Science and fiction.

[jurelometer]

Here's the "tine" thing. This one does well in surf/sand and might work on a muddy bottom. The tines will snap out of this position(pointing backward from what's showen) in case of a snag-up

Short answer:  Tines  work when there is horizontal force.  Here we have vertical ( lifting) force, so the tines cannot dig in.


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Long answer:

Sinkers  with tines  need a horizontal pull to dig in.  No good for our situation.   My argument hinges on the claim that the horizontal force of the current on the line gets redirected to lifting force on the sinker, and the deeper the drop/faster the current, the greater the redirection.   So any solution that will stick better has to resist vertical lift.  If we think that  this is not a valid claim, we need to come up with a better reason why the sinker won't stick to the bottom as well when the line is attached.

On a deep drop in current from an anchored boat, with the line free-spooling out as the weight sinks,  the line will form  sort of a "u" shape (more like a sideways "j"), with the current carrying the loop past the weight (sinker) as it reaches the bottom.   Reeling up will pull the loop back toward the boat, which  causes lifting force on  the weight.   

Whether the weight will break free when the direction of pull is away from the boat , straight up or toward the boat depends on line diameter, CoF between line and water,  current speed, etc.   Even if the line managed to tighten up pretty good and nearly straight line to the boat(which won't happen),  the lifting force will be primarily be upward due to the deep  drop.    So there will be little to no horizontal pull.


I think that we have to remember why the weight is being dislodged in this environment (primarily upward lift from the forces of current on so much line).  Making the sinker stick to the bottom when the current is causing it to be lifted vertically  is hard to defeat mechanically IMHO, so the answer ends up being adding enough weight.  At  which point, we want the weight shape that drops the most efficiently (least amount of line to reach the bottom)  and can be wound up the most efficiently (minimal water resistance while winding).

This is my argument against the cat food can shape. That, and I don't want to get a cat just so I can have some molds

I think that anchor chain style solutions would have to get pretty unwieldy to resist the substantial lifting force (unlike a normal anchoring situation, the current is working against us), but I have admit a lower level of confidence here.

Also, We should not focus on simply getting the weight to stick once it reaches the bottom, but look at the entire problem.  We want the most efficient way to get the bait to the bottom and then back up again in this setting. With enough money and time, we could design some sort of lightweight frisbee shaped contraption that shot out a set of barbed legs that stuck  to the bottom really well, and weighed only 6 ounces.  Unfortunately, it would take a couple thousand yards of line and a quarter mile drift to reach bottom.   Try winding that back up  .

My opinion is that cannonballs make a great all around sinker.  They can be trolled, deep dropped, worked over sand or rocks.  A great all-rounder.   Sometimes less is more, especially on a boat.   Don't like that they roll around the boat, and once they get up around 12-16 oz, they can start making dents and bruises.  Sort of like a cannonball.

I believe that deep drop fishermen often use long cylinder shaped weights, but I am not a deep drop guy myself.   If I was looking for a specialty weight, I would start with whatever the deep drop guys go to.  Especially if they are using a cylinder, as it lines up well with the science as I see it.

-J

[Ron Jones]

My experience with this involves far larger lifting bodies, specifically submarines that are bottomed and how to keep them there. There are hydrodynamic shapes that alter the effective angle of attack in such a manner that they could be expected to assist a sinker to stay on the bottom while being acted on solely by the current and submerged long wave forces of water. Unfortunately, you would be fighting those forces all the way up and the harder you fought the stronger the effective angle of attack would increase in a downward direction. That and it would be prohibitively expensive to design and manufacture the mold.

I do believe that we can do better than a cannonball, I like the can food form because it minimizes the exposure of the weight to the current and the current on the bottom can often be quite intense. I do not like the cat food because you will fight it all the way up. At the velocities we are discussing and the level of complexity we want in a mold the optimum shape for minimizing hydrodynamic resistance upon retrieval would arguably be a teardrop; however, taking the operation into consideration, its efficiency is only slightly below that of a sphere. The sphere exposes more of the body to the water column and can be moved around easier than any other shape.

