Earlier this year I was out fishing a few miles north of St. Joe Michigan with my son Logan.  It had been one of those days we’ve all had where nothing quite goes right.  You know the ones, where every time you turn around you have tangled lines, boogered leaders and hooks caught on everything but fish.

I was trying out a new down rigger ball I had found at a swap meet.   It was a handmade job similar to Willie T’s Balls Downrigger Weights.

I was curious to see how it would run and if it would have less blow back than a conventional ball.   Anyway all morning I had issues with the new ball running in towards the center of the boat.  The fin had a weird kink in it that was affecting how it tracked.  It was especially bad making turns to the port.   Around 11 am, I was making a slow turn back to the south (port) when the port downrigger rod started twitching.   My son immediately jumped up and called fish, grabbed the rod and proceeded to pop the rod from the clip.  But there was nothing on the line.

I got up and started to crank up the port downrigger but something wasn’t right.   There was more tension than normal as I cranked it up.  I was about 15 feet from the surface when my son shouted dad stop!  He frantically pointed to my port downrigger wire which was now perilously close to my motor.  What the heck!  My downrigger lines were crossed.

At this point I shut my motor off so I wouldn’t suck up downrigger wire in the prop.  Then I had my son, pull the rod for the starboard downrigger which came up minus a lure.  I can only guess the port downrigger wire must have cut the starboard downrigger rod’s line.

After about 20 minutes of fiddling, I managed to get the port downrigger untangled from the starboard downrigger.   Amazingly I didn’t lose either downrigger ball or damage the downrigger wire too much.   By itself I thought I was doing good.   But I then cranked up the starboard downrigger and to my surprise my leader, lure and a Laker were still in the clip with the starboard side downrigger.

My son excited at the chance to hand line a fish, grabbed the line and pulled in a 5lb Laker.  At that point we both figured we’d used up all our mojo for the day and decided it was time to go home.