Boys, I need some help to solve a problem that occurs in the Georgia Straits every guiding season that drives me up the wall. Floating seaweed or frankly the crap line that shortens my tacks and causes me no end of frustration every summer. It might just be me but there seems to be more weed than ever the last few years and I am forever raising my downriggers in order to clear my gear and that takes time from my fishing and tips out of my pocket. The Campbell River area is well known for its fast tides and deep fishing, having the gear set at 240 feet is not uncommon and that is where the problem lays. With fifteen pounders down and the lines running sideways under the boat I have very little room for steerage and if to much seaweed builds up on one side or the other I often have to abort a tack that I might have set up in order to cover some bait schools or a GPS mark set over an earlier strike. The problem lies in the fact that the particular species of seaweed that causes the most trouble lies submerged and is not visible at the surface until the boat is right on top of it.

In an effort to thwart this seasonal menace I have tried many strategies including heavy stainless steel carabiners snapped over the downrigger braid and connected with a short cord to the boat. By allowing the carabiners to hang about two feet underwater I can often clear my line with a quick snap of the wrist. Unfortunately this only serves to the clear the downrigger and does nothing to prevent the weed from sliding down the fishing line. I have also tried loops of stainless wire around both downrigger and fishing line but that hasn't worked to my satisfaction. So I am asking whether anyone here has come up with any kind of novel solution?

The only way I have tried, is to lift the arm of the rigger and move it and the rod to miss the kelp. This only works if the crew is quick off the mark. Maybe there are some better ideas out there? Thanks for the post.......BB

That is the problem I am the crew and at my age my speed is beginning to go. I run a seventeen foot Boston Whaler with a tiller and because the boat is narrow I keep my downriggers fully extended to sixty inches to avoid tangling. This cuts down a lot on lost cannonballs as in the tides we work in they tend to be sheared off by the propeller. That also makes the downrigger arm awful heavy to lift and miss visible kelp heads , fortunately I can usually reach out with the gaff and knock them out of the way but if you can't see weed coming at you it is normally too late by the time you are committed to running through a mess of the stuff. I find I often have my eyes glued on the fish finder and my free hand is hovering over the GPS in order to mark a strike or a decent looking ball of bait and sometimes my full attention is not on our heading.

There used to be a device sold with the exact name as the subject line of this thread-URL long gone now though.

From my experience the only solution is an active exerienced/biddable
deckhand.

You are right Whalebreath one of my guests found this thing called a crapcatcher on the Internet a few years back that he thought was the perfect gift for me as I have been trying to find something that would be a solution for the weed problem for years. For twelve bucks he got me something that may or may not have worked if I was a trout fisherman but I love the name of the site that put it out it was salmonbroadsandbeer and maybe they had the right idea.

Lifting the boom on your downriggers to avoid the crap is probably, sooner or later goint to end up with you losing your grip on the boom, and a good chance of doing a lot of damage or losing the whole set-up, besides being pretty hard on the ageing body. (just ask me about ageing bodies)
Have you tried re locating your rod holders? I have added a rod holder on the port end of the transom, for the starboard rod, with the rod pointing pretty well straight back. It is much easier to watch both rods from the helm, and the weed and crap may not be as bad directly aft.
Adding scotties` ball retrieval set up would probably work to catch the crap on the dowbrigger cable,but it may have to have weight added to keep it deep enough. At least it would help in re-connecting releases.
Lure-Washer

Lure-washer, you are not kidding about the dangers inherent in lifting the boom to miss the weeds and I try to avoid to much of that but I do have to turn my riggers to face inboard for traveling and that means some handling of the booms and the fifteen pound weights but I don't have to much trouble with that. As to the Scotty weight retriever I have tried placing up to four pound weights on the line attachment but it has not been very successful and even more dangerous as the extra weight of the weeds builds up fast not allowing the retrieval mechanism to work correctly and it definitely is not as good as the carabiner method that I use presently.

Rod holder placement is another thing that I have worked on, I don't use the rod holder on the downrigger rather I use Scotty Orca holders on the boat rails just inches from my guests so they have every opportunity to pop the release clips themselves. And I must say the Orcas are the fastest and most convenient rod holders I have ever used although because of space requirements there is very little room to move their positions. I do set my rod holders to face back as much as possible but it is difficult because the downriggers get in the way.

I do thank you for your ideas though and appreciate what you saying.