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| Yesterday, went trolling for walleye and saw bait and some fish returns about 50 ft. Set downriggers at 45 ft with about 60-80 ft. of mono pulling shad raps. Also had two rods with leadcore set at 350ft.(using Cabelas depthmaster line counter reels, evidently not accurate line count as I had at least two colors of 18lb leadcore on reels at that setting and didnt have more than 30 ft. of florocarbon leader). All fish (7) were caught on leadcore using same series and color shad raps.as downriggers. Any suggestions to make the downrigger baits catch fish? |
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| I would say you were possibly to deep with the lures on the downriggers versus the returns you were seeing on the graph. Depending on the size shad rap with 60-80' from the rigger weight you were down another 10-15' deeper.
Also you may have trouble with hook ups with that amount of leader length. That's a lot of slack to take up after tripped from the release. Try running 15-20' back from the weight and see how that works next time. It could have been the rigger weight spooking but I'd try it again. |
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| I agree, your shad raps were diving past your target zone. If your running diving cranks off riggers you don't need to stretch them past 25 ft as the bait will dive out and down away from your weight. Riggers are easy to adjust you should have pulled them up some while fishing. Never leave an unproductive pattern in the water while catching on another for longer than 30 minutes, you could have caught more fish! |
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| Also ran one downrigger at 35ft., using #5 shad raps, will try using shorter leader from release. Additional note, using wire for cannonball, would it be better using braided line for cannoball? |
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| I've only used riggers with cables so I couldn't say one way or the other. Like I mentioned before shorter leads will help with hook ups and it also takes out some of the guess work as to lure depth. There will be times the cannonball seems to spook some fish so it does happen. Just keep experimenting with lures and depths until hopefully you come across a pattern. I also go maybe 20-30 tops and if I'm not getting bit I make some kind of change.
Good luck next time out and let us know how it goes. |
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Trolling with downriggers