Mounting Downriggers

[flyingd]

How far back from the transom would be optimal to mount downriggers??

[No Reservations]

Most people are from the school the farther back the better but you need to consider the position and whether or not it will be in your way when trying to net and land your catch or just fishing and not using the downrigger. I mounted mine right behind the rear curtain on my seahawk seems to keep it out of the trolling motor when you get that steep angle in a turn. Also its nice to swivel the boom forward and have it out of the way when not in use.

[fishkisser]

use the search function and you will get a lot of info ...
I ended up mounting mine 5' forward of the transom ...

[BARCHASER]

Since I live in Seattle, 90% of my fishing is downriggers, Puget Sound, the Strait and usually two trips to the west coast of Vancouver Island. I have a Seahawk also and NR mounted the downrigger plate 26 inches from the stern end of the boat. That seems about right for me. On my old Bayliner and my even older Glas Ply I had it mounted about the same. Any further back would be too hard to reach, any further forward it would be in the way of netting fish and the cable would be more at risk of fouling the prop. I use long booms on both DRs and only had the cable catch the prop once and that was over 20 years ago.

After 28 years of manual Penn DRs I finally bought one Scotty electric DR. I've used it 4-5 times now for Blackmouth and it works great. The guest can use the manual Penn, I logged too many years of cranking.