Seneca 8/17/11

[bkf5012]

Still not much luck to report. Only our third trip out, but we have two down riggers now. We were in the water by 6 A.M. We had a fish on off a down rigger around 50 foot within 10 minutes, but lost it because I did not have the down rigger release set right and I spent to much time fooling with it to trip. That was the last action of the day. We fished until 11. We ran leadcore dipsys, 250 copper, FF, black/green, green/silver, orange/silver, black/silver spoons. Ran down riggers at every depth you can dream up, and fished every where form 100 FOW to 300 FOW (when we could read the fish finder). Does anyone know why a fish finder would read for awhile then stop? We would be in 300 fow and then it would just stop and start saying we were in 4-5.

Maybe the bite was bad this morning because of the full moon, changing weather patterns, etc, etc? Or are we just missing something

We have been running 30lb mono leaders. Could this be the problem? Should we use 20lb fluoro instead? Or would that not make that big of a difference?

[BarringtonTrapper]

were you near the barge? mine did that earlier this season crossing the lake south of the barge

[quality time]

We run 8lb fluro in spring ,12lb when we start fishing for lakers

[33canuck]

Speed might be the issue

[tpr39]

Is there a general rule of thumb on speed or do you just have try different speeds to see what works?

[tmckenzie]

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.

[33canuck]

Might want to try slower 2.5 should be ok but sometimes they like it slower. You can get a drift sock or put the boat in neutral from time to time or do some s turns to slow the inside gear and vice versa

[britty]

For lakers I slow right down to 2 mph or slower in 80 to 120 feet of water and run your down riggers about a foot of the bottom and i have very good luck with cow bells and spin and glows. Give it a shot I'll bet it will work for you . Good luck

[lakebound88]

Seneca is turned off, this weekened should be good. the sudden change of winds saturday to monday messed things up. Went from a south wind to a north wind. The fleas are horrible. Use youe 30lb mono but with about 10 foot of fluoro at the spoon. Good speed on seneca for me is 1.8-2.5 I like to keep it 1.9-2.2..

What kind of Downrigger releases are you using?

How long of a lead from ball to spoon?

[quality time]

I should have added it depends on what you are running. Old school Sutton spoons, cowbells with peanuts 1.5 to 1.8, Stinger spoons run faster. Haven't had the guts to see what the top end is but we caught fish at almost 3mph. Stick baits put them along side and adjust speed up till they have a nice wobble. Spindoctors and flys 2.2 to 2.4. When fleas are bad run 30lb mono on main line for riggers or flea flicker swivel then leader. If you run flashers or spin doctor use heavy line to spin doctor 20 lb min. 30 is better and keep leads short to the rigger. Less chance of your line twisting. You have to pick lures that will run at the same speed. Our normal program is stinger spoons and spin doctors at 2.2 you will cach fish. I think the 30 lb leader was killing the action of your spoons. The finger lakes are blessed with many great charter captains. A trip with one of them could teach you what could take years on your own. Wes

[Hookedup]

I wasn't on the lake today but I bet the bite sucked. Yesterday was the worst morning I have had in years, 8 fish on only three in the boat a big bow, Laker, and a Salmon. Thats what I get for fishing in a cold front with a bad North/East wind. One of the ones that got off was at least a 12 to 14lb bow that went nuts at the back of the boat. The weeds and fleas were the worst they have been all year. I had to handline in flea flicker due to the amount of fleas on the line. Monday the fleas were even worse but we did pound the fish Salmon, Bows, and Lakers, a big change in the weather can make things real tough. Also the T-Cline was all messed up some areas on the East Side it was down to 90ft out in 300+ and on the west it was 60ft down. So you could be fishing in 100 to 150 ft of water that is way to warm. If I was you I would fish out over 300 to 500+ that is where the bait is now along with the Silver fish and Big Female Lakers that haven't headed to the spawning grounds yet.

Like Wes said if you are running spoons or cranks you better lose the 30lb leader. You could fish on the Finger Lakes on a day when they are jumping in the boat and have trouble catching them with that. 10 lb floro carbon will work if you are running a 300 copper or longer you might want 12lb Floro. Run your long lead of 20lb then neck it down to 8 to 10ft of the 10lb floro. You will be pounding them in no time Sean

[quality time]

Sean is one of those guys I was talking about Wind can move the water around alot. Down temp probe is major tool but if you fish the bait pods you see on your depth finder or sometimes you can mark the thermocline on depth finder and fish those depths you will do O.K.. I remember one day last fall when I thought my temp probe was broke. We kept dropping the rigger and got down to 140' and it read 70 deg. The day before we had 55 deg at 70 ' Things can change fast. We have seen currents over 2mph. You think of a lake as being a still body of water but it is always moveing. Wes

[rshubuck]

The fish finder issue you are having sounds to me like a power issue. Make sure your connections are good and the battery is fully charged. I just had this issue with my dads hummingbird this late spring and he kept swearing up and down it was charged. It wasn't. It still could be a number of things and you might want to talk to the manufacture for more info. Most of the manufactures have decent customer service.

