Canandaigua Canandaigua has been decent

[Dan M]

Last 3 times out we've hit Canandaigua twice and Cayuga once.  Trolling dipsys at both lakes, Canandaigua has produced 7 lake trout in both trips, almost all on copper backed michigan stingers in 40-50' down. Cayuga only produced one laker with a flasher fly.

Still very new to trolling, so it's a learning in progress.

I tried running one line at 45' down and another at 100' down ( deeper with a spin doctor and lake trout fly ) - bumped bottom and lost my spin doctor and fly. Damnit. Higher one up caught a laker. Go figure.

Can't seem to find any rainbows, and as far as I can tell all my lake trout have seemed to be random pickups. I'll mark a huge school of bait, run up , down, around it several times/speeds, and not a single pickup, ever. What gives?!

Launching in the South end of Canandaigua - speeds around 2.2-2.5.

Anyone that fishes here regularly, is there a certain are that is better than others? Right now I'm just driving everywhere hoping to get bit.

Look at this bait pod - how did I not get any action from that?!

 

 

[Trouthunter]

Kick-up your speed some for the rainbows out over middle of the lake for them run cheaters with very bright colors with orange or pink

 

[Dan M]

Just now, Trouthunter said:

Kick-up your speed some for the rainbows out over middle of the lake for them run cheaters with very bright colors with orange or pink

 

Tried that through the middle at around 2.8-3mph bright colors , nothing both times. What are cheaters?

[Trouthunter]

cheaters are a extra lure that runs down half the distance of your downrigger set usually about the length of your rod 8 to 10 feet

[Dan M]

1 minute ago, Trouthunter said:

cheaters are a extra lure that runs down half the distance of your downrigger set usually about the length of your rod 8 to 10 feet

Not running downriggers, just 2 dipsy rods.

[Trouthunter]

You are limiting yourself catch all my rainbows & browns on downriggers

 

[Sk8man]

Dan you may have trouble getting rainbows or browns on this lake using just dipsy set-ups. although the bigger fish may grab them occasionally they are most consistent for lakers on Canandaigua. Most of the rainbows and browns are caught on riggers or leadcore/coppers out here where the lures are running farther away from the boat and turbulence. If you really want to catch them you'll probably have to diversify your spread. Trouthunters advice is on the mark.

[Trouthunter]

Thanks Sk8man this is my home lake spend many days on her best lake for beautiful rainbows

 

[Dan M]

12 minutes ago, Sk8man said:

Dan you may have trouble getting rainbows or browns on this lake using just dipsy set-ups. although the bigger fish may grab them occasionally they are most consistent for lakers on Canandaigua. Most of the rainbows and browns are caught on riggers or leadcore/coppers out here where the lures are running farther away from the boat and turbulence. If you really want to catch them you'll probably have to diversify your spread. Trouthunters advice is on the mark.

Don't down riggers run straight down? How is that away from the boat? I don't think I could fit riggers on my boat - it's pretty tight as it is being a small 16' aluminum.

So if I'm targeting rainbows and browns, it's right in the middle of the lake? How far down? 40-50 where the lakers have been?

[Roys Boys]

Should look into some leadcores then you could run one down the middle .. looks like a 10 color will do the trick.. just gotta battle the weeds

[Dan M]

1 minute ago, Roys Boys said:

Should look into some leadcores then you could run one down the middle .. looks like a 10 color will do the trick.. just gotta battle the weeds

Next year I might add a few things - maybe downriggers over the winter. Literally just bought the 2 dipsy setups (tekotas with talora rods) and rod holders, trolling bags, etc. Money has been flying out of my wallet. It's a small boat, and usually just me, or me and my brother, so I'm trying to keep it simple and not have 4 rods out at a time. 2 is plenty for us honestly.

[Sk8man]

They can be anywhere out there but often this time of year they can be out deep suspended in the middle portion of the lake. One of the difficulties here is that the recreational boaters are out in force during the weekend especially and this is the height of the tourist season. I don't even bother messing around here until after Labor Day or even into October/November. If you only have the dipsys for equipment you still may be able to use long leaders of fluoro say about 30 ft long or so but you will have to hand line in the fish which takes a bit of experience to do successfully consistently especially if you are fishing solo. Run them up high in that 40-50 ft range. If you have spinning rods with 10 lb test of so you could long line for rainbows with heavier weight spoons with weight attached to get you down  (even if you had to load up a bunch of big  split shot about 3 or 4 foot up the line from the lure but inline trolling weights would be better). The thermocline should be about 40-70 ft right now (haven't been out in many weeks now here) so you probably need to get down to about 40 ft or so but they will come up for something if they are hungry and interested. Need to troll 2.5 - 3.2 or so most of the time with a lot of turns and increases and decreases in speed.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Sk8man

[Dan M]

10 minutes ago, Sk8man said:

They can be anywhere out there but often this time of year they can be out deep suspended in the middle portion of the lake. One of the difficulties here is that the recreational boaters are out in force during the weekend especially and this is the height of the tourist season. I don't even bother messing around here until after Labor Day or even into October/November. If you only have the dipsys for equipment you still may be able to use long leaders of fluoro say about 30 ft long or so but you will have to hand line in the fish which takes a bit of experience to do successfully consistently especially if you are fishing solo. Run them up high in that 40-50 ft range. If you have spinning rods with 10 lb test of so you could long line for rainbows with heavier weight spoons with weight attached to get you down  (even if you had to load up a bunch of big  split shot about 3 or 4 foot up the line from the lure but inline trolling weights would be better). The thermocline should be about 40-70 ft right now (haven't been out in many weeks now here) so you probably need to get down to about 40 ft or so but they will come up for something if they are hungry and interested. Need to troll 2.5 - 3.2 or so most of the time with a lot of turns and increases and decreases in speed.

