Seth Green Rigs

[brboerjan]

I am looking a purchasing a rig... was wondering if anyone uses another reel other than a penn 309.. has anyone has success with a line counter reel??

[rolmops]

I inherited a Victrola box with a Seth Green set up,but I use my Penn Sabre with a Penn Senator 113 mostly when I try to use a Seth Green.It is hard work and sometimes it feels like professional fishing and not fishing for fun.

[ray koziatek]

the line counters are dooable but the whole concepr of the seth g rig is to cover lots of depth with the same rod and you will get a pretty accurate depth by counting the passes on the reel, and the spacing you choose between lines

[dbutts]

I always used to have rigs pre tied, wound up on spools. using 3- way swivels. approx. 15' between swivels. leaders usualy 10'. The rig connects to the main line by a snap swivel. then let out a bunch of top line. thats where line counters came in handy. i would start at around 100' of water and let out line till it hit bottom. then i knew about how much top line to put out to get that rig to the depth i wanted it. all you need are some 3 way swivels line and some weight. it's really cheap and easy to set up. the hardest part was when bringing it in i had to hand line the rig into the boat. it was a little tricky to learn how to lay the rig(leaders and all)in the boat so it didnt get tangled. very effective way to catch fish. quite an experience hand lining a nice laker, or L.L. great for finger lakes, but i wouldnt want to do that on lake ontario. That was my version of a seth-green rig

[ray koziatek]

holy debuts,i cant imagine the mess just use small bead conn . between each 15 ft then have premade 10 ft lure lines with swivel on each end just hiok up lure swivel at each bead connector as you let out and remove them as you bring in and wind on a old cheep fly spool ,you can get your whole setup out or in in about 3 min with no tangles

[dbutts]

it really wasn't that bad. mostley i fished with 3 liters. the only time i had issues was when the wind was blowing hard, then it could get ugly. however , its easy to just cut it, and retie. i caught many big lakers running one of these set ups on a jug way of the back of the boat. my buddy used to use a goose decoy for his jug.

[Tripleduece50]

I used to use a old penn 49 large spool reel. They are not line counter reels. I had beads tied in the main line at 50, 100, 150 ft. I used what ray is talking about the spring clips with bead chain swivels, makes pulling off leaders fast and easy. Worked very well. Kind of graduated from that technique though. I like the dipsy's, riggers and boards now. I will say Seth Green rigs do catch fish!

TD

[HPORT]

We use 47LC's spooled with 50lb Power Pro for the main line, on Keuka.

We also use 309's, since the bottom is the most productive on Keuka, we let out line till it bouces and call it good. 10' spacing with 8' leaders. 3 to 5 spoons depending on where the fish are. We use the 47LC to let us know how deep we are.

John

[hemlockman]

How much weight are you using on Keuka? Do you use any sutton spoons also? Thanks

[Adm Byrd]

Thermoclining is way too much work, you need to bring new friends each trip to reel them up for you. Serriously, I wonder how much 7 strand backer a 47LC will hold. It would make repeatability easy.

[dcso]

you can put a 1000 ft of 7strant steel braid on a 47 !

[HPORT]

How much weight are you using on Keuka? Do you use any sutton spoons also? Thanks

We use 24 ounces tied to a 24" 30lb mono leader off the bottom of the 50lb Power Pro main line.

Sutton spoons, never heard of them...

You won't need anything else if you bring a few new Sutton's.

John

[alwysfishn]

We have always used the hand line version for the Finger Lakes. 10' leaders with 2 hooks each, spaced 10' apart on mono (7 total to keep under the 15 hook rule) attached to the green "cloth" topline. We have boxes that hold 3 drawers, one drawer per rig. The drawers have screen bottoms with the left side divided up into 7 or 8 compartments where the hooks and the sinker are placed to keep them out of the leaders and lines. Some of the guys always called them "Set Screen Rigs" which I think they got confused with the actual name Seth Green Rigs. The lines and leaders are coiled in the drawers. We always place an outdoor magazine on the lines to hold them down. It also gives us something to read on a slow night. Oh yeah we still go out at night with the home made lights hanging over the side. Not to many out there anymore on the Bluff or on Canadaguia at night. Used to be lots back in the the day. A regular party every Saturday night out there. We used to do real well on Canadice on the south end in 60' of water on the east side back in the 70's in the fall. Lakers, rainbows and a lot of bullheads too. Gotta give that a try again. Hemlock wasn't too bad either.

[lakebound88]

i always use a 5 liter rig, with each one tied to a three way swivel, with 10-15 feet in between each swivel, with 8 foot leaders. i use penn 49 and 309's. using single copper as my mainline. i use 30lb for the leaders to the 3 ways and a 12 lb leader to the 32oz weight at the bottom just in case u get hung up, you wont lose your spoons:). i also dont use te spools. i have wooden box's doing the board technique that i learned from great grandpa, and not to mention these are his boxes and poles to this day! i am almost 22 and the have been around way longer than i have

[Second Chance 22]

I've been trolling rigs for about 15 years, but with a few differences. About 10 of my former coworkers ran rigs and I picked up alot of info from them.