The best of both worlds would be a flattened sphere, such as the can that was pulled up from the side. The wider the circle used the better, but then you get into where are we going to store the thing.

Gary, I think you should cast the wire into the side of the cat food sinker and give it a go, if you can figure out how to make the sides round, so much the better.
The Man

The Man

[oc1]

I think that anchor chain style solutions would have to get pretty unwieldy to resist the substantial lifting force (unlike a normal anchoring situation, the current is working against us), but I have admit a lower level of confidence here.

I was a land-based shark fisherman as a kid.  The most annoying thing in the world was to get all set up for the night and then have the surf pick up or the sargassum move in so the weight no longer held tight.  Taking out a bait at night was a non-starter.  The easy solution was to clip another weight onto the line and try to get it to slide out as far as possible.  It was OK from the pier or jetty but difficult from the beach unless you had an outrigger.  Nonetheless, a little extra weight to keep the line down would always keep the bait from moving around.

Casting with some auxiliary weight up on the line is nearly impossible though.  There is a type of surf fishing weight with tines like Greg shows but also having a long top wire.  The long wire out the top makes it laydown so the tines will catch and sort of acts like an anchor chain.
https://buffalogapoutfitters.com/products/sea-striker-sputnik-anchor-sinker-4oz-long-top-wire-0029-2747?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&adpos=&scid=scplpFARSS-4OZ&sc_intid=FARSS-4OZ&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhqvDgpTJ6wIVEj2tBh2wMggbEAQYBSABEgI7QvD_BwE

-teve

[RowdyW]

Dominick,"May the force be with you".    

[gstours]

Thanks for sharing your information and thoughts 💭 .   We are keeping a. Open mind a every person has a right to chime in.    We don't all have to be rocket scientists to go fishing 🎣,  sometimes just getting lucky overcomes doing things "wrong".  I,m here to learn.
   This may seem like and odd or dumb post butt there's some things going on when we make a drop.
Secondly let's narrow the weight shape and size to the fact that in the area I fish there is usually current.
This changes the assumption possibly that you are fishing strait down.   When there is little or no current it easy to switch weights and make things easier for the drop and retrieving.   
  It's when the tides start running, everything staying the same you bait and sinker will lift up and as it can't go back anymore simply lift up.   Lessening the line angle is helpful as well (another post with easier scientific explanation?) it just seemed like using as small of weight will make you happier and the possible shape could be improved from the cannon ball.
  Yes the fisherman can help by choosing days when the flows are lesser,  heavy leads are usually the complaint as to the point of throwing in the towel.     
  There's lots of good things happening here,  and thanks Alan,  for letting me in .👍

[Ron Jones]

Big angle most certainly makes the problem worse. The longer, flatter belly in the line "flies" more. Its called kiting.

The Man

[jurelometer]

Secondly let's narrow the weight shape and size to the fact that in the area I fish there is usually current.
This changes the assumption possibly that you are fishing strait down.   When there is little or no current it easy to switch weights and make things easier for the drop and retrieving.   
  It's when the tides start running, everything staying the same you bait and sinker will lift up and as it can't go back anymore simply lift up.   Lessening the line angle is helpful as well (another post with easier scientific explanation?)

This is what I was trying to describe. My apologies if it got too long or convoluted.   Let me try  (last time, I promise ) with a story and a diagram:


Gary says that he will take me fishing if I promise not to rattle on all day about fish vision and light waves.   We anchor up at a promising spot with strong current in about 200 feet depth.   I drop the sinker and start letting out line, but I was so excited that I forgot to tie on the sinker.   The sinker (and bait) fall mostly straight toward the bottom, drifting a bit in the current.  But the unweighted line is pulled away from the boat, and doesn't sink very far at all, with almost completely horizontal movement.

Hoping that Gary didn't catch this on video, I claim that I had a fray in my line, wind in, tie on a fresh sinker and try again.

This time, the pull of the current on the drifting line will be competing with the force or gravity pulling the  sinker toward the bottom.  The thicker the line, the faster the current, and the greater the depth, the more force will be coming from current on the line. If my sinker is too light, it will not be able to overcome being pulled up and along with the line.   But Gary has set me up with a nice 2 lb sinker, so eventually it hits bottom.

