Otisco 5-13 first decent tiger of the year

[justtracytrolling]

Water temps are rising very fast and the main lake us in the 60's. Tracy and I thought we would take a troll before we headed home today. Still couldnt find any eyes so I jumped the speed to 3.5 and it was only minutes and we had a drag singing! After a great fight we landed a 38" exceptionally fat tiger. Neither of us had a phone so no pics...ill be sure not to forget it again! Fish was caught 38 down over 60 fow on an inside board line. The seaguar smackdown 20lb braid is incredible...gets deep and I leaned on that fish harder than normal on 30lb just to see if it would take it... and it did!

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

[muskiedreams]

Justin,

 

How do you determine the depth of the lure? And how do you achieve such a depth just off a board?

[old man]

Sounds like a nice one, way to go! Leaving your camera or net behind will always trigger fish

[justtracytrolling]

old man,

Funny you should say that...last year opening day we forgot the net at the house...of course we caught a nice fish and couldnt hardly get pliers on the hook.

 

muskiedreams,

I use the precision trolling dive curves to come up with a setback that gets me to the desired depth.  I use the rapala deep taildancer tdd11 for deep trolling when I want to troll over 2.5 because its very deep and unlike reef runners they can be trolled to 4 easy.  Tdd11's dive about 30 on 10lb dia line and 36 on 4 lb diameter line according to their conversion chart.  I have 3 different diameter braids.  I use heavier braid on the outside and thinner on the inside.  On my inner most line on each side I put a 3oz clip weight at the desired setback.  Then I hold the rod tip at the approximate height off the water the the release clip will be on the tow line and slowly feed line out while going the desired speed.  When the clip hits the water you are at the dive curve depth, and then you can add more line to go deeper.  Today I added line till the clip was about 2-3 feet down.  The clip also acts as a weedguard.   Without the clip weight you have to add a lot more line just to get to the dive curve depth on inside lines.  You can do the same thing with an inline board to pick up a few feet with a lighter clip weight.  If Im going past 40 feet down I use the 20 plus method table in the precision trolling book.  Basically if you put a 1oz clip weight 20 feet in front of your deep diver it gains 30%, and a 2 oz another 30%.  Its not exact im sure, but it is repeatable and its the best Ive come up with so far to troll cranks fast below 30 feet.  The new walleye copper might be another way, but I havent seen a dive curve for over 2.8.  Doubt too many guys use big boards for tigers, but unless im solo I prefer big boards to inlines.

[rnsurfnturf]

Way to go Justin, Good to hear ya hooked some teeth!

[justtracytrolling]

If it was easy it wouldnt be any fun!  Be back thursday to build a deck, but Ill have time at night to fish!

[Ivan]

Nice job Justin. That's pretty deep. Tigers must behave quite a bit differently than pures, but I have little to no experience with tigers so couldn't say for sure myself. We've caught a few by accident fishing for pures in lakes that have both. I typically don't fish or catch pures much below 30' down and that usually only happens in the fall. I do understand they can be deeper than that though. I have a buddy that got a big pure 45' down once...that was late fall also though.

 

I wonder if the bigger tigers use deeper water like bigger pike do the majority of the time. Do you or any other tiger fisherman know? May explain why smaller fish were being caught casting shallower water in the tourney. Also, I know tigers are sterile, but do they go shallow like pike and muskie in the spring and still go through the spawning ritual even though they could never be successful? Obviously, understanding the seasonal movements and habits of the fish we target is a big part to catching them successfully.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Ivan

[justtracytrolling]

Im no expert...I fish 1 lake a ton and have learned that in the spring I get my biggest fish deep. In summer they arent as deep on Otisco due to poor disolved oxygen levels. Our biggest tigers suspend over deep water lazily same as the walleye. I seldom cast for them in the shallows, only as a last resort because Im not a numbers guy Id rather catch nothing and target BIG fish. I trolled my butt off with 9 lines for the tourney, but we couldnt catch a cold. Last resort was to go for smaller fish just because it was a tourney. I fished my whole life from a canoe so when I bought a boat I wanted to fish deep.