Noobie in need of help please

[007]

So I thought it was a great idea and bought a great boat ( my first boat) and loaded it up with all the best equipment. I have been driving around for 2 weeks trying to find fish and am not having much luck at all. Can anyone throw any tips for sourcing fishing areas and if anyone has any luck for sale I may be in the market lol as I have not caught a fish yet lol.

[Tim Bromund]

Ok first question and we'll take it from there: What port have you been fishing out of?

Tim

[007]

Sorry, Forans in Grimsby Ontario.

[TyeeTanic]

What equipment do you have? I thought I had the best equipment, and have changed it over 3 times.

Firstly you should have wire dispey's and or down riggers. If you only have wire dipsey's then put on flea flicker on two chute (center) rods.

Use 8 to 8.5' rods and nice trolling reels that can take at least 300 yards of line, with good drag systems.

Next - you need to find out temperature by depth. Fishhawk makes good products they have the fishhawk TD, which you drop into the water and it tells you the temp every 5 feet. Drop your lines in the 45F to 55F depth range - spread them out. This time of the year you will find this temp range in 30 ft - 50 ft of water.

Finding the right depth is easy with down riggers - needs some work with dipseys. Get the Precision trolling Big Water edition 2 - this has all the charts for wire, mono, etc.

Put some good floro leads on the end of your line before you hook up to your spoons - try 10 feet of 20 - 40 lb test.

Use Monkey Puke, Watermelon, Purple Black, Blue Silver Williams spoons - all size 3 or 4.

Troll at 2.5 mph between 100 ft and 140 ft deep water.

Try over an over until you catch fish.

[007]

Thanks for the post Mark. I will follow your suggestions and get back to you.

[dewey123]

I wouldnt neccesarilly go out and buy all that stuff. I dont have a temp/speed probe...the only thing i have is the surface temp on my fish finder. Stagger you lines and see where youre marking fish and adjust. I dont use wire divers, I use braid on my divers because i couldnt afford wire and got a bunch of power pro 300 yrd spools for 10 dollars each on clearence. I use berkley big game mono for my leaders and i have 20 plus foot leaders of 30 or 40 lb line for leaders. I like to use longer rods for divers 9'6" or 10'6" and 8'6" for rigeers. I have manual scotty downriggers with a 20 inch boom and 12 lb weights. I used to use 4 dipsy divers off my dads boat that didnt have down riggers. I would say youre most important thing now starting out before you dump all your money into trolling gear is to know the speed of your boat. I do best 2.7 to 3.1 mph. I use a hand held delorme gps unit. It will take some time of picking stuff up here and there to get your boat set up with everything and the best stuff.

[TyeeTanic]

Dewey - I just ended up changing all my braid over to flea flicker line - 30 lb test - because of the fleas.

The flea build up on braid renders these rods useless in a few hours nowadays - I would not go with braid right now.

You don't have to get wire if you don't want to, it is more difficult to work with, but I think good to fish with.

You can put flea flicker on all your reels - it cost me $20 for 250 yards - and it works great - strong as steel and the fleas don't stick to it.

Also, down temp is not a necessity, but I do produce more fish with it. First thing when I'm out on the water I put the lines down to 30, 40, 50 and 60 ft. Then I test the temp and adjust my depths according to where the 45F to 55F is and then put one just above the 42F.

I have really zero-d into the fish zone quickly with this technique.

I do agree with Dewey though, don't go replacing all your equipment - what I gave is a suggestion - rather tell us what you have and we can suggest any necessary changes.

Speed is definitely important - 2.5 to 3.1 mph is my range. I get strikes mostly at 2.8 mph.

[dewey123]

Yeah the fleas stick to it but its not too bad....I've caught well over 100 salmon on braid this year and I'm not changing the braid untill I have to.

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