Down rigging techniques

[irishfield]

I had fair success downrigging for lakers this summer with the spoon 75 to 100 feet back from the ball. The booklet on my new Canon Mag10's with Ion control state that you should keep your baits within 10 or 15 feet of the ball or the ion feature is pretty much useless.

 

Curious to hear what lead lengths others use when downrigging for Lakers, and Salmon for that matter, and why. My thoughts of using the 75 to 100 feet was to get the spoon out away from the noise of the ball/wire going thru the water....but maybe I should be using that as an attractant instead??

 

Shorter leads would also allow stopping the boat...as 100 footer sure don't..but it does make it fun making the OPP follow beside at 2MPH for inspection! LOL

[LeXXington]

Hey Wayne.

 

When the water is clear I use a longer lead. 30' (this is my normal starting point)

When the water is super clear I use up 100'

When the water is murky I put it a couple feet of the ball.

 

I could be wrong by its worked for me,. What I was told was the ball creates noise that the fish come to look at too clear they spook to murkey they come in close.

 

Another consideration is the shorter the lead the less likley for a tangle when mutiple lines down

 

food for thought

[irishfield]

Thanks Lex... Temagami is pretty darn clear water..so maybe I'm doin the right thing. Only had one tangle this year and it was on a stacked line when my wife and sister started reeling them in in the wrong order. Did lose a couple spoons that snagged bottom though when making a drastic direction change though that allowed the spoon to drop 20 or 30 feet before the line was tight again.

[POLLIWOGG]

Lakers will follow the ball for half a mile, short lead of 5 or 6 feet won't bother them. Salmon will take a short lead but bows , browns and eyes back them up 50 to 100.

[icefisherman]

Wayne,

 

When trolling Temagami last summer I got tons of lakers with 15-25 feet behind the ball 75-95 fow.

I rarely go longer when Salmon fishing on lake O. or Eyes and bows fishing on Erie. The most I've done was in Algonquin on Opeongo....100-150 feet back and I was getting laker after laker....and few hyge bass too.

So for me it is trying and testing it depending on the body of water and the fish modd for the day. But always start short and keep going longer depending on the bite.

 

Cheers,

Ice Fisherman

[misfish]

Wayne, I got some info about lakers and whities on Simcoe. Maybe you can come down next season and I could share with ya.MAYBE SPLIT A WING OR TWO.

[silveradosheriff]

I like to run 25-30' behind the ball with 30lb flouro on Lake O.

I doubt the flouro adds much advantage over mono out there - but it makes me happy to run it.

 

For what it's worth, I double the flouro off the leadcore.

 

:-)

[Vanselena]

I run 7' behind the ball on Erie for Rainbows and Walleye, catch enough.

[Fisherman]

There is this "rule" called the 100' rule, if you go down 10', it should be 90' behind the ball, down 30', 70' behind the ball, 90' down, 10' back, etc. For me, all depends on how rough it is, the rougher, the shorter the lead I use.

[spoonmaster]

I fish Long Point Bay for Rainbows, Walleyes and the odd Brown.

Most of my downrigging is in 60-80 FOW. In June we started catching bows, with the balls 25-30' deep, 10 ft leads with sliders. we caught more on the sliders than off the ball. In July and August balls down 60-75 ft deep 10-20 ft leads, very few hits off the sliders.

I use 10 ft of flouro on every rod and have caught more fish with it.

 

 

Al

[moemoe]

I fished Lake Ontario and Erie mostly, for salmon I ran max 20ft, usually 10 and for Erie eyes, I've had good success with short leads of less than 5 ft with a harness, I figure depth control is the key, so I can corelate the arches to my specific depth, For suspended pike, My biggest this year was 12lbs fishing 40 ft of water down 25, with the a black pancake doctored up with some hologram tape and a five foot lead to a rapala j13, Trial and error I guess.

