downrigger's a mystery

[jason]

what lake are you fishing. i run downriggers and had a good yr on the finger lakes. i found that going faster 2.5 to 3.0 was the best for me. all flys with spin doctors or echips dodgers. purple and blacks on cayuga white and sliver on seneca yellow greens sliver and blacks on keuka.

[FLXTroutman]

Usually have good catch rate rate here with the riggers, often in combination with the wire dipsy rig too, green flasher and green fly or white flasher and glow squid, some what of a conundrum for me since rarely a spoon bite for me this year while flashers and flies or flashers and squids were hot. One rigger is manual Cannon with probe and one rigger is electric cannon with positive ion control, not sure which rigger catches more fish though, negative charge is phenomenon of aluminum boat's which may have ground issues, you should take a reading off of rigger cable while trolling with a volt meter and detect charge or lack there of with true reading tool such as voltmeter. You may be surprised what you see,..... speed has more to with the whole scenario of which you speak I am afraid, a down temp and speed unit will pay for itself in one season or less take my word, Finger Lakes all have tremendous undercurrents which few trollers are aware of with out down speed and temp you have no idea what your rigs are doing down there, especially when targeting fish 40' to 100' down.

[cdelong]

the deeper you run them, the closer to the ball they can be...... 100 fow- closer.... 50 fow farther back.

Flasher to fly depends on the action you want... short lead=fast/long lead=slow.... and how long your net is... LOL...

Most instructions I see have 18"- 40" from flasher to the fly (for Kings).

[ray koziatek]

give me a call and ill look at your setup ,this year was a little tuff for some of the usual stuff guys ..some of my best days have been 25 ft down in july catching lakers and landlocks in the middle of the lake.(seneca) I have fished seneca for over 8 years now so it pretty easy to go anyday of the week and find fish,due to the strtucture and water depth change,after that the balls in your court with lure selection,speed,speed ,speed ,did i mention speed ?oh yes and lure selection most of the time it size of lures than the color but both are important if it wernt for the 30mph winds today id be there(fishing). but with my indiana deer hunt 14 days away and all the work i gotts to due i suppose ill work today.i should be able to tell ya everything i know in 2 minutes with 90 sec to spare ..Ray K. 769-7947

[ray koziatek]

well not that i ever butted heads on this board but i never use my down speed probe on seneca..ive played with it a few times but have never had more than a .5mph diff betweentop and down speed ,with a predomanitly west wind and the fingers going n/s there ant much wind effect though the natural rotation of the lake is counterclockwise so gps and surface speed will ulually differ more than surface and down speeds..........but hey.............

[goin hungry]

Ray, are you saying that the surface speeds generally match the downspeeds? I understand the difference between GPS and surface/downspeed, but I don't have a probe, so that's a good bit of knowledge to have!

Based on that then, am I correct in assuming that coming up the east side, for instance, I'd need to go faster, because I'm going with the current, but going up the west side I'd need to slow down because then I'm heading into it? What do you use to determine surface speed, something like a Luhrs speed indicator?

Wouldn't this vary on days when there's a good northerly or southerly blow?

[IRISH56]

I have a bit of advice for ya that won't necessarily hit your pocketbook (directly anyways) ... give it some time!! Nobody becomes an expert, or even a modestly decent fisherman overnight. Time on the water will get you where you want to be.

That's not to say that equipment doesn't play into it but if you're like most of the guys on here you can't afford to go right out and buy the best equipment and every spoon, flasher & fly known to man .. although you will try, as we all do

Give it another season, ask a lot of questions right here and read up on the info. available here. I remember the first couple of seasons for me, not that awful long ago, when I couldn't buy a fish on any set up. It finally started to click and now I can hold my own with some of these guys ... not Ray K. mind you but some of 'em

Downriggers are the staple of a good trolling spread, they take some work though to get them dialed in. The Seth Green rigs are essentially downriggers with a whole bunch more spoons, speed and depth of one spoon/combo on a rigger is a little more work to dial it in.

