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rail bird

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Posts posted by rail bird

  1. Your set up is the reverse of most boats and I think running 2 dipseys and a flat line or lead core off the back will always give you problems. I run 1 core off the back riggers off the back in the corners and a dipsy out on each side at a 2 setting to get them away from the boat if I am running everything. If I get a big one on the rigger I will clear that side dipsey and slow turn the boat to that side to keep him clear of the other lines.

    good luck

  2. I live by this motto; It is better to just run 1 thing correctly than to have 1 thing run incorrectly. If your new don't over do it. Spoons are the easiest things to run because most of them are speed forgiving. Put one 15 feet behing your down rigger and drop it down 5 feet. Watch it swim. It should have good back and forth action and not roll in a circle. Adjust your speed if you have too. Now drop your rigger to fishing depth if it looks good. Do the same with your second rigger puting 10 to 15 feet higher or lower than the other. If you get comfortable with that add free sliders. Make sure they don't tangle. If you have not used flashers and flys wait until you have more experience with running spoons. Once you get the hang of them then you might want to start using flashers.

    Good luck

  3. I would guess either the moter it'self is having trouble or something is binding. It is easy for the motor to turn when going down because there is little load on it in that direction. What size weights are you trying to pull up? Maybe you have to go down a size with that rigger. Will it work if the boat is not moving? Pulling a weight up through the water while the boat is going 3 mph can take a lot of force. Is there a clutch on the unit that is turned down too tight? Just some things to think about.

  4. "Her is my question. Gas has gone up because OPEC crude has gone up,right? Why did all the prices of gas go up in all the gas stations ,from all the oil companies even those who do not buy from crude OPEC?

    I must be missing something here."

    I will take a stab at answering this question. There are three major steps in getting gas in your car. 1) oil exploration and production. 2) The oil refiners. the guys that make oil into gas or jet fuel or heating oil and 3) the gas retailers which own the stations.

    Some oil is produced by the same company that can do all three steps. The big guys like Exxon/mobil and Sunoco, etc. In most cases they do not produce enough oil to meet the demand of there own customers so they have to buy oil in the open market. Contracts for oil are bought and sold in an auction type of process, the main one in the US being at the Chicago board of trade. If you really need more oil this month to send to the refinery to make gas this is pretty much where you have to go to get it. You also have to out bid the company standing next to you. Thats pretty tough to do in a market like this where there is great demand world wide for oil. The more you have to pay in Chicago the more it cost for you to make gas which is then marked up and passed along to the customers.

    There are only two ways for prices to go down in the long run. Increase supply, or reduce demand. On the supply side you can drill for more oil but the problem is the oil is in harder places to get to so it is more expensive to get out of the ground. It's difficult to drill wells a half mile deep in the ocean or in the frozen permafrost of the north slope of Alaska. Still the Oil producers are looking for every last drop and high prices encourage them to do that.

    On the demand side high prices make us think about how much gas we use ourselves and how we can save money by using less. The more people switch off the the use of gas by going to alternative sources like hybrids or electric cars the less oil people need to by in Chicago then the prices come back down.

    So the best thing you can do is figure out how to save as much gas as you can. If everyone cut back 10% on gas consumption this year it would be much more effective than boyctting a compnay or cutting the tax on gas. Most of us can save 10% on gas without it impacting our lives at all. Just keeping you tires inflated correctly saves 2%. Don't speed the difference in gas consumption in most cars is pretty big by going 60-65mph rather than 70-75 mph. Combine car trips. Don't let your car idle.

    The term for traders is called demand destruction. Once you start to destroy demand there is more oil for sale in Chicago than there are people who need it and the prices come down.

    I hope this helps.

  5. I think it's more a matter of water color than a magic temp. If you have very clear water near shore it's very difficult to catch fish. You need to search around for pockets of stained water which will hold fish. These pockets can break off from river plumes and travel for miles with the currents. When the near shore water gets warm enough a thermal wall will form where there is a rapid transition from warm to cold water. Those are what you will look for as you move off shore.

