tmckenzie

thanks for the info, will get one on order,I intend to have its maiden voyage on seneca in the am.

I was just thinking about what happened to you and how to avoid it if possible. I just purchased a fising kayak and almost have it rigged and ready to go. Do people that troll in kayak use a flag of some sort so they are better visible?

channel cat? did not know we had any. Talk about good eats.

Thanks for all the advice. I think I will order a bracket today.

I bought a used humminbird fishfinder. It had not bracket with it to mount the transducer. I am wondering if I can glue the transducer to the transom, beneath the water line and it still work? Anybody here done this before? I have meesed around with it and it reads best pointed straight down.

We got off to a rough start, went to put in at smith park and what they call a boat ramp is a joke. Not deep enough, so we headed back down to watkins and put in at 7. Headed up the lake and caught a couple nice rainbows, one got away. Both off of downriggers down about 50 feet. We think we found our problem. Going to fast.

Nice. Sounds like they are biting again. I planned to go out Sunday, but looks like Irene is going to mess that up.

Well, we 2 brave souls ventured out onto Seneca this am. Rain did not bother us, but we must be doing something wrong, or just the fish are not biting. Not a single bite. We put in in Watkins Glen. Saw a couple other boats out. Did anybody on here catch anything at all? We ran into an older gentleman in the walmart parking lot, who asked if we had any luck and we said no. he said nobody including him has had any luck for about a week. May try over on Cayuga next week. Were is the best place to put in on the south end, on the west side?

We are going to change some stuff up and try it agian early Sunday morning if the weather is good.

Thanks for all the good responses. Seem like we have some changes to make. And the weather had them messed up like we thought. I think our speed may be ok. We were barely moving and we were using a luhr jensen speed indicator that we got used and I think the line on it is too short. Sounds like the big mono is the main trouble. We tried several lenghts of line behind the ball on the dipsys. Any where from 30 to 100 ft. What is best? We were using sverel dream weaver spoons. On the riggers we are using the expensive chamberlain releases. Out the back we tried, dipsys, spin doctors, you name it. I think the wind and all was the biggest trouble for us yesterday. I t got really rough early, I know, we have a 14 ft boat. And we tried going out Tueday morning and it was way to rough. We are just itchy to catch fish and have spent a good bit to get all of the right stuff. If we do not get it right next couple trips, we may hunt somebody up we can go with to see how to do it.

I am the other fisherman. We were running about 2.5 about as slow as we could go. Then tried speeding up. We ran the same speed as we had ran before whe we would catch fish with just 2 rods out. We ran from watkins up toward atwater winery and back.

Had the same thing happen on a brand new one first trip out. It is those cheap plastic gears. I called the company, they made it good and said they had been having a buch of calls. The replacement they send was brass. Just got a couple sealines for a good price off craigslist. Nice reels.

When my family commercial fished we made a lot of money off of drum in the Alabama river. I have seen 7 pounders. We would sell them for a dollar a pound. Caught a lot of what we called buffalo too. All out of hoop nets this time of year in the middle of the river. In about 75 fow. We never ate them as we considered them trash fish. We were after yellow cat, but since there was a market, we kept them. One Sunday, me and my daddy decided we would see what all the fuss was about, the customers who bought them, all African Americans, just raved about drum. So we tried it. My Lord it was terrible. The more you chewed the bigger it got. It was like chewing cotton. Good thing we had also cooked up some illegal spoonbill catfish. Now talk about good eats. Spoonbill is amazing.

Was reading about this thing online. Does anybody have any experience with black boxes in general. The theory behind them make sense to me.

I am new to the whole trolling thing and I troll seneca. We should get together and comapre notes.

You are absolutly right on the peanut oil. It does fry fish better. I remember my grandparents frying fish in pure lard. Now talk about good. But you cannot get good lard anymore.

We picked up some nice used downriggers of of craigslist this week. Got to get them rigged up this weekend. How do I know how heavy a weight to use?

I am southern, raised on fried catfish. We fry everything. So I had heard of a lot of ways to cook lake trout, but I said naturally. Get the grease hot. I skinned a nice laker, filleted him, and cut it into 3 inch long peices. Salt and pepper him good, then get zatarains fish fry from walmart, and put it in a paper sack with a littles lawrys seasoned salt. Throw the fillets in, give the bag a good shake and when your deep fryer is hot, put the pieces in and when they float, they are ready. I did not know what to expect, but that stuff was amazing. Way better than catfish and that is saying something. Oh, you got to eat it with cheese grits and scrambled eggs, and hushpuppies.

Does anybody know where I can find older trolling reels that actually use metal in gears. We had a brand new okuma out monday, the worm gear quit. Opened it up, somehow, probably inexperience caused the worm gear to strip. Darn thing was plastic. They will warranty it, bit i would rather have metal. Bound to be somebody in the finger lakes with a shop they carrys older better stuff.

The wetaher may have stirred the lake up pretty good as a front was coming through while we were out. Probably messed the fish up too. Nope, no pee bucket. That is a new one on me. Us southern boys can pee out the side of the boat without getting a drop in the boat.

Nice job. Where did you put in at? Going after a nice fishfinder and 2 nice downriggers to help our boat out today. We hope to get better every trip out. I fried up the laker we got Monday. I grew up on fried catfish. Fried laker fillets will make catfish take like dirt. It was amazing.

I will have to start checking that out. Seneca lakes is so big, I think it makes it own wind. While we were trolling, we would go through spots that were almost white capping, then as we kept going, it would settle right down. wierd. Another thing is, I was keeping my hand in the water and I was amazed by the temperature fluctuations on the surface of the water. That has got to effect the fishing.

Report. We left the landing probably at 6 15 in watkins. We trolled north, the weather looked nasty, but it did not deter us. Went as far north as atwater winery. All I know is we could see it. Not anything, then we had one reel mess up, whch okuma is going to warranty, so it was out of function. So we made a long turn and went back towad watkins with the one rod running copper and a flasher and fly, which we had just changed to. After about 5 minutes, we caught a very nice lake trout. That was around 9, so we started back in so because we both had to go to work. We have to get a good fish finder so we know what we are doing. We will get it figured out soon I hope. Maybe it was the weather? Down south a front like we had this am makes fish feed. But we were both proud of the laker we caught.

How far south were you?

Report is not much to report. We had one nice Salmon. Hope to do better in the am.