TOPIC:

Has anyone used or tried the fishfighter adjustable cannon ball weights. I haven't seen or heard of any reviews and was just curious if any of the great lakes trollers have used them. thanks    

I tested a Fishfighter (fishfighterproducts.com/) a few years ago that you could add side plates to adjust the weight from 1 to 14 pounds and you could adjust the fin 10 degrees L or R to make it track away from the boat. First, let me say it's a weight, not a hi-tech machine. Add some weight and it's heavier and you get less blowback. The tracking system is a bit more complicated. First, I don't know how far out from straight the weight tracks at depth. I tried it once when I could see about 18 feet and it looked to be tracking maybe 18 inches wider. Can't say if that would be 50 inches at 50 feet or 100 inches at 100 feet - probably not. If so, it would be at the expense of blow-back. Think of it like a Dipsey Diver. Set it on 3 and the disk goes wide but you have to let out a lot of line to get depth. Set it on one and it dives the same depth with less line. Also the "spread" would vary with speed. To get maximum spread, you have to troll pretty fast. Sharp turns will make it do funky stuff. At 30 or 40 feet maybe no problem, at 75 or 100 funky might make it into a big wreck. I wouldn't recommend it for a boat with more than two riggers. Accident waiting to happen. On a two downrigger boat, perhaps you'd catch the occasional fish that wouldn't move that extra five or six fish to bite a lure - not many extras. Better ploy would be to run the lure maybe 20 or 30 feet back behind the weight. Blowback? I couldn't make any guesses, but they are all iron/steel so they are bulkier than lead. Regardless of the shape, an iron weight is going to have a bigger blowback than a lead weight.
Now the WORST thing is they cost $116. Downrigger weights are not really "disposable" but I have many 20 year old rods and reels - I doubt if I have any 20 year old downrigger weights. Eventually, they'll end up on the bottom, right along with the Fishfighter sample weight I used that snagged on a reef up in Wisconsin.