Big Shoulders

[powerdive]

Fished the K Dock area for walleye yesterday. Didn't catch a ton, but there were some well-fed Bull Shoalsians mixed in. Had a very fat 23" walleye with an 8" shad in its gullet, an 18" walleye, a 21" bass that was about as wide as it was long, and 4 white bass all between 16 and 17 inches.

Oh, and a coupla gar. Trolling cranks at 26 feet. Fun day.

[Forsythian]

Powerdive, I went out on Monday and tried bottom bouncing crawler harnesses for the first time. Tried it for mebbe 2 hours. Didn't catch any, but I don't really know what I'm doing so that shouldn't be surprising.

Seems like a viable technique for me, using the trolling motor and drifting with the wind... especially since I can't troll cranks with my rig (175hp). I'm gonna keep after it and try some new locales.

Anyways, was it my imagination, or is the thermocline at 20 ft in the Kdock/ Mincy area? Seemed kind of shallow, but there it was

[powerdive]

I figured the thermocline at 23 feet on Sunday; surface temp was 90. But thermocline depth does vary somewhat between lake sections, I've noticed.

My fish came off the edges of flats within sight of the marina.

Bouncing should work great; looks like there's a lot of panfish down there, though. Some guys at the ramp had one 20" walleye, which they said they caught drifting a crawler at 15' across a flat.......

[powerdive]

Forsythian, have you tried a drift bag? You only need to get down to 2.5 or 2.75 mph or so, if that, this time of year. A bag under the bow would almost surely get you there, and also give you better tracking. Just a thought.

[powerdive]

Went out of K Dock again today, and had a much better day. Caught about 2 dozen walleyes, mostly short, but with a limit of 19-22 inchers (kept 3 for the pan). Also caught about 20 sow white bass and a 13" crappie. Most were caught vertical jigging in 32-38 fow.

Thermocline looked to be topping out at 19' today..... !

Was only out about 4-1/2 hours...sun was brutal...no wind most of that time. Very tough on the old bod.

Here's the pre-fillet pic:

[Sam]

Nice catch, P.D.! I'm going to get down there and try to emulate your success.

Powerdive, Forsythian - I've got a new scheme going. Trolling a 1/4 oz. Roostertail is one of my favorite techniques (for various species), and sometimes I run a worm sinker and a swivel a couple of feet above the Roostertail for trolling. Trouble is, a Roostertail has to troll at least about 2.1 mph with the main motor for the blade to spin, and even with a weight it doesn't get down more than 6 feet at that speed.

With the surface water temp at 90 degrees, trolling at 5 or 6 feet won't do it, even for white bass. The fish are down around that thermocline.

I read about the Worden Vibric Roostertail that's made to spin at a much slower speed. I picked some of those up today at Bass Pro, 1/4 oz. white. Now, in my tackle-making gear I've got some 1/4 oz. chrome lure bodies (like for making Roostertails). I'm thinking of running my 10 lb. PowerPro line through one of those lure bodies, tying on a swivel, then about 8" of monofilament and one of the Vibric Roostertails. That would give me 1/2 oz. of weight, it should look like a small fish chasing a tiny minnow, it should spin at slow speed, and I think I can slow-troll it at close to 20 ft. deep with the trolling motor at about .9 mph.

That sounds like a walleye rig to me - as well as white bass, crappie, etc. What do you think?

Here's what the Vibric Roostertail looks like:

http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_2870_100006002_100000000_100006000?cm_ven=bazaarvoice&cm_cat=RLP&cm_pla=2870&cm_ite=productname_link

[powerdive]

Sam, for bottom bouncing with a crawler harness (with spinner blade), the rule of thumb is 1 oz. of weight for every 10' of depth, at an average speed of 1.2 mph (the usual range is 0.7 to 1.7 mph). The blade does provide a bit of lift, but the effect is lessened at slower speeds. For achieving depth, over-weighting is easier to fix than under-weighting; just increase speed or shorten the line out.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I suspect you might need more weight ahead of your Vibric. But really, the only way to know is to go!

Sorry about the photo above. For some reason it posted as a thumbnail, and I haven't figured out how to resize it. Yet.

[Sam]

Thanks, Powerdive - that 1 oz. per 10' figure is something I'll keep in mind. Interesting.

I wonder if there's something in the dynamics that's different there, because with a bottom bouncer you're staying in contact with the bottom, while I don't want to touch bottom with my rig. Maybe it takes a lot more weight to keep a rig in touch with the bottom than it does to keep it at a certain depth? I don't know.

The reason I wonder that is that my experience mostly comes from slow-trolling a swimming minnow on a 1/8 oz. jighead, usually with 2-lb. mono diameter 10-lb. PowerPro braid line. I do an awful lot of that for crappie, and I've got the depth figured out. I cast out as far as I can behind the boat, then give the rod two big sweeps to get out more line. I have to troll at .9 mph (by the GPS) to get the tail of a swimming minnow to wiggle - and with that rig I'm running at 12' deep. That's exact to the point that in 13' of water I probably won't bump bottom, but if the depthfinder shows a spot at 12' the jig will bump when it gets there.

Running at 12' with 1/8 oz. of weight seems like a big discrepancy from needing 2 oz. to get to 20', so I'm puzzled. I don't doubt what you're saying as I know you do this all the time - I'm just puzzled. As you say, I'll have to try various rigs on the water to figure this out.

[powerdive]

Then again, I use a 1/2-oz. bullet sinker for live bait rigging with a floating jig at bouncin' speed, and I can easily stay on bottom in 20', with enough line out. Probably that's the difference--when bouncing, your line should be at a 45-degree angle or less (I prefer to run as close to the boat as possible, no more than 50% more line out than water depth). So, less line out = more weight needed to achieve depth, assuming boat speed stays the same.

By the way, the "bottom bouncer" is kind of a misnomer. We've pretty much learned not to run on bottom--especially in these waters--just let it tick occasionally for reference.

It'll be interesting to hear how you do. I haven't used an inline spinner in years--caught an awful lot on them in younger days at higher latitudes. One of the favored techniques on my home lake (Geneva) in Wisconsin was to longline troll a #4 or #5 Mepps gobbed with a crawler, over the weedbeds at night. The weeds grew to about 4-5' under the surface, and you wanted to just tick the tops. Walleyes would slam 'em like tarpon.

[Sam]

That explains it - the difference is the amount of line we've got out. With a 1/8 oz. jighead, it's not possible for me to troll at a 45 degree line angle, and if I tried to keep the line short the jig would be 2' underwater right behind the boat.

When I troll like that, sometimes I hook a bass and it jumps before I've had a chance to reel in much line. When that happens, I'm always amazed at how much line I've got out because that bass jumps at a surprising distance 'way back behind the boat. I wouldn't be able to slow-troll this way with mono line - it takes a thin no-stretch braid to work right. I'll fish the weighted in-line spinner rig the same way, and I think it'll get down there OK.