Worst Case Scenario? Hulling with Downrigger Deployed

C_Run's post on his experience hulling his kayak refreshes the multiple scenarios I think of that can occur when an angler flips while actively engaged in fishing and transporting a lot of miscellaneous equipment, tackle, and gear onboard.

I'm one who has yet to bite the bullet and rig up my kayak with a downrigger. My mind keeps envisioning one of those "in the blink of an eye" complications where the boat flips with the downrigger and weight deployed.

I'm sure someone out there must have experienced that scenario which in my mind would add a whole new level of safety issues and risk, i.e. entanglement with the person, his equipment on his PFD or boat gear, slicing body parts on the wire or spectra line, difficulty righting the boat with 6 to ?? pounds of lead hanging under the hull, etc. (Probably a major reason to consider spectra over wire so you won't need to keep a pair of wire cutters in your vest.)

For those reasons and my respect for Alaska's water and weather conditions as a newcomer to the non-powered boating sport, I'm leaning towards starting out on the cautious side with trolling tackle using divers and weights rather than a downrigger. I've seen enough feeder kings taken on the 20 and 30 foot downriggers on my friend's boat to know Jet Planers or weights will probably get down deep enough to provide me with something to put on the stringer. And I won't need the DR for halibut fishing.

Can anyone shed light on their experience hulling with a downrigger deployed and what complications they encountered?

You have to right the boat from the side the boom is deployed from. Otherwise your pulling against XX lbs plus the leverage of the deployed line. I've played with this a few times just to test it out. Not much harder, you just have to think about what you're doing before you act.

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I use a downrigger.  I haven't huli'd with one deployed yet.  I use a 4 lb weight, so I don't imagine that righting a boat would be too difficult even if I had to pull on the weight.  I run braided line instead of wire because wire makes an annoying loud hum when you are trolling.  That it is easier to cut is a bonus, even though I do carry wire cutters in my pfd.

As for entanglement, I'm always worried about that and I always have two knives ready and reachable by either hand.  I had a crab pot line dragged across my lap by an idiot power boater once, that was enough to convince me how important it is to be able to cut a line in a split second with either hand.

Any time you flip a fishing kayak, there is a risk of getting tangled in the leashes and lines which can end up hanging in the water.  For example, if you have a rod and a net leashed, and you flip your kayak, these items are likely to end up hanging below the up-side-down kayak, and you can get tangled in the leashes.  Because of this risk, a kayak angler should carry a readily accessible knife on his or her PFD, so they can cut leashes or lines if they get tangled in them.  I am not a fan of folding knives, because when you really really need that knife, which has been decorating your PFD for years and has never been used for anything but spreading peanut butter, it is likely to be inconvenient to open a folding knife.  I also prefer knives with dull tips, which reduce the chances that you will cut or stick yourself when slashing around at lines like a pirate in an emergency.

One way you can reduce the risk of getting tangled in leashes is to attach your gear to your kayak when you aren't actually using it.  Bungie down your net.  Clip your rod into its rod holder. Stick your fish bonker, pliers, lip grabber, folding knife, shears, and other gear down inside a mesh pocket.  If you do this, the only things which might end up hanging down below your kayak by their leashes are the items you were actually using at the time of the flip.

The risk of entanglement increases if you have fishing line and/or a downrigger cable and weight out at the time that you flip.  You can reduce the amount of chaos created by a flip if you right your kayak in the correct direction.  Here's the problem: if your kayak flips over to the right (clockwise as viewed from the stern), and you flip it up clockwise, your leashes, fishing line, and/or downrigger cable can end up wrapped around your kayak.  To avoid this, you should right your kayak counterclockwise, so your fishing line and downrigger cable will end up hanging in the water pretty much as they were before you flipped.  So if you end up in the water to the right of your upside-down kayak, push the near side of the kayak up and away from you to right the kayak.  Don't reach over the kayak, grab the far gunwale, and pull the kayak over on top of you to right it.

I do a lot of downrigger fishing for lake trout, running my downrigger weight only a few feet above the bottom.  On rare occasions I have caught my weight on something, and in a lake with no current, that isn't a problem.  My kayak grinds to a stop and turns a bit, I release the downrigger cable and head back the way I came from, and then set the brake and pull the weight off the obstruction.  I've never lost a downrigger weight.  However, downrigger trolling near the bottom in ocean or river currents is a really bad idea, because if you catch your weight on the bottom, the downrigger cable will probably flip your kayak in an instant before you have an opportunity to release the brake, and the current could sweep you away from your kayak.  If you are in the ocean in an area with current, and are running your downrigger weight down 50 feet in 150 feet of water, you're safe.  But watch your fish finder like a hawk, and if the water gets shallower, haul that downrigger weight up.

I have only had one problem with a downrigger when flipped.  I was out on a lake in my Revolution, and a big storm suddenly blew up, sending fields of whitecaps marching down the lake towards me as gusts moved down the lake.  I'm a whitewater kayaker, so I pulled up my Mirage Drive, bungied it down, and was paddling crabwise into the protection of a point, keeping my nose into the wind and waves, when I got hit by a huge gust which blew spray about six feet off the water.  In a sit-inside kayak I could probably have braced and sculled myself upright, but I was in a sit-on-top kayak, and although I braced like crazy, the wind tipped the kayak over until I slid out of my seat into the water, flipping the kayak in the process.  I didn't have any fishing line or my downrigger cable out, but at some point in the process of righting my kayak and climbing back into it I bumped the handle of the downrigger and released the weight, which plummeted to the bottom.  I climbed back into my kayak and tried to get behind the point, but discovered that my kayak was stuck!  The downrigger weight had gotten stuck in some rocks on the bottom!  I couldn't move upwind to try to dislodge the weight in the middle of the storm, and I didn't want to cut my braided downrigger line and lose my weight, so I just released the downrigger's brake and pedaled the remaining distance into the protection of the point, trailing my downrigger line, and got out on shore.  After the storm passed, I pedaled back out and dislodged my downrigger weight.  I didn't lose any gear in the flip, because all my gear is always attached to my kayak and/or leashed.  But I did get an increased degree of respect for storms, and get the heck off the water when bad weather brews up.

Your downrigger weight isn't going to make it noticeably harder to right a flipped kayak. An 8 pound downrigger weight is trivial compared to the total weight of a flipped kayak with gear.

I have rolled my boat while DR fishing more times than I should probably admit. It's the price I pay for riding in a fast boat. Here are my pro-tips.

1. You must right the boat in the opposite direction that it rolls over, or else you will wrap your DR line and fishing line around the boat.

2.  Leave yourself an exit path. Don't entangle your feet or any other body parts with leashes. Keep a tidy deck.

3.  If if floats or can be made to float, don't tether it. It's easier to paddle around and clean up a floating yard sale than to untangle a birds nest of leashes.

4.  Have a knife handy, but don't go cutting everything willy nilly. For as many times as I have huli'ed while DR fishing last year, I have never become entangled in my gear.

5.  Practice self recovery with your DR. The first time I did this it was live and I struggled with getting back in the boat because my DR was preventing me from hauling my belly button over the deck in my usual spot. Now that I have practiced with it, I know where to hold to haul myself up without running into the DR.


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