Thanks. I might just stick with the lakers for now until the salmon start on the pier. Don’t really want to run a huge leader just for rainbows - that sounds awful. I’ll try and make my dipsy leader from 6’ to 12’ and see if that helps at all. 

Side note - this is my boat - how would you run downriggers on this? 

[Sk8man]

Probably remove the cleats from the corners and locate the cleats on the gunwale near the corner (i.e. in front of it) and beef up the corners underneath with aluminum plate.  and brace if necessary. Then probably another triangular shaped 1/4 inch thickplate across the corner wide enough to support a rigger base and then mount a swivel base on each through bolted and mount the riggers (I'd get the extendable booms both to give you some options and for later on if you decide to go to a larger craft and the swivel bases will help when docking etc.) to them at both corners of the transom.With the swivel bases you'd be able to choose the angle preferred as well as avoid the possibility of getting into your motor with the wire on a real steep turn. That's pretty much "off the cuff from just the pics" It is always wise before permanently mounting anything to actually get inside the boat with the equipment you intend to run and check out out all the spacing and angles to make sure you don't have conflicts. If you need more height with the riggers locate them on pedestals but I wouldn't go too high as the center of gravity will possibly change.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Sk8man

[Dan M]

10 hours ago, Sk8man said:

Probably remove the cleats from the corners and locate the cleats on the gunwale near the corner (i.e. in front of it) and beef up the corners underneath with aluminum plate.  and brace if necessary. Then probably another triangular shaped 1/4 inch thickplate across the corner wide enough to support a rigger base and then mount a swivel base on each through bolted and mount the riggers (I'd get the extendable booms both to give you some options and for later on if you decide to go to a larger craft and the swivel bases will help when docking etc.) to them at both corners of the transom.With the swivel bases you'd be able to choose the angle preferred as well as avoid the possibility of getting into your motor with the wire on a real steep turn. That's pretty much "off the cuff from just the pics" It is always wise before permanently mounting anything to actually get inside the boat with the equipment you intend to run and check out out all the spacing and angles to make sure you don't have conflicts. If you need more height with the riggers locate them on pedestals but I wouldn't go too high as the center of gravity will possibly change.

Thanks for the advice. I really just want to upgrade to a bigger boat in a couple years. Hard to justify pouring more money into this thing that I'll never see back. Probably just make due with the dispy setups for now and work on the wife to get a different boat

[ifishy]

They make a clamp on portable down riggers I would have one clamped on on each side in front of a seat in a boat with bench seats movement is tough so mount the rigger where the person is it does not have to be at the back

Sent from my XT1080 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

[Sk8man]

ifishy is right  I used to have 2 manual Riviera 4 foot boom riggers with swivel bases clamped to the bench seat of my little Whaler worked fine.

[Lucky13]

I have a Canon mini troll, and it works fine if you don't mind all the cranking.  And it is limited to 100' of cable, so likely 75 to 80 max depth. 

[Dan M]

11 minutes ago, Lucky13 said:

I have a Canon mini troll, and it works fine if you don't mind all the cranking.  And it is limited to 100' of cable, so likely 75 to 80 max depth. 

For me it's more of how little room I have on my boat already, it's pretty narrow I think.

[Lucky13]

I have used this downrigger on my Raddison canoe, just had to use pieces of plywood to spread the force out when clamping.  I've also used it on a 12 ft StarCraft, and a 14 ft. Herter.  You may be in too small a boat for Canandaigua if your boat is smaller than those. Or, just keep sounding like an outboard, but, but, but, but...…

Edited August 27, 2019 by Lucky13

[thork9]

Just mount 2x6 across back, side to side, make a bracket to attach to boat then you can mount  2  down riggers, one on each side, I don’t have a picture right now but I run this on a 16 ft Lund.

[Dan M]

13 minutes ago, thork9 said:

Just mount 2x6 across back, side to side, make a bracket to attach to boat then you can mount  2  down riggers, one on each side, I don’t have a picture right now but I run this on a 16 ft Lund.

Did you see the pics of the boat? I mean yes I know it's possible to mount downriggers here, but it is seriously crowded just running 2 dipsy rods off the back. It's not a very wide boat. I'm going to just run dipsys until I can get something a bit bigger.

[Sk8man]

Dan - When you're in a little boat you have to think big When I had my 13 ft Whaler I had the two manual Riviera downriggers with 4 ft booms, I had a kicker motor, 15 ft outriggers, and used to run 4 15 leader Seth Green rigs on the Fingers with just my 8 year old kid with me It just takes a little thinking and figuring. Oh.... and I used it that way for 22 years

Edited August 28, 2019 by Sk8man