TyeeTanic

Nice gift. Bet you won't forget that Father's day present! There's lots of help here. Also if you are on the Canadian side of Lake O, visit Spoonpullers.com - which is more focused on the north shore. This site has a lot of experienced anglers as well, so make sure you keep tabs here too!

If you can throw a few more bucks in. I have this unit, it is really good. Marks fish awsomely, and it is really easy to use: http://www.gpscity.ca/lowrance-elite-5- ... otter.html 500W RMS Has switching between 83kHz and 200 kHz, which helps you change the cone angle and see things differently.

I just bought some walker tripz divers. This should help me a bit, particularly in the top 40 feet of water. I'm thinking of running 3 dipseys with 2 settings apart (2L, 0, 2R) and then the tripz diver in the center running over the center dipsey. Maybe will set the center to 0.5L or something so it's not right under the tripz. Have a look. What's nice is it floats as you release your line and then when you pull back it starts diving. With wire even the size 20 can get to 36 feet deep according to the Precision Trolling book.

As IRISH56 says, you need some backing to get bite! I use duct tape, basically tie the wire around the spool and then tape a 1" to 2" wide section of duct tape over the wire and wrap around, overlapping at least once. Then start reeling in the wire nice and tight - do this correctly and you will be happy - not too fast, until you get the hang of it. 1000 ft of wire is all you need with the duct tape backing. Wire goes straigth to the dipsey and I support the above - hooked in via a good quality quick connect swivel. I use 30# fluorocarbon as my leads - it is more invisible in water than mono. If you are going from a dispey to lure - put 10 ft of it on. If you are going to a flasher put around 5 or 6 feet of it on, then whatever you need to the fly or artificial bait - as per instructions.

Are those Babelfish translators available on ebay?

I take about a 2" length of copper pipe insulation (grey foam). I wrap my lead around this and store with the dipsey. Leader never gets kinks this way and stays neat and compact for storage.

Watermelon (purple, white and silver with black dots). Monkey puke (yes this a a lure's name) - it is orange and green Hawg Wild (it is orange and yellow) Purple Thunder (Purple and Black) NBK spoon (green and silver with a chrismas tree pattern on it) Go for the 4" lures, and if you can, maybe some 3" (but 4" is the preference). Also as stated above, get some Atomik flies: - bloody death - crinkle glow - hawg wild

Yup, and with 40 lb test mono line, you need a really big reel to fit 1000 ft of it. Agree with all the above - fleas, stretch issues. Also wire gets deeper than mono as there is less drag due to higher density of line and thinner line for same strength.

The main reasons: (1) hooks not sharp enough (2) drags set too tight (3) dipsey doesn't pop open and allows slack in the lead line. Mark

I would go at least 9 ft, 10 ft if you can. It helps getting the fish a lot closer to net when you have more length as you can wind up more line. It also helps to get the rods over the rigger rods if you want them to sit over one another. I have Rapala RSC's 10 ft with roller guides - very nice. You will get 100 opinions here, so you'll need to go to a good shop and look at the options. If you go the roller guide way rather than twillie tip, then get a rod with good roller guides or the wire will end up getting stuck between the roller and roller mount and you will be swearing a lot. A good roller guide is an amazing rod to work with.

I don't use downriggers on my boat. I fish with 2 or 3 dipsey's and one or two lines using a heavy bass weights. Don't use snap weights, they are useless. Go with wire lines if you can - it is way better, trust me. If you buy anything else you will likely end up buying wire and spending the money twice, so do it right the first time. Wire is not difficult to use if you follow a few basics. Get 7 strand torpedo wire, and spool 1000 ft of it onto your reel. Keep it tight, apply it on slowly and then you won't have any major issues. So let me explain my setup: Two outer rods are always on wire dipseys, number 1 dipseys on 3 setting away from the boat. If generally put these deep in the water 50 - 90 feet deep. Two inner rods (center) I normally put on heavy drop weights a 4 oz and a 6 oz. This allows me to put these lines far out (180 feet or more) out and away from the dipseys. At these distances I get around 30 ft deep. The 4 oz weight is always 20 or 30 feet farther out then the 6 oz weight. This keeps these lines away from each other as well. To attach the bass weights, they will come with a ring on the weight. Connect your main line to this ring using a snap swivel. Connect your leader to the same ring using another snap swivel. Your leader then needs to be at least 10 feet long, florocarbon 20 to 30# to lure. Sometimes I'll use a number 0 dipsy on one of the center rods if I need to get to 40 feet or so. The setup up is very productive. I hooked into 7 fish this weekend, and landed 4 over the space of 3 hours fishing. Mark

To be honest, I keep the one on the SD only. I've tried it with two, where the fly comes with a swivel as well, and haven't noticed any issues. When you say what is the lenght of the cheater line, do you mean the lenght of the leader line (from SD to bait)? It depends: 24 - 28" if you are using a fly. 36 - 40" if you are using cut herring bait or artificials (MC Rockets). Reason for longer lead is you don't want the swing action of the SD to affect the rotating action of the herring bait.