Well you got some of the best guys who fish these lakes to give some good info to you. I run 30lb mono on my riggers all year with about a 5ft flurocarbon leaders. I tend to run 10lb fluro for spoons and sticks on the fingers lakes. Now when I hit lake O I switch over to 17lb fluro for the kings but I run 10lb fluro sliders and cheaters and rarely have a break offs if the drag is set just right. But I did not change my leaders out since my last lake O trip and been running 17lb stuff. We did really well on the browns yesterday. Fluro does make a huge difference so give it a try.

Now for the cold fronts. For me I have noticed lake trout action slows big time, but I tend to do better with the silver fish. Don't ask me why. Also, the day after a cold front I find the mornings are slow but around 3pm it will pick up a bit. The fish got to eat some time. I don't let cold fronts stop me from going fishing.

I don't fish Seneca very often. I fish Cayuga. One of the Seneca guys once told me "fishing Cayuga is like shooting fish in a Barrel." Just sayin Keep at it and good luck! You will figure them out soon enough!

[tmckenzie]

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.

[excavr]

When you guys talk about running speed, are you referring to gps speed or downrigger ball speed using a probe?

[ Post made via Android ]

[rshubuck]

Down speed at the ball is what we are referring too. It really helps you to catch fish more consistently but you can catch lots of fish with out it. Typically GPS and downspeeds have a .5mph difference. GPS reading faster. Some days there is very little difference and some days I got over a 1 mph difference.

Determining how far you run your lures off the ball depends on how deep you go down, lure and what fish you are after. Some guys use this 100 ft rule. 50 down 50 ft out. 70 down 30ft out. I think its a little crude. I tend to run flasher flys 10 to 20ft off the ball. 80 plus I tend to shorten it to 10ft. Spoons I like to run 15 ft plus at the ball. I ran 20 ft off the balls the other day. As for releases I love blacks releases. I started using rubberbands this year with them. Use what you like. Keep them a bit tight for better hook sets.

[ERABBIT]

Still not much luck to report. Only our third trip out, but we have two down riggers now. We were in the water by 6 A.M. We had a fish on off a down rigger around 50 foot within 10 minutes, but lost it because I did not have the down rigger release set right and I spent to much time fooling with it to trip. That was the last action of the day. We fished until 11. We ran leadcore dipsys, 250 copper, FF, black/green, green/silver, orange/silver, black/silver spoons. Ran down riggers at every depth you can dream up, and fished every where form 100 FOW to 300 FOW (when we could read the fish finder). Does anyone know why a fish finder would read for awhile then stop? We would be in 300 fow and then it would just stop and start saying we were in 4-5.

Maybe the bite was bad this morning because of the full moon, changing weather patterns, etc, etc? Or are we just missing something

We have been running 30lb mono leaders. Could this be the problem? Should we use 20lb fluoro instead? Or would that not make that big of a difference?

Humningbird fishfinder ?

If it was only doing it out deep look up my post and the setting they gave me to change. Mine is a humningbird 788ci and works fine now with help from YT and a few other folks on here.

If you run your downriggers with a fixed slider you can cover 4 differnt depths at once.

We ran leadcore dipsys

on the same rod/reel ?

We have been running 30lb mono leaders.

Too much for spoons not enough for FF.

Spoons on Seneca I run folo-leader materail 10# , my leads are longer than most but I had a hard time getting bit in shallow (less than 50' ) mine are 30' to 60'. I start the season at 55' to 60' and cut back as nicks,twist or bad spots show up and at around 30' replace it. Use the 30' for slider or stacker leaders.

On your FF you want a stiff line so the flasher/dodger whips it giving it action.

I don't know any thing about the copper stuff , but my wire dipsy I'll pick a point say 150' and let more out till I get bit or 300' out. Pull it and put some other combo down.............

