Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Recommend a downrigger

Alright gents, working to get my small aluminum boat outfitting to fish next year. Targeting coho in the salt and kokanee in fresh water. Boat is a 12' Marlon jon boat so it's on the small side. Do not want to drill holes in the boat so mounting options are limited to clamp type mounts. Looking at a manual downriggers due to lack of power on board and the boat being fairly small.

Any recommendations?

Big Jon made some decent clamp-on down riggers back in the day. I think they were based out of Michigan. No frills but I have two that I still use to this day in my 12 foot Lund and Grumman Sport Boat. They made two different sizes of the clamp on models, IIRC.

I also have an aluminum extruded clamp on base that accepts a Canon standard downriver plate. I bought it on a close-out deal years ago but I cannot even remember the manufacturer. I use that one on my larger sv18 Lund on the transom. It works well.

EBay is likely your friend on this endeavor!

Walker might still make one as well. It is designed a little differently with a horizontal spool but also has a built in rod holder which is nice!

Appreciate the input. Ebay for mounts, downriggers, or both?

The Big Jon and Walker downriggers have a built in clamp on mount. There are multiple examples of both on Ebay right now. Either would be great for your application! The "larger" version of the Big Jon clamp on model includes an aluminum tube rod holder as well which is nice. Several include your lead downrigger "ball" as well which saves you some $$$.

Mine are used for freshwater trout. That larger Big Jon would probably be better suited for the coho and still a good fit for your 12' boat.

I’ve used the Scotty Lake Troller and Cannon Mini-Troller and wasn’t impressed. Cannon makes a clamp-on mounting plate where you can use a more robust downrigger.

I believe Cannon makes a clamp on as well. I’ve got larger cannon manual units on the Lund boat I use for guiding lake trout clients and power Cannon units on the Lake Superior charter boat. I mention these because I find Cannon to be pretty darn good products.

I have not used a Cannon clamp on nor unit brands the other guys have mentioned above, they may be as good or better.

Osky

I ran two full size mechanical Cannon's on my 14' Lund screwed down onto the wooden middle seat. There is a lot of line drag and lead weight pulling on the down rigger arm when we fish deep water and I wasn't going to trust a light weight clamp on. Lots of the charter guys on Lake Michigan were using the electric Cannon riggers. My buddy with the bigger boats started with the mechanical Cannon's too before he went to electrics.

I second concerns on torque and stress on the boat. Just no other options on a jon boat other than clamp on (at least that I'm aware of). I'll have a couple of factors that will limit what I can do. This setup should get me by until an opportunity for a larger boat comes along.

We have used aluminum boats with down riggers by using a wooden (redwood actually) two by six across the entire boat and then using turnbuckles/eyebolts to hold it tight across the gunwales. Mounting the downrigger plates to the top of it, eyebolts through the bottom for the turnbuckles. Spreads the stress and strain out and worked ok.

We used cannon easi troll's with that configuration. I have Cannon Unitrolls mounted on my boat now. Second the Cannon recommendations.

Scotty 1050. I've had great luck with them. Can run multiple lines on one at a time.

Cannon manuals. The only way to go with manual downriggers.