Rapala Scales

I've been a big proponent of the Rapala hand held digital scales... but they have let me down - I think. I won't go into details yet, but here's what's going on.

I just went downstairs and weighed a 5lb tuning weight 5 different times. Each time it read 3.89 except for the last time when it read 3.99. I fished with bassboy1 today and caught a funky looking fish (beat up, I'll post a pic in a bit) and decided to weigh it. It was a fat 12-13" long, and the dang thing weighed in at .96lbs. bassboy put it on his scales and it read 15oz as well... I thought, oh well - I'm not as good at guessing weights as I though I was but it bothered me.

So... with that being said - I think a fish I caught earlier actually weighs nearly 2lbs more than what I though it did. I checked some bass calculators and it's pretty close to estimates given by another tinboater who has yet to fail me at guessing weights before the scales were shown.

Could a bad battery cause it to show false readings like that? I just replaced it with a non brand 9volt, but it's all I can think of. I don't have another battery to test it with yet...

Now I wish I had taken girth measurements... I'm going to have to get a sewing tape to keep in the boat with me from now on

I feel your pain, I have gone through 4-5 scales already. Once it reads false I toss it. After extensive research I decided I am going to spend some coin and get the best one (I think anyway) from all the reviews.

https://scalesgalore.com/salter_electrosamson_hanging_scales.htm

did you have the weights on before you turned the scale on

hardwatergrampa said:

did you have the weights on before you turned the scale on

Click to expand...

I go through the same process everytime I use the scales...

1 - turn them on without anything on them
2 - zero them 2 or 3 times
3 - put the fish on and take weight
4 - take all weight off the scale and see if it goes back to 0.00
5 - weigh the fish again

I just weighed the 5lb block and the 10lb weight I have... both are still reading nearly 1.75-1.8lbs lighter than the acual weight. I put those weights on my tournament scales just to make sure, and the 5lb weight is dead on, while the 10lb weight is around 9.97 (not a tuning weight...)

I caught a 36" Musky three weeks ago that weighed 1.3 lbs on my Rapala digital scale - with fresh batteries. I had to get the fish back in the water so I couldn't mess with trying to get an accurate reading. Haven't tried it since, I'll try some weights like you did and see what happens....

Darn it...just bought one of those...50lbs Rapala.
Doesn't matter, probably won't use it anyways

How sure are you of the tuning weights calibration? Reason being, 2 or 3 times we weighed the same fish on both my scale and your scale, and short of mine being set to pounds and ounces, and yours being set to decimal points of a pound, they have matched, once the math was done.

But, I just went out, and weighed mine against a known accurate digital scale we have. I weighed about 10 different items varying from a couple ounces up to about 11 pounds. On all but one item, the variance was no more than .5 of an ounce. I will attribute that to the fact that the Rapala scale measures to the ounce, whereas the other scale measures to the tenth of an ounce. The one exception was on a 10 pound 9 ounce gallon of paint. The Rapala scale weighed it as 10 pounds 10 ounces, whereas the other scale weighed it 10 pounds, 9.0 ounces. The next time I put the same gallon back on the Rapala scale, it went 10 pounds, 9 ounces.

So, my scale weighs accurately, yours doesn't, yet mine and yours match. I'm scratching my head.

Jim said:

I feel your pain, I have gone through 4-5 scales already. Once it reads false I toss it. After extensive research I decided I am going to spend some coin and get the best one (I think anyway) from all the reviews.

https://scalesgalore.com/salter_electrosamson_hanging_scales.htm

Click to expand...

:shock: Ouch! Looks good, but expensive as you stated.


I have the Berkely brand digital scale from Walmart, and I'm thinking it's off some also, as I tested it weighing my 10 lb mushroom anchor, and the scale read less than 10lbs. I need to put the anchor on the bathroom digital scale to get a comparison point going. I'm now thinking that the 4lb (accoring to my scale) LM I caught at Table Rock last year might have weighed more (maybe 5lbs)! :shock:

I have the Berkley digital scale.

I have gotten mixed readings in the past. It doesn't suprise me tho. It gets rained on and is out in temperatures from 30*F to 100*F and usually gets thrown around the boat. Somedays it is very close. Other days it struggles to stay within 25% of accurate on a fish. I know this to be the case, because we weigh all of our fish during our tournaments and have something to compare it too each time we bring our fish to the tournament scales. I usually don't have to second guess it, becuase if it's off, it's noticeably off. In that case, we wait for the scale to power off itself then weigh the fish again.