MYam4
Active Member
I made a quick run to the lake yesterday to try out the new gear I bought and see how it goes. Being totally new to this kind of fishing I figured as long as I learn something, that’a a good thing.
I spent most of the day up in the cove at the back of Warm Creek Bay. I was trolling a Bomber BD8 Fat Free Shad deep diving crankbait 100 ft out, at about 3-3.3 MPH. Dragging a 5 gallon bucket seemed to work fairly well for slowing down (drilled about 9 holes on the bottom and removed the wire handle). Dropping the bow mount trolling motor slowed us down a bit more. This may not be the long term method but it seemed to work. Once I got in the 20ft water at the north end I found fish on the graph. Not sure if fish in this relative shallow water would have been stripers or more likely smallmouth. I dropped a spoon as soon as I could. Tried to jig up and down. No no bite however. Tried that for a while in the same general area but still no luck. My son tried casting and retrieving a different deep diving crankbait. No luck with that either. At some point he used a ned riggged Yamamoto double hula grub plastic bait. I told him to have it sit on bottom and occasionally hop it around. I’m not sure how his technique was but no luck.
So we headed to deeper water a bit south of there, trolling the whole way. Came up on more fish on the graph at about 30 ft down. Tried much of the same stuff, especially the spoon but no bites. Kept trolling and eventually came up on a 3rd group of fish at around 40 ft. Didn’t get them to bite either. So I’m actually happy about finding fish but I’m still left wondering about our execution.
There were a number of challenges that I felt was hampering all our efforts. For one, there was a light breeze and we kept drifting away from the fish while I kept trying to manually keep us on track with the foot pedal of the trolling motor (spot lock is on my wish list). I feel like I did a poor job. Eventually I started to drop anchor but by the time I did that we had probably drifted a bit far. I figure I need to be ready to drop anchor right away next time. Either that or put a mark on my fishfinder map right away and get better at staying near the spot. Question: how bad does dropping anchor scare the fish?
Another challenge was related to the first challenge. I’m not sure how well the spoon flutters down when the boat is drifting. Seems like ideally you should be somewhat stationary. Lastly, the reel I was using with the spoon had a line counter so I could see how deep it was dropping. It was an Okuma Magda, which is on the cheap end. I feel like I could not get it to release and spin freely enough to allow the spoon to drop without
a small amount of back tension applied to the line. I know that the dropping, fluttering action is the important part so next time I’ll try another reel. Seems like there’s a fine balance between freely letting the line go (like opening the bail on a spinning reel) which won’t allow you to feel a strike, and hampering the falling motion with too much back tension. I need to find where that is.
All in all, I’m glad we went, even though there were no fish caught. It was a beautiful day in the 60s on the lake. We learned some stuff. I will keep learning until hopefully it pays off.
I spent most of the day up in the cove at the back of Warm Creek Bay. I was trolling a Bomber BD8 Fat Free Shad deep diving crankbait 100 ft out, at about 3-3.3 MPH. Dragging a 5 gallon bucket seemed to work fairly well for slowing down (drilled about 9 holes on the bottom and removed the wire handle). Dropping the bow mount trolling motor slowed us down a bit more. This may not be the long term method but it seemed to work. Once I got in the 20ft water at the north end I found fish on the graph. Not sure if fish in this relative shallow water would have been stripers or more likely smallmouth. I dropped a spoon as soon as I could. Tried to jig up and down. No no bite however. Tried that for a while in the same general area but still no luck. My son tried casting and retrieving a different deep diving crankbait. No luck with that either. At some point he used a ned riggged Yamamoto double hula grub plastic bait. I told him to have it sit on bottom and occasionally hop it around. I’m not sure how his technique was but no luck.
So we headed to deeper water a bit south of there, trolling the whole way. Came up on more fish on the graph at about 30 ft down. Tried much of the same stuff, especially the spoon but no bites. Kept trolling and eventually came up on a 3rd group of fish at around 40 ft. Didn’t get them to bite either. So I’m actually happy about finding fish but I’m still left wondering about our execution.
There were a number of challenges that I felt was hampering all our efforts. For one, there was a light breeze and we kept drifting away from the fish while I kept trying to manually keep us on track with the foot pedal of the trolling motor (spot lock is on my wish list). I feel like I did a poor job. Eventually I started to drop anchor but by the time I did that we had probably drifted a bit far. I figure I need to be ready to drop anchor right away next time. Either that or put a mark on my fishfinder map right away and get better at staying near the spot. Question: how bad does dropping anchor scare the fish?
Another challenge was related to the first challenge. I’m not sure how well the spoon flutters down when the boat is drifting. Seems like ideally you should be somewhat stationary. Lastly, the reel I was using with the spoon had a line counter so I could see how deep it was dropping. It was an Okuma Magda, which is on the cheap end. I feel like I could not get it to release and spin freely enough to allow the spoon to drop without
a small amount of back tension applied to the line. I know that the dropping, fluttering action is the important part so next time I’ll try another reel. Seems like there’s a fine balance between freely letting the line go (like opening the bail on a spinning reel) which won’t allow you to feel a strike, and hampering the falling motion with too much back tension. I need to find where that is.
All in all, I’m glad we went, even though there were no fish caught. It was a beautiful day in the 60s on the lake. We learned some stuff. I will keep learning until hopefully it pays off.
...