A bit before (possibly) and after the sinker hits bottom, the line will form a loop downcurrent from the sinker.   When I reel up, this loop starts to get taken out of the line, but I will never get a straight line from the rod tip to  the sinker.  It will lift off the bottom first unless I am using much more weight than is necessary to hold bottom without over-tightening the line.

As I tighten the line, I am mostly adding to the upward lift on the sinker because of the force of the current on the line.



So anything that you do to the shape of the sinker to help it hold bottom in current, has to help hold against this mostly upward force.   But if your design drifts or spins too much while dropping, or  creates too much water resistance when winding up, you still could end up worse off.

I don't think that the bait load changes these basic issues much (just have to use more weight), but I will save that for another day.


Note that this is unique to anchoring. The interactions would all be different on a drift.

I could be wrong (wouldn't be the first time), but this is how I see it.

-J.

[Ron Jones]

Taking out the bow in the line causing more lift is an astute point. My grandfather, erroneously, used to say that you laid enough line on the bottom to let the anchor hold position. As I studied hydrodynamics I realized that the chances of that happening are very slim unless you all but empty most spools by allowing the current to pull out line. There is a point where the line will get straight enough that this effect is diminished or eliminated, but as you pointed out if you can get there you are probably using way more weight than you need.
I see this as one of braid's unnoticed advantages. Its sensitivity is such that you can have a bow in the line and still feel what is going on with the bait.
The Man

[gstours]

Thanks Dave and Ron for this evenings enlighten ment. 🎣.
  The example Dave shows here is very applicable,  good graphics.!
   As I'm learning from you I still have questions.   As Ron implied that reducing the line angle from vertical to more horizontal should deminish the force of lifting the weight up.  I agree with this and usually it's the first mending you can do on a imaginary drop.  Generally this helps , butt there's a fairly small window of and how much this will work ok.   I,d say about 25% of the time letting more line and working the bait back you will be able to fish with your chosen bait/lead if everything stays constant.....
  Unfortunately things down there don't stay constant.....  just look at the tide 📚 book.
I thought that a flat bottom low profile sinker may hold the bottom best because of the square edge sitting in the mud silt in comparison to a round ball.   Maybe the lift up from the line is the demon here?
  I,m hoping to make a flat bottom sinker  with a side eye as Ron suggested before I,m done with fishing this year.   Keeping the forces low may help,  certainly the retrieving will be easier.   Butt heaven can wait!

[jurelometer]

Thanks Dave and Ron for this evenings enlighten ment. 🎣.
 As Ron implied that reducing the line angle from vertical to more horizontal should deminish the force of lifting the weight up.  I agree with this and usually it's the first mending you can do on a imaginary drop.  Generally this helps , butt there's a fairly small window of and how much this will work ok.   I,d say about 25% of the time letting more line and working the bait back you will be able to fish with your chosen bait/lead if everything stays constant.....

I am not sure that is what Ron was saying, but he can clarify.

To get to the same depth with  less acute angle, you have to let out more line, and the more line that you let out, the more lifting force that the current has on your sinker.   And I think that the U shape curve will still be there on the sinker side, so you will still end up with vertical lifting force on the sinker.  My guess would be that you would end up with more force,  still in an upward direction.  No free lunch in physics.

But getting back to the original question, even if you are right, the general shape of the curve in the line and the vertical lift on the sinker should still be roughly the same. Modifying the shape of the sinker to resist a horizontal pull in the mud won't help if there is little horizontal pull.

I thought that a flat bottom low profile sinker may hold the bottom best because of the square edge sitting in the mud silt in comparison to a round ball.   Maybe the lift up from the line is the demon here?

Yes.  That is the demon if my theory is correct.

The flat bottom/low profile sinker will sink slower and be harder to retrieve.  It might suction on the bottom a bit, but I am not sure how it would much that would help. It won't plane up too bad if you lose bottom momentarily, so that is a positive.

  I,m hoping to make a flat bottom sinker  with a side eye as Ron suggested before I,m done with fishing this year.   Keeping the forces low may help,  certainly the retrieving will be easier.   Butt heaven can wait!

