Pulling Copper vs Seth Green Rig

[Dick]

Hills Valleys and Streams in Elmira have all the weights for the rigs. For copper. remember 2 pulls on the oars, 3 pulls on the copper. 300ft braided copper,3ft 30lb mono, pfleuger #4 with a #5 hook. let out enough line until you feel bump, bump, on the pull. If the pull stops, hold tension for a minute and see if you slowly start moving up the lake! soon your arms will tire but don't tie off, the fish will feel something solid to pull against and break off. Be careful not to enlarge the hook hole in the fish.

My Grandmother used to love watching us get taken for a boat ride up the lake.

[Clarkie]

Clarkie, thanks for the edification. Did some more data mining and here's what I came up with to be a Seth Green rig ...

yeah, John Boy...That is the way I fished the Seth Green Rig years ago..

On Sept 15, 1975, I caught a 16 3/4 pound laker just off Marlena Point on Keuka with a hand held rig just like the one you posted..Took me a half hour to land him..

Later on I got lazy and fished my rig with a rod and reel..

Nowadays, I vertical jig..Haven't trolled in a number of years.. I still catch lots of fish and they are much more fun to catch without the weight of the terminal tackle used in trolling..

[John Boy]

I used to do quite a bit of night fishing on Seneca. When I was tired from dragging copper ... would hang a Coleman lantern on the side of the boat. The saw bellies would come to the light. I'd drop a cherry bomb tied on a rock - Boom, stunned saw bellies. Hook one on the rod line with a 1 oz bank sinker and jig it slowly about 20 ft under the ones swimming around the light. Was a productive lazy way to catch lakers and rainbows

Thinking about the same cherry bomb method here at the Jersey shore when the stripers are chasing the bunker on top. Sad to say though, the bunker schools now are not what they used to be

[Ric66]

If you can get a copy of Sanders Fishing Guide for Central New York, he reprints parts of Earl Holden's book and has a diagram of the Seth Green rig

[HPORT]

Seth Green rigs typically have 5 spoons ( 15 points if you use trebles) In Keuka you will pull 75% of your fish ( Lakers) off the bottom spoon... We started out with 5, and eventually went to 3 spoons spaced 12' apart on 8-10' leaders. The possibilities of tangles went way down and fish in the boat stayed the same. 28 ounce seemed to work best for us most days, we use 50lb Power Pro main line and Power Pro & Fluoro carbon leaders with Suttons. The weight was tied on with a 20lb mono leader about 12" long, if you manage to snag an old boat, stove, refridgerator, etc...you will only lose the weight and not your favorite spoons... Purple / black NK's with glow ladders work well at first light.

If you want the fight, jig with light weight tackle, even a 4-5lb laker is fun...

If you want to see copper hand lines and Seth Green boxes from way back, Hammondsport Mercantile has a bunch of them. You can't beat the boxes that were built years ago, some of those guys were true craftsman.

My 2 cents

John

[alwysfishn]

My father, my uncle and myself used the hand line Seth Green rigs on Keuka, Canandaguia, Hemlock and Canadice back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. We used a home made adaptation to a Coleman lantern to get it out over the water with one on each side of the boat to attract sawbellies using white gas for fuel. Hand lines coming out of the wooden trays with screen bottoms like in the pics were stored 3 apiece in wooden boxes and went down with 7 leaders and sawbellies (5 for the shallower lakes). Anchored with enough rope to give the boat a good wide swing the Lakers, and the occasional Brown,Splake, Rainbow, or LL were in trouble. We'd dip sawbellies for bait if we needed more and in the midst of all those boats sometimes you would hear a Cherry Bomb go off in the water. (Maybe they forgot their dip net?). We used soup cans and later on plastic cups fastened together, filled with water and hung on the outside of the boat to put the sawbellies in as we pulled up the rigs. Usually the bottom two leaders were the most productive, but there were times when a Bass,Perch,Rocky or a hungry Pickeral would take one the higher ones. In Canadice on the south end the Bullheads would always hit the bottom ones and we would catch more of them than trout. It is a fun way to fish and spend the evening especially on a warm summer night but you needed a lot patience if those leaders and lines got tangled.