[Fang]

Wayne

 

25-50 will do most of the year on Temagami, On a good bit I do tighten them up

 

Up around north arm theres lots of sand/muck bottom and we run the diving plugs a little longer to make sure they're ticking bottom

 

I run a lot longer (100+) in the spring when we set riggers at 5-25ft deep

[fishindevil]

Hey wayne,im not sure if you have seen the new style cannonball...its a chrome shark...its amazing and cost 70 bucks...well it really attracts the salmon,and most of the time we will run that shinny shark about 10ft...and man does that get the salmon very interested,we can see them on the graph all the time streaking up and down ...its really a great fish catching ball...andwe really do run them as close as 5 ft...its been a secret for a while but its out now...and i seen it all summer long in my buddys boat....until now i always varied the lead,depending on fishing conditions,and how they were biting.but in rough weather you have to shorten up your lead and in flat will run them most times at 20ft...for kings...now for lakers i never have a lead more than 75 ft...well ill tell you why...because the number one reason is every once in a while i will slip the engine into neutral,and let my lure or bait sink on a nice dive curve,and lakers as we all know will follow a lure forever so by having a lead of about 50 ft will make a nice dive curve,and almost always if you are marking lakers on your graph,and dont seem to be getting a hit,and you have a lure at that depth...90% of the time if you put her in neutral,thats when they will hit...so there is lots of little tricks you can do by varieing your leads....cheers bud let me know what you think,and have a look around and see those shark style cannonballs they are amazing and the fish can see them for a mile....they really work...

[irishfield]

Thanks everyone for your tips and tricks. Thought it was a good subject during the transition period around here. As for throwing the boat in neutral..speeding it up.... etc..that's gonna be part of the game plan next year. Many outings this year I got stuck in a constant speed troll mode (even though I've read and read to speed up/slow down/etc)...and then when we'd call it quits and pop the lines off of the clips the spoon fluttering back, while the line's tightening up, would get nailed by lakers. Jim that owns Dad's Outdoors store had a HUGE Laker (have never seen a TDR that hooped) on when we did this to get him back to the store one morning in September. He lost it, from horsing it up, and then the spoon got picked up by a smaller eater within seconds and boated that one.

 

Fang... I guess where I started doing 100 foot leads, was from us flat lining in the spring when they were in the top 10 feet of the water column...then I continued it when I only needed the ball down 10 or 15 feet.. and so on. Hard to give up on a length that was working, but next year I'll try one long and one short and adjust as the season goes on to find the most productive mix. Also had good success with a few specific spoons, while everyone else appears to be using crank baits up there (and my net was hitting the water more than theirs this year it seemed). Next year I plan to use a mix of spoons and baits as well, on a regular basis.

[Tomcat]

Wayne:

 

A couple of years back, a charter captain provided the following advice in a post on walleyecentral.com on lead lengths behind downrigger balls.

 

Lead lengths behind your rigger balls vary day to day but below I will post the general rule of thumb that I have used that work. I start with these leads and either shorten or lengthen to what the fish want at that time.

 

3 - 10 feet down, 55 – 75 feet back from the downrigger ball

10 - 20 feet down, 35 – 55 feet back from the downrigger ball

25 – 35 feet down, 20 - 45 feet back from the downrigger ball

35 – 45 feet down, 15 - 35 feet back from the downrigger ball

45 – 55 feet down, 10 -25 feet back from the downrigger ball

> 55 feet down, 10 - 15 feet back from the downrigger ball

 

The above down and back chart is for main lines. If I stack a rod on the same downrigger (i.e. use another rod and reel and lure on the same downrigger simultaneously), I will place the lure attached to the stacked rod 10 feet above the main lure and 10 feet farther back. For example, deep rod 65 feet down and 12 feet back with the second rod 55 feet down and 20 feet back.

 

Although I've been fishing Lake Kipawa in Sep the last 7 years, primarily for walleye, I also fish for lakers during the day using a portable downrigger. Most success has come from fishing a Sutton 71 thirty five feet down in 65 feet + of water. I've been using a 25 foot fluorocarbon leader behind the ball.

[troutbum]

Deeper = shorter. In summer I rig in over 100 FOW for chinooks with very short leads. Under 10 feet. Early summer, not so deep -- maybe 50 FOW -- much longer leads. 20-30 feet. It's not the rigger ball I worry about -- but rigging shallow 10 feet behind the boat and motor can't be good. In real early spring when we don't bother with teh riggers, we use super long leads and inline boards to keep teh lures as far away as possible.

 

I've got lakers off the bottom, and a few odd rainbows with short leads down deep. But mostly salmon. Good mix of chinook and coho. I don't know if it matters much. If I had to give a hunch -- I would say longer leads for coho, shorter for chinook. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm going to make some notes next season and see...

 

I run worm harnesses up to 200 feet behind the balls in Erie for walleye in 50-60 FOW. When gobies pop the riggers after setting THAT up, I get a bit furious...