The ad was removed. What did it say?

So based on this, the best you're going to get is 120 to 130ft down?

I would rather put a flasher ahead of a fly than a spoon. I like my spoons clean after a 6 oz drop weight, or a No 0 dipsey. And use at least 8 to 10 ft of lead line (floro).

Mag dispey with ring, the chart only goes to 100 feet for 30# wire. 100ft on 0 setting needs 210 feet line back. Same 210 feet line back on 2 or 3 setting only gets you about 90ft down. The angle of the curve suggest after 210 feet you go down 0.3 feet for every foot of line out. So to get 10 feet you need 33 feet of more line out. So this is my guess on 2 or 3 setting: 100 ft down - 240 feet out. 110 ft down - 270 feet out. 120 ft down - 300 feet out. 130 ft down - 340 feet out. 140 ft down - 380 feet out. 150 ft down - 430 feet out. I think past 120ft down it actually becomes impractical. Will take forever to reel in a king from that distance.

Storm Warning has it right. Precision Trolling Big Water Edition II. The paper the dispey comes with is useless for braid or wire.

I agree with Bottom Feeder's setup suggestion. You want to play with distance away from boat and depth to keep them apart from one another. I've done it the other way around with the mags on the outside and then a standard or even a smaller No 0 dipsey on the inside two. What works the best if you go with the smaller ones on the inside is to use a No 1 and No 0 on the two inside lines. This puts the No 1 deeper and closer to the boat, and the No 0 shallower and farther from the boat. If a king hits the No 1 it can basically swim under the No 0 line. Anyhow it's all good and easy to keep under control until a big king hits. You'll have to get use to potentially reeling in one or possibly two of the lines if you can't control the king away from the others. This is where it is good to have a spare set of hands onboard.

I use just about every color. I match my dipsey color to my flasher color. Blue on blue, green on green, purple on purple - etc. I do pretty well on the blues and purples.

Yup, when I see this kind of stuff, I think ... we are on a big friggin lake. I mean its like 50 miles wide or something, and we have all this space. Why in the bloody world do these guys feel the need to come so close? Maybe they are lonely or something, but comeone, it's not like we're in a small confined zone. Basically, they are retarded ... just accept it.

Huh? What are you boating in, a canoo fitted with a radio control airplane engine?

I don't ask for gas money but everyone still pitches in one way or another. Some guys bring lunch and others will offer gas money. However no one ever offers to stick around and clean up the boat!

I use Torpedo 30 lb, 7 strand. 19 strand is a lot more expensive, and I don't think it's necessary. I never had one break off all of last year on this wire line. It is flexible and spools nicely. 1000 ft on each reel. I agree with what the other guys are saying. Braid is okay from May - June. July to mid August the fleas will render your braid useless. You will not be able to reel in your line and lose everything. After mid-Aug the fleas disapear and you can use braid again. If you have wire, you have no problem all season long. Mark

Ducks, I cracked two 9 foot starfire rods last year. One pulling up a 20 lb laker, and then other pulling in a violent 22 lb king. I switched to 10' Rapala RSC's. Both the starfires and RSC's have roller guides, which I swear buy. I couldn't recommend the starfires based on what happened. It wasn't a crazy amount of strain, but both rods exploded on seperate occasions about 12" up from the reel. I could recommend the Rapala RSC's though - they are 100 times better to work with.

To tie it to the real you actually tape it down using duct tape. Go around the spool with it once or twice and then use a piece of duct tape as wide as the whole spool and wrap it right around over itself. This gives the wire you now are going to wrap around the spool something to bite into. Remember keep the wire on the reel and off the wire spool always tight and straight - no loose ends, no kinks. Do this right and the rest works like magic. For the fishing end of the wire line, use a swivel tied to the wire, probably a quick connect will be the best so you can snap dipsy's on and off quickly. This is what I use to tie the swivel to the wire and it has never failed me, and it never will. It is as simple as it gets: http://lotsa.org/Wire%20Line%20Knot.htm Mark