[tmckenzie]

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

[kremer01]

excav-downrigger ball speed using a probe.

tmac-everyone I fish with puts the FF combos anywhere from 5 feet off the ball to 30 feet, no more than that. most of time short leads work best.

spoons are a different story. anywhere from 10 to 100 feet back.

dipsys out anywhere from 180 to as much as 350. start with one long and one short then keep adjusting till they start firing and you'll hone in on a good depth.

start with greens whites and blacks then play with the color combos from there.

try glows and darks early then change to brighter colors and chromes when the sun comes up.

pay close attention to what takes shots and what doesn't, and find similar stuff to complement the stuff firing.

try changing up the speed and do a lot of s turns - sometimes your outside rods will fire on the turns (speed up), sometimes your inside rods will fire (slow down).

Good Luck!

[quality time]

probe speed. Gps speed runs about .4mph faster than the probe on our boat. I'm not sure what causes this I think elevation above sea level might affect it. If you troll and make a turn and get a hit note which side you got the hit on. Inside is going slower outside is running faster. Every day it can change. I talked with one guy that had never caught a laker on a spin doctor. I asked how fast he was trolling. He was fishing sutton spoons at 1.8 mph I told him to bump it upp to 2.2. The next day he told me he got 6 lakers on the spin doctors. If we are marking fish and not catching fish we will change lure colors and speeds untill we are. Wes

[143447]

My humminbird acts like yours when the power plug in the unit comes loose. I cut small pieces of wire(hair thickness) into small quarter inch pieces and wedged them into the power plug holes to insure contact. Never had problems after that.

Pay careful attention to the tension on the dipsey pole. Try to read the bow of the pole or tension on it as it bends back at trolling speed. This would be a good indicator of speed if you are in doubt of your gps speed.read that hoop/bow in your wire dipsey rig and if youget hits at that tension match it until the bite stops then slow or even speed up a little.

When trolling with the waves or wind the gps always reads faster than what I read as a proper speed off the pole tension.

You can do the same with the leadcore rig, watch the bow of the pole as you troll.

You'll eventually get really good at reading the pole action, whether its a small fish riding, a weed tangle or even flouro twisted around the dipsey diver.

good luck from a small boat troller.

[bkf5012]

is running leadcore and dipsys together not a good idea? I thought the leadcore wouldn't sink as fast as copper so you put dipsys on them. We are going to try in the morning. Thanks for all the information we will try the new tips and see what we come up with. Is there any good way to read a fish finder or are they all different? I am having a tough time telling what is fish, what is weeds, etc. When it is in 300 fow everything is right at the top even if it is down 70 foot or so. I am guessing? I'm surprised how close to the boat you run the ff, not questioning, you all know way better then me. I just never would have guessed, I figured the boat would spook them that close. Is there a good rule of thumb on what depth to fish if you don't have the ability of finding the thermocline? We have been trying to cover the levels, between 45 foot and 70 foot.

[ERABBIT]

I'm surprised how close to the boat you run the ff, not questioning, you all know way better then me. I just never would have guessed, I figured the boat would spook them that close.

If your getting bit on your dipsy and not your riggers then streach your leads out on the rigger because of what you just said. The short leads are getting the agrasive (sp) fish.

When I run lead core it's by it self , off a board or down rigger. Just seems to me your are losing all the action that a core would have in the water on turns , waves and such where it would rise and fall...... I set my depthfinder to read just the top 90' of the water collum that way every thing is not pushed togather I can adjust it anywhere I would want.

Is there a good rule of thumb on what depth to fish if you don't have the ability of finding the thermocline? We have been trying to cover the levels, between 45 foot and 70 foot.

Thats sound close you could drop down even more for lakers as far as 100' this time of year.

When/if you get the seperation on your depthfinder you will be better able to see and fish those marks that are too close togather now..............have fun !!!

[bkf5012]

Thanks a lot! We will try that the next time we go out. We tried changing the leaders out this week. We put on 8lb mono and that still didn't help, we ran everywhere from short to long leads off the riggers and all the depths and ff combos and spoons and speeds. We may not have been fishing over active fish. I can't figure out where we would be that far off.

We are getting a humming noise from our down riggers, we think that may be an issue, that it is spooking the fish?

[ERABBIT]

We are getting a humming noise from our down riggers, we think that may be an issue, that it is spooking the fish?

That's a good thing for me it's the high end of the speed , take speed up till up hear the hum ( not all at once ). If you don't get bit back it off a bit. Or if your motor throlle control is better dropping back take it to the hum........and drop back.......I like starting out HOT most times.