    I know it's not a direct answer but I hope it helps.

  6. In general Flashers like the hot spot are supposed to run at a slow roll and dodgers wave back and forth and do not roll. Of course speed determines what happens to them when deployed.

    A good early season coho rig is a 00 orange or red dodger with a white or green fly.

    I am reluctant to run both dodgers and flashers at the same time as it increases the chances of one of them running the wrong way and driving fish away.

  7. On the bright sunny days you want a spoon that does not have a silver back if you are fishing up high. Copper or white backs work well for me on those bright days. As a spoon flashes thorgh the water the sun tends to magnify the silver reflection and make the lure look much larger than it is in the water. It's good to have some less reflective lures on certain days.

  8. Thanks for all the advice everyone.

    Paul, if I have not figured things out when it is time to run them I will stop by with one of my riggs.

    Eric, I will be back at 4c's this year. I hope all is well and looking forward to another good season. Hope to see you when you come up.

  9. I want to get my dipsy's working better this year. I normaly run spin doctors behind the dipsy with a fly. I guess I am doing something wrong because I seldom take a hit. So I am looking for some advice including terminations, holes to attach to, length to flasher and fly, what type of fly's and colors to use.

    Thanks for any advice.

  10. Some day I will actually get around to putting the lettering on my boat but after much thought I named my 21 foot Sea Pro the RAIL BIRD. Some birds were perched out on the bow rail of my boat one day and it came to me that was the perfect name association with my other hobby, horse Racing. In horse racing the Rail Birds are the fans that lean on the fence during the running of the race. These are the two dollar bettors who often don't have a place to sit in the club house. Rail birds are going extinct in the modern days of online wagering and simulcast betting parlors but at a big track on a busy day you will see a big flock of them pressed against the fence screaming out names and numbers and cursing in 12 different languages.

  11. Wire will get you deeper than mono or super lines but the big advantage is the ability to fish with it when the fleas are around. You can cut the fleas off with a quick slide of the hand across the bottom of the wire. Super line forget it. Mono stetches more than the other two lines so it is hard to get dipseys to release when they are out real far. I fish with both Fire line and wire dipseys but soon as the fleas come the Fire line rods come off the boat.

  12. What you have this time of year are fish that are going to spawn and fish that are not. The fish rolling on the surface close to shore are staging for the fall run. They are not in their prefered temperature range as at this point it's all about reproduction.

    The water temprature plays an important part as to whats going on with the non staging fish. What you tend to get this time of year are fairly uniform tempratures in terms of depth and across the surface. The thermocline is often very deep near shore. If there are non staging fish near shore they are hugging the bottom and may be very difficult to target.

    As you go away from shore you will eventually find some cooler water and a thermocline closer to the surface. I like to target the area where the thermocline is less than 60 feet down. If you don't have down temp and there are no boats fishing off shore to give you a place to start you can still find fish. Head a few miles off shore then put down a clean spoon set up using NK's or some other spoons that work well at higher speeds. If you have two riggers drop one down between 50 and 60 feet and drop the other between 30 and 40 feet. Run a free slider on each rigger and you will have the water column pretty well covered. Get your boat speed between 3 and 4mph and keep heading deeper untill you take a hit. make sure your lures are wobbling and not turning over at the high speeds. Once you find a fish you can work that area.

    Later in the season The cold water will push closer to shore and that will bring the fish in. At that point you can look for surface breaks for places to start.

    Good Luck

  13. In my opinion let the am rules go back pretty much to the way they were then have a 3rd division. What we might call a small boat division. basic rules for the small boat divison.

    4 rod limit.

    cooler check on the way out

    no observer

    6 fish, no bonus laker

    release allowed because how are you going to stop it?

    communication same as other divisions.

