Just went through this , 115 merc four stroke with a 4 blade 15" vs a3 blade 17" the 17" killed the hole shot and cavitated at w.o.t. , the 15" has a great hole shot but allows too many RPM at w.o.t. My decision was to stay with the 15 and run the boat at 5400-5800 rpm instead of w.o.t.
We. Fished Hugh's on Sat. 8 for 10 on kings, biggest on tipped the scale at 17# found them in 129 FOW, also caught a dozen or more steelhead , one brown and a laker. Most of the steelhead were on a temp break at 209 FOW. Running all spoons at 40 ft. Or less, Troll King and Stingers worked for us .
I talked to Gary (big weenie) and he informed me that his heads won't take the bigger saw bellies, just seeing if anyone has tried running them backwards ?
Can't find meat heads large enough for whole Alwives , has anyone tried cutting the tails off and running them backwards in the heads?? Sounds goofy but.....
Use what ever will get you to. Target depth, snap weight- thru- riggers charters are great place to learn but you CAN do on your own , and the costly lesson have a tendency to stick with you, re-read my first post --run ALL the same type of baits, take notes and enjoy the fishing, it's not all about the catching !!!!
Before I had down speed I played the percentages , I would flood the zone that had the most fish, with that said one must be aware that every spoon has a sweet spot when it comes to speed, a Moonshine will not run with a Alpena diamond , with that in mind I always run the entire spred of the same spoons . If they don't go I change the entire spred and go with a faster or slower spoon , if they don't want spoons then the whole spred gets changed to a stick program, the same holds true with sticks , some like it fast, some like it slow. You also need to pay attention to wind direction and currents, stingers could be wackin fish at 2.2 mph running with the wind, turn and head into wind and they never take a fish, , this what the current will do ! Gotta love this game !!! Good luck and GOD bless
Several yrs. ago we caught them flushing out of the pond heading for the lake, with this in mind it may be worth a shot casting off the beach at the state park, with a mud line would be AWSOME, browns are there NOW !
The rules are simple biggest ( one ) fish wins , you can have only one fish per category on the board under your name, the boat could have the 1st, 2nd and third place winners on it with three different names. The only " box" derby on Cayuga is the LOU-ALL , the winner last year had three lakers and two browns . Not sure about the finger lakes trollers ass. Derby's but the have nothing to do with the "bear & Barney" derbies.
On the water at 8:00 headed west , turned at bear creek , headed south, did this 3x's . Went 49 for 53 biggest brown 6.5 lbs. best bite was on the cobble rock in 5-8 ft. All stinger spoons, die hard, orange alwive , chartreuse alwive and golden perch were the best but everything took fish. High light of the trip we had 7 rods in with 7 fish on and landed them all !!!!! What a fire drill !