chowder

Went 6/8 on mature Kings. 50-80 down over 120-150 FOW. 2.2-2.3 down. Spoons; green dolphin, NBK, green thunder glow(Yeck's) on the riggers. Green/White E.chip & crinkle green fly and White Smart fish& crinkle green fly on the wires. Temps were all over the place. We just kept going back & forth thru a series of way points where we marked a little bit of bait and couple of fish. We never had a screen that looked very good.

Thanks for the report, sounds like I better get back up!

Holy mackerel, I was talking w/ this guy who is supposedly a charter captain and he told me not to run the run the cable in the hook because it will wear the cable! Ray, which way do run them and do you have much wear on the coated cable (can't remember but thought you had a Depth Raider).

If you have Mag 5s they are going to have their hands(motors) full w/ the 15#s at any kind of speed, a Mag 10 w/ any kind of age on it will struggle w/ 15#. From what I have seen w/ my older Mag 10s if you want to run 15# weights you should really have Mag 20 downriggers, then you can go up to 20# if you need to.

Seem to have problems running my depth raider coated cable on a Cannon Mag 10 w a 13# Pancake whenever I swivel the rigger out to the side .Should a depth raider probe rigger always be run straight out the back and not at an angle? The cable has chafed 2 or 3 times now and yesterday it got snarled on the retrieve because the cable was jumping around on the spool as it turned. The other side jumps around some on the way up too but the regular rigger cable doesn't seem to bother much.

I don't know what Musky looks like in a gown, but I do know what Ray looks like stripping down in the fog! This poll shouldn't even be close!

Some fish! What a slammer to get in a tournament!

I use my super braid slide divers to target fish in the upper part of the water column. I set the reg slide diver w/o ring on 3 and run out 130-170' and have had zero problems w/ my wire mag dipsy divers @ 160-240' out @ 1.5. I also put together a pair of wire slide diver lite bite rigs w/ the large ring, I only use a 4' final leader on these because my goal w/ these rigs was to eliminate the hassle of the long dipsy leader in my small boat. They seem to work fine but the extra hassle of setting the diver/leader has made me favor my traditional wire dipsy combos for the most part since it's much quicker to get them back working after boating a fish or changing out.

Huntfrisco and others have their Simrad's hooked up to the GPS, I have stayed the heck away from doing it. At this point can't see the advantage in it, pick a heading- AP on and away you go.

Good deal Chris!, hoping to get back up there myself asap!

This is a really good point. Under Monday's conditions off Port Bay(N/S troll) it seemed like I had to let out 140' of coated depth raider cable to target Kings at 100' w/ a 13# pancake + probe @ 2.3-2.4 down w/ 40# spoon rod on the rigger. The blowback was extreme enough that I couldn't see the weights on the graph after they were in place.

Go Musky, Go Musky!

Keep on trucking Musky!

Gonna want the 65#. I wound up using 8'6" rods so I could run them outside my 7' wire dipsy rods.

Gambler, do you run them on that high tension setting? Seems like they might be hard to trip down at 100' if you want to change out?

At down speeds over 2.2 spoon and flasher rigs spooled w/ 30# Ande kept popping out of my Scotty power grips, I had one rig spooled w/ 40# that held fine, tried 2 different new this year releases w/ same results? One thing I am wondering about is I use pancake 13# weights w/ the release clipped to the big tail fin which I am thinking is another problem because I can't imagine that weight can pivot very good once the rigger rod is cranked down. Should I attach the release to the same eye that the cable is attached to? Still doesn't explain why the 30# doesn't stay in @ higher speeds though!

I'm praying for you Musky and hoping to see you out and about soon. -Andy

Had this problem some last year some too; I see quite a bit of line twist in the leader from my wire mag dipsy to the flasher, today I lost a real good king when this leader broke in the middle. I retied these leaders one trip ago w/ 30# P-line flouro, what should I be doing different besides fishing for smaller fish? Spinny had the proper snap swivel on the front and I use the Howie clear snubbers behind the diver. I am wondering if the Howie swivel is the culprit? My drag was set loose enough to click out a bit here and there. Suggestions?

Mower, great to see another promising angler coming along in nephew Tyler! Elliot wishes him all the best out on the east coast and say's he stands ready to duel it out at Barney's.

Don't worry about copper and lead core yet. You want to concentrate on a pair of rigger rod combos and a pair of wire dipsy diver combos. To support this hardware you are gonna need a pair of downriggers and weights (10#+) and pair of heavy duty rod holders for the dipsy rigs, preferably on a track system. You will probably want a combo gps plotter/sonar unit (preferably w/ dual frequency) and a down speed moniter (depth raider is the best buy). It will help a great deal if you can get out and see/ fish w/ somebody who has all ready risked divorce and has all this stuff, that way you get the picture which is worth a 1000 words thus flattening the learning curve. I have gone some part of the way down this road and would be happy to have you on board out on Cayuga some time, pm me if you want.

RR, forgot to mention in my post a few weeks back that the "undisclosed location" we moved your big laker to was my smoker (sorry, I had a pool party coming up and I needed some thing to go along with some of that fine King Ferry wine).

Thanks for the reports guys. Looks like rain for Sat. so I can fish w/o worrying about missing a sunny day of field work. Probably won't get going too early (too much like work!)

I converted the exact boat you are talking about into a trolling rig and I still have it but I wound up getting a Starcraft Islander last fall that I use for most of my FLX and Ontario trolling. I have had my Alumacraft 16.5 out in some very dishy stuff and it took it us back to shore every time but it's just not enough boat for a day that's anything less than mild on the FLX or Ontario. Mine has Merc 40 hp 4 stroke and 65 Minn Kota bow mount, I have gone back to using it for bass/pike fishing and I use it for trolling on mild winter days(the EFI 4 stroke will start at 10 deg like it's a summer day) Send me a pm if you would like to see or talk about how I have the Alumacraft set up-It's got Berts Trax/rod holders, down speed,sonar/gps, down riggers,etc.

Heat up the rod tip over the element on an electric stove, grip the tip guide w/ a pair of needle nose pliers thru the guide end and twist gently. Should come off fine if you have it heated up enough- be careful not to burn it.(Musky; don't follow these instructions for your own equipment!)