  14. The answer is maybe. There are plenty of fish in open waters late in the year. Just like summer they still key on temprature and bait. These are the non spawning fish in open waters. I tend to find them further offshore than 60 fow most days but again it is temp dependent. The steelhead fishing this time of year can be fantastic.

    Good luck

  15. I have been a docker at the Oak for 4 years now and have been very happy with the fishing and the area. The Kings don't show up in great numbers untill a later in the spring but there are plenty of coho, steelhead and browns to catch in the early spring. Once the kings show up they seem to stick around untill they run the river in the fall. Boat traffic can range from almost no one out on a weekday afternoon to tons of boats on a Sunday. Still I have no problem finding a place to fish in realative peace by getting away from the packs of boats chasing the charters around. The river is deep for the big boats and even though it is getting low this year I have not had to worry about hitting the bottom at my dock.

    I can't help with real estate prices but except for the waterfront property it is a low cost area.

  16. Well I managed to saw off a cannon ball this weekend and it now sits and the bottom of lake Ontario in 200 fow off oak orchard. I now need to re set up the rigger. I have a few of the cannon plastic crimps but after putting one on I was reluctant to try it did not seem too secure. does anyone use the cannon crimps or is there a better way?

    Thanks

  17. This is my 4th season with my own boat on lake O and at one point I had the same feeling as you have now. Lot's of people around me catching fish but I would come home with nothing. I thought the same thing It must be my boat. The good new is it was not the boat it was some little things I was doing wrong that stopped me from catching fish.

    You did not mention what your normal set up is but I run a 2 rigger boat with 1 or 2 dipsys and sometimes a lead core. I have had good luck running with just 2 or 4 rods so don't feel intimidated by the 8 rod spreads that the big boats put out. A few of the things I have worked on that have helped are as follows.

    1) Make sure what you put under water is running correctly. When you put your first spoon in the water drop your rigger in the water a few feet. Watch your spoon. Is it flashing and does it have a good wobble? If not speed up or slow down the boat untill it looks like it is running the way you want it. Different spoons run better at different speeds so if it takes 3.5mph to make an NK 28 flash right then run at that speed. Currents can play games with your spread so it is better to run at a speed that works for what you have down. Repeat the steps with your other rigger keeping in mind it might be better to run the same types of spoons so they all should act the same way at the same speeds. In my opinion it is better to have one lure out running correctly than to have 5 lures out with one running incorrectly. One spoon spinning in a circle can chase the fish away. The same goes flashers and flys on dipseys let the out a little bit and watch them The flashers should have a slow steady rotation.

    2) When trolling keep the cables running behind the boat. Currents can swing your spread to the left or right so find a direction that keeps yor cannon balls running directly behind the boat. If you take a hit make sure you notice what direction you are running. Some days even 10 deg variation in heading can stop the fish from hitting.

    3) I am a big fan of free sliders and almost always run them if I have spoons on the riggers. 6 feet of mono with a snap at each end is all I use. Watch the lures as they slide down the line to see if they are running right. If they look bad you might have to speed up or not run them.

    4) Don't be afraid to run close to shore in the summer. The 40 to 60 fow range can be really good if there are schools of bait in the area. Most boats go out deeper in search of big kings but the area where the thermocline intersects with the bottom can be a good place to search. I will say that if the screen is blank in shallow do not bother fishing in that area but if you see them try it.

    5) Watch your rod tips. I like it when they bounce a little bit like a sewing machine. If they go dead you may have some weeds or other junk on your lines. You have to clear the weeds so check the rigs if you think they look dead.

    I think thats most of the important stuff. Trust me if you keep trying you will find the set ups that work for you.

    Good Luck

  18. Tri hulls were the first thing I thought of when I saw that name. There were a lot of them around.

    Are they going to let you drill a bunch of holes in that boat to mount downrigers rod holders and fish finders etc. ? I am certain as long as the boat is sound there is no problem taking a 23 footer on lake O if it is a deep v or a modified v. Better make sure you can rig it without starting a family feud.

    Good Luck

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