Last Nights Trip...

[nathanhooper]

Well, I started to say it was a report, but really just have a few words of advice.

I was trolling with my downriggers, and feeling less than confident in their depth, I decided to lower them on down some more. That in itself was not the problem, but thinking that I could tell when they were hitting bottom was. After 3 hours of running over fish after fish, good bait balls, and just ideal fishing conditions, we decided the fish just weren't in the mood to bite what we had to offer...

So stopped the boat and pulled the baits up. Wow, I have never seen line more twisted in my life. I would guess that about the time I let down the baits and came into some shallow water to see if I could see them ticking the bottom, which was about 30-45 mins into the trip, was when they caught moss and started their spin.

I can imagine all the fish we were going by were just looking at the lure and shaking their heads...

Lessoned learned. If your trolling by fish after fish and no bites, stop and check your lures. Even still, I would say that you should check your lures every so often.

Oh well, have to replace some line now. I am tempted...very tempted to go with some 10lb line. Would this be very silly of me? These rods are strictly trolling rods. I do not cast with them at all. I also troll some pretty open water. The only times I troll where there is a lot of trees/brush is when I am going for whites. I am just thinking that with 10lb test I could get my lures down a bit more with long line trolling. If I am not mistaken, the trolling data book was based on 10lb line and when 20lb line is used you can subtract 25% from the depth.

I have been using 20lb line and getting to 19'-20' with some of the lures I use. If you add 25% to that I would get to 24'-25'. That would be pretty close to where I am seeing fish for sure. Last night they were again holding at the 30' mark. I would think that a lure running 5' above their head would get their attention at least. Better than 10' above their head. And some of the fish were seen around the 25' mark, especially when we were close to the bait balls.

Any thoughts? Is 10lb test mono just a broken line waiting to happen when fishing for striper? I know for walleye it would not be such a big deal.

[uofastudent]

try 10 lb yo zuri hybrid. not terribly expensive and great diameter to strength ratio

[Feathers and Fins]

Nathan all my trolling rods are 10lb Seagar Fluorocarbon, Doc can attest that they will land big stripers no problem just be sure to set the drag accordingly and play the fish. As to the line twist run a swivel 4ft above the lure will help and defiantly check about every 20 minutes if you are not catching fish, this is also when you should change out to a different color or lure to find what they want.

At the end of the day tie on a swivel with a weight to it and let out 100yards of line or more depending how much you have out for trolling and put you boat speed about 5 to 10 mph and run for about 5 minutes.... Then pop the line and swivel off and let the line out and repeat but at a higher speed and it will help reduce to remove line twist.

[nathanhooper]

Well ok then. That's what I'm going to. Now if I can sneak away from work for a little bit....