I tried using Penn 49's and Okuma linecounters, both were destroyed in less than one season. I use Penn 320 GTIs and 340s. The clickers on these reels are crap, but other than that they hold up.

I usually have 3 completed rods/rigs ready to go at any one time ( I know one guy that use to run 8 rigs at once!). At any rate, linecounters are totally unnecessary.

The rigs are tied so that the barrel swivels (bead chains fatigue with age and break) are the same (measured with a tape measure) distance apart- usually 15 ft or 20 ft. As the Finger Lakes have gotten clearer, I have found the 15ft distance to be less productive than in the past. Anyway, on a rig with 20 foot spacing, once you have your 5 lures on, you have 80 ft. of line in the water. Let out line to the next bead and you have 100 ft and so on. If you take a fish you can repeat the depth by letting out the exact same amount of line. This method is way more accurate than the 47's linecounter function (I have some 47s that I use with my downriggers). Really skilled rig runners can feel the bottom when they lower the weight, I've never been that good at it.

My leaders are 12 fluorocarbon with a spring clip on one end and a quaility snap swivel on the other. I have tried using braid as leaders and it was a total disaster. The thin diameter of the braid lets it tangle up in the spring clips and resulted in the worse tangles.

Leaders are stored on a piece of 2 inch thick styrofoam insulation board which is about 24 inches long and 16 inches wide. The lures are hooked into one edge of the board and the leaders are wrapped on the board until you run out of leader and then the spring clip is hooked into the board. Depending on how welll you space the leaders, you can get about a dozen leaders on one board.

Leaders don't belong in the boat while you are fishing. If you are taking them off everytime you get a fish, you are doing a lot of unnecessary work. If a fish is hooked on anything other than the top leader you bring the rig up until the top leader is reached, then you simply play the leader out on the top of the water while you continue to hand line the fish. This process is repeated until the leader with the fish is reached. After the fish is unhooked, I can have the entire rig lowered back to the same depth in 20 seconds or so. With a little practice, you will never have any tangles (unless your boat driver is an IDIOT).

I have 3 rod holders on each side of my boat. After I reel up the rig to the top leader I place the rod in the middle holder to hand line the rest of the rig up. If I decide to change lures, I bring up the rig to the desired leader, wrap the rig main line 3 quick wraps around the rod holder and have my hands free to change the lure.

Quite often I run two rigs while I run two downriggers for my wife. If the fish are hitting the downriggers but not the rigs, you are running to fast.

Running Seth Green rigs requires some work, but it isn't near as difficult as some make it.

[J_HAY]

Bringing back an old post here... Hopefully someone can help with this.

If the fish is on the bottom leader and your hand-lining every leader into the boat without un-clipping, doesn't it cause a piled up mess on the boat floor? My Seth Green is rigged up to snap the leader onto beads every 10ft, which dictates that you have to unsnap the leaders off the rig to wind up the rest of the line into the reel to get to the next leader.....

My Rig does catch fish, but it is a pain to unsnap every leader (5 total).

[Trolling Keuka]

I unsnap each leader but that's just how my dad showed me how to do it. When I was a kid fishing with dad, he or I would unsnap then I was in charge of put the leader and spoon down where it wouldn't make a mess. When I was old enough I couldn't figure out the hand lining way so I just stuck with what dad taught me.

[Fishnet]

This thread was sooo good to read I’m just posting to it to bring it ahead five years to the present. A true wealth of information on this site. 

[Sk8man]

Good to see this thread resurrected. These days many folks are preoccupied with king fishing on Lake O and filling their boats with the latest and greatest elcetronics and that is a fun part of fishing for sure but Seth Green (or "thermocline" or "rig" fishing) on the Finger Lakes can be a blast too. Yes, it sounds complicated and a lot of work to folks not familiar with it and yes it is "old school" but it can also be VERY productive even in the absence of the latest greatest technology. I recall another previous thread where a lot of the things involved were detailed as well but  Second Chance 22 (above) detailed the "basics" very well. For those folks unfamiliar  with this trolling method I would suggest going out with someone who has been doing it for a while to get a real feel for it  before discounting it as too complicated or too much work. Interestingly, each fisherman doing it has their own "twist" to it and even very experienced folks can benefit from seeing it done on the water. There is nothing like having a couple of big rainbows or Landlocks on one rig at the same time trying to go in different directions and then hand lining them to the boat with your heart in your mouth and adrenalin flowing.....kinda like holding a full draw on a recurve bow on a deer and trying to stop the shaking

Edited November 23, 2017 by Sk8man

[stoneam2006]

This is on my list to try this year.

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