TOPIC:

Whats every ones favorite brand of down rigger snubbers. I recently switched from chamberlain releases to dreamweavers due to the built in snubbers, and I love the snubber part but HATE the releases so I want to go back to chamberlains with adding a snubber and with the price of lead I don't want to lose a 20 lbs ball. So what brands are people running they are confident in that wont break and lose the ball.

Scotty brand snubbers are good. Don’t cost much either.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. We have fish riggers for 40 years. I just can't ever remember using snubbers on the riggers. Maybe we are missing something here but just not sure why you'd need them.

I have never used a snubber on the rigger.

I have never used one.

I use Scotty’s the same as Steelie Don. Thought it may take some shock out of the sudden stop of my downriggers and stress the gunnels a little less since my Cannons drop the weight really fast. Does it make a difference? Can’t say, but it is nice to grab a hold of to pull to the boat to reset a rigger vs the wire. I run 14 lb cannonballs and they work fine but can’t say how they would handle 20’s.

Not sure we need them but I like using them. Prefer Scotty's over DreamWeavers.

You can get the Dreamweaver ones without the built in Black’s releases. The FishHawk branded ones are decent quality, that’s what I ended up with just because I wanted one that had a swivel snap on both ends of the snubber to attach directly between my probe and rigger ball. Amish Outfitters also makes one that is like the Luhr Jenson dipsy snubbers and has high test Dacron line between the swivels in the even the the rubber breaks. Those look like the best option really with the added safety layer.

When I spoke to the guy who makes the Chamberlains before I switched to them he specifically said that if you are going to bounce bottom with those releases you should use a snubber between the release and ball to avoid tearing up the release / bending the wire.

I just ran the snubbers for the first time last trip and I will say it definitely helps with the shock loading quite a bit when my Cannon DigiTroll 10 TS riggers go down or come up... I have them set to the lowest speed but there is some sort of software glitch where those riggers will automatically switch to the 5 speed when it’s got a lot of line to send out or retrieve (Program Run or Auto Up). I have seen the wire actually back lash on these fast retrieves / hard stops. The snubber seems to eliminate that issue.

I lost my X4D probe, chamberlain release, and ball at the end of the day during a retrieve a few weeks ago to what I suspect was a kink in the downrigger cable caused by one of those backlash events... $350 or so loss which may have been prevented by a $10 snubber.

So I’m giving them a shot. I will probably look at ordering some of the Amish Outfitters ones as well.

I have Cannon riggers as well and I use the Amish Outfitter snubber.

amishoutfitters.com/catalog/index.php?ma..._info&products_id=52

Glad i looked at this thread- have a pair of scottys on the way