bumping the speed up to 2.5 - you're now down 36 ft. 3.0mph is 27 ft. Pretty much why when fishing out of my kayak, I purposely fish baits that work better at slower speeds. It's easier for me to fish for a longer period of time and deeper. Makes no sense for me to pull baits that work best at 3.0mph when I'm trying to get 70 ft down.
I used to obsess about how deep certain weapon/torpedo rods were getting. I learned that depth wasn't nearly as important as reproducibility. If you keep getting bit with your 8 oz rod out 75, then keep doing it. If you're not, use a heavier weight or let more line out. You'd be amazed how many fish come out of temp to smoke a rod, especially at sunrise.
In the meantime, play with this to get an idea.
A sturdy roller guide rod with 20-30 pound wire and a 12, 16, or 20 ounce lead ball and a metal dodger and fly was what came to mind for a pump handle. Depending on the water depth I would drop it back until it bounced bottom and go from there. Tweaking the angle of the sonar beam tilted back lets me watch it on the finder screen as it drops. A pound ball is tough but the 20 oz. is some serious pumping. Lately I use wire for dipsies more than cannon balls.