Rocks for Weights??

Over the past few years i've had concerns over all the lead that I have lost in the ocean by all the snags.
I know it doesn't take much weight to get the bottom and wondered if natural rocks will do the trick? If it snags and I lose it, No harm, No foul.

I saw this cool design on the internet. Any thoughts?? You guys think it will work?
Saving a few bucks wouldn't hurt either.

I cringe when i think of how much weight and led is dropped to the bottom of the ocean floor each week by charter boats trolling for salmon. --L.A.

If you're concerned about dropping lead, maybe rebar would be an option. It's not as dense as lead, but I've heard of people using it for DR weights, so it should your line to the bottom. And one 20' bar would make a lot of fishing weights...

I guess you are not the only one thinking about it. 

http://norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=66172

I have been collecting lead on my dives and remelting it so I can eventually make new ones. 

Keith that looks a lot like the rock I grabbed from Beardsley 5 years ago to use as a downrigger weight since mine broke off...I put that rock in my garden at the old house somewhere, I better go back and retrieve it someday.

I acquired an old salty tackle box that had these waxy-plasticky looking discs about the width of a nickel and about a half inch thick, with an eye at the top. I read the paper in the bag and it described melting these things with a lighter and sticking them to a rock and using it for a weight.

Maybe one could melt half a glue stick onto a rock and stick a swivel into the hot glue? May work. Not sure how good the glue is for the environment or how durable it might be.

I'll see if I can rummage and take a pic of those things. They are old!

Tobacco sacks and rocks/sand is my goto beach setup.

Or maybe use a masonry drill through them and use cotton rope?

Tobacco sacks and rocks/sand is my goto beach setup.

^I have heard of this working well. ^

Good for you for caring about this. It's great to see I'm not the only one worried about the obscene amounts of lead that get dropped into the ocean on purpose. Think of what the sea floor must look like near Muir and Dux! And think about all our delicious dungeness crab that have to wade through a minefield of lead!

I don't lose sleep over the occasional unintentional "donation" of a jighead or few oz sinker, but intentionally dropping a couple/few pounds of lead for each salmon is excessive in my humble opinion.

I like the rebar idea.  FAR less expensive, easy to cut & drill for use as a weight.  The rock idea looks good too but a little time up front to create "bolder holders".  I guess spark plugs will rist away over time leaving only the ceramic insulator to become broken down over time through wave/sand action.

I understand not wanting to polute, but is donating a big chunk of lead to the bottom of the ocean such a bad thing? It seems to me that most of the lead would get covered in sediment and not do too much environmental damage.  Anyone have data on this?

I worked for a Cat Dealer we used track pins for weights. They welded a lock washer to the pins to attach the line. If you need a lighter weight there is one draw back. It takes a torch to cut them down as they are very hard.

I understand not wanting to polute, but is donating a big chunk of lead to the bottom of the ocean such a bad thing? It seems to me that most of the lead would get covered in sediment and not do too much environmental damage.  Anyone have data on this?

I want to say that the only data I've heard of was pertaining to landlocked bodies of water but it's been a while since I even attempted to look anything up on this matter.

I'd be happy to give you whatever rocks you want out of my backyard.  We have enough for everyone in NCKA!

I don't need data to tell me that dumping ANYTHING into the ocean that didn't originate there is a bad idea.

Elemental lead is pretty benign unless it's actually ingested (such as birds eating lead shot), but it does react with other chemicals and leach to some degree. I could see it entering the food chain via crabs and other organisms that feed by sifting through sediment.

At the very least, it's littering...

Lead is nasty stuff. I spend a lot of time devising ways to clean up lead-contaminated soil.

Great topic. In fact you beat me to it.  I have been brainstorming a way to use rocks on sinker releases while trolling.  There is great potential here. The problem is finding the densest rocks.  It would suck dragging a baseball sized rock while trolling; especially on a kayak. I like the twine sling idea. This would be easy to incoorporate some swivels into this.