Very similar to a dollar sinker.  These are not used for drop fishing for a reason.  These will drift more on the drop and have a tendency to spin. Once they lift off the bottom they will plane up a bit, and are not good at catching bottom again.

I could be wrong, but if I was a gambling man I would not be betting on any of the cat food can designs, pyramids, or tines.  I would take whatever drops the fastest without spinning and is the easiest to wind.  Or just use a cannonball so I didn't have to carry too many different sinkers.

I would suggest to also try a longer cylinder or torpedo shape.  Torpedoes (and submarines) must be shaped that way for a reason.    Easy enough to pour something in 3/4 or 1 in pipe. John's (Brewcrafter) plumb bob shape is no a bad idea either. It might manage to bury itself a bit, and will drop and retrieve nicely.

Always enjoy your experiments.  The field testing is where we find out what really works.  Theories are just for making up the short list.

Glad that you liked the diagram.   I made the sky grey so that it would look familiar 

I see this as one of braid's unnoticed advantages. Its sensitivity is such that you can have a bow in the line and still feel what is going on with the bait.

I agree.  We can fish differently with braid.   Also,  we can often get by with thinner braid than we use, which is already much thinner than mono.  Shrinking the line diameter shrinks the force from the current (proportionately?)

-J

[oc1]

It's sort of weird that when you lift the pole, the weight is pulled away from you.  Not pushed away and not pulled toward you, but pulled away from you.

The profile of the line perpendicular to the current is the line diameter multiplied by the depth (but perhaps not the amount of line out).  Knowing the area of the line profile and current speed, and with all the forces being upward, it seems like it should be possible to calculate the force and, thereby, the amount of weight required to resist the current.  Whether it's theoretical or empiriical, it seems like there would be tables or equations or guidelines or something for this.

Shrinking the line diameter shrinks the force from the current (proportionately?)
-J

When they calculate wind load on a sail the wind speed is squared.
-s

[gstours]

Yes i smiled when I learned a new word from mr. Ron.   
as·tute
/əˈst(y)o͞ot/

adjective
having or showing an ability to accurately assess situations or people and turn this to one's advantage.
"an astute businessman"
 
As i re read Rons reply on letting more line out I was not sure if I agree butt thats why i,m here.   Thanks everyone for chiming in as we can be civil and still try to understand and be helpfull.
  I,ve found by experience that letting out more line can be helpfull to hold the bottom.  That said it seems like the line angle and its lifting power is a clue to something here.... I also agree that this will only help if the weight size is close to the minimum size that will not get swept downstream.   There are some hidden forces at work here. 
  Another part of this lead weight delima may be bait size and shape.  I like to use an led light at times butt thats more drag.  A spin n glo winged body is popular here to make motion, and or vibration.  Butt my style is a large 12 size musky spinner blade for vibration.
These all add drag to the weight to help pull it down stream.   Working with the variables a choice has to be made by the fisherperson.   Many times you cant add these as its added drag in the water hurts you even more.
   Like in boating when you drop the anchor you may have made a poor choice at that moment.   This is a little off topic butt there is a lot going on down in the water,  things i got to know about to improve my choices.
   Luckily lead can be remelted and cast into many other trial molds.    I,m going to try the pyramid or cylinder weight when I can.
        Yes the grey background was easy on my eyes,  I dont know how you folks can do the endless blues skys?

  I enjoy learning stuff,  you, all have been good.

[philaroman]

Thanks,  it seems like a flat bottom will have square edges and resist rolling or tipping more than the round cannonball that is most popular here.   We fish sandy, pebbles, mud mostly with bottom foliage.
  Some folks have shown me some rectangular lead sinkers usually 2-3 pounds they like more than cannonball weights.   
  Line diameter, depth, and bait size also comes here into the constant equation.

too lazy to read all 26 replies, so if noone said it...

mini-mushroom-anchor

[philaroman]

EDIT THAT: make micromini-mushroom-anchors

...or, get 2 regular mushroom anchors to breed & keep drowning the babies