Keep after it! DAN

[Fishstix]

I havent posted anything in awhile so Ill pass some info on.My boats blocked in the barn with kids furniture right now or I would be on the lake myself. Im to lazy to move a bunch of stuff to get my boat out.

On Cayuga Lake usually the best fishing time is the first week of deer season. Fish are usually high. The pike bite is fantastic. Usually a few good brns are mixed in.

I started with seth green rigs yrs ago . They collect dust now . As far as riggers go you just cant beat one fish, one lure , on a rod. Its hard to say why you cant get your riggers going. Could be speed ,lure selection. luck, big swivels , or maybe you just havent put your time in.Some boats just dont catch fish some do. Are your downriggers balls coated?I usually try and get my lures above the fish usually about 5 ft. I dont know if its true or not but they say fish look up to feed.

Down speed is important but if you keep changing direction it will be right at some point. Zig ZAg troll. So you are slowing down the lures on one side of the boat while speeding up the other. I also like short leads usually less than 20ft. rarely over 40ft. 75ft max on the boards.

Awalys look at your lure in the water before you send it down . Is it swimming right? Are all the lures your sending down running the right speed? A lot of guys run small size spoons but I do best on 28 size and larger.

Yea we get skunked from time to time but usually we do OK. My best spread is 2 downriggers,2 wire dipseys. Most fish come off the riggers the best fish come off the wires.

I did not whallop the fish on Cayuga this yr like I usually do . It seems like everything used to work. This yr they seemd to want to hit one lure and one lure only. I would catch them all on one rod and the rest of the stuff would rot in the water.Also what worked one day would not work the next.

Ive got a probe but rarely run it in the fingerlakes. They cost to much when you lose it. If something goes wrong its always the rigger with the probe on it.I dont trust a probe much anyway.Thats a subject for another post sometime.

Just keep trying and paying close attention to little details and your rigger fishing will improve.

[Splitshot115]

Stix,

Somedays it just pretty much luck. But you and the others covered it pretty well.

Splitshot115

[ray koziatek]

stix, ive painted myballs ,coated my balls ,i even moved em around under my rod with no big change ,,just a little difference in the way my rod hangs,i also have a aluminum boat and went through the whole procedure of current check,grounding and like i said messing with my balls,also cleaning the zinc thingies near my moter with a stainless brush...like you said some boats have trouble catching but a few checks could help also as i think back to my scuba days its amazing how some boats sound as compared to others under the surface.with the moter ive replaced my old one with my boat trolls much calmer (less rod tip viberation). anyone who sits in a stand and can hear traffic you dont notice cars that sound the same but a clinky wheel or noisy muffler,or even a great sound system will put you on allert ,same with the fish sooo keep the radio low ditch the sub woofers,tune the moter,and for a little fun mess with with your balls a little ...............2 days to Indiana,,Tom how are those saints doing compared to the BILLS.?????????????

[LongLine]

Trip - I'd go with Stix. Depth & speed. & let Ray play with his balls way way... way... way out on the lake

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[ray koziatek]

eh

[hermit]

TD I've never fished with copper but I've learned a fair amount about it just from reading the tackle and techniques forum above. There's a few good copper threads with lots of info. Good luck!

[Splitshot115]

hermit & td50,

Can't beat the copper on the fingers.

Splitshot115

[rustyrat]

I would switch over to blacks releases. They are easier to use and can be adjusted better. They snap to the rigger terminal and then attach the ball to the blacks snap.

http://www.thornebros.com/muskie/trolli ... lacks.html

Cheap too.

RR

[jason]

i use blacks relases. i have 2 releases per cable, one fixed the other not fixed. if i want to run to stackers, all i do is hold the release while droping the ball. then grab a rubberband and tie a half hitch in the open space where the cable run through. the rubberband will hold the release at your desired spot.

i also been on other boat who wraps the rubberband around their fishing line and runs the loops of the rubberband through the release its self. instead of twisting a loop in the line and running the loop through the releases. i asked why they do that and they said it helps keeps the line from being beat up. i was skeptical about that. so the next time i fished on my boat i did noticed the difference, and found flat spot on my line. so i switced to rubberbands.

[waterlogged]

What Rusty Rat said!!!