58Johnson

Great Fish! Best of luck trying to beat that one this year. Great start to the year.

Frogger, I agree and see your question. I have been working on helping the OP get some basic understanding of his equipment. It does have a learning curve. For someone who already understands sonar, chart plotting and downrigger operation there definitely is a whole other set of questions to answer. I actually have moved away from bottom tracking. I have not even slightly increased my catch rate when tracking. It is a convenience but not a necessity. As stated before, I am a huge fan of the other features these riggers have. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

Think about how you compensate for offset with a non bottom tracking rigger. Watch your graph and pull it in a little if your hitting bottom Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

Keeping the fish hawk off the bottom is always the goal. I would throw a fish hawk TD down there instead if I was ever going to do that experiment.

You have settings in your finder for low KHz beam and high kHz beam. Chirp is another setting that kind of combines both high and low kHz beams. The higher beam (200kHz) will throw a narrow beam and your downrigger balls may be outside its narrow focus under the boat. The lower beam (83kHz, 60kHz, 50kHz) is much wider and along with slightly tilting the tail of your transducer up, will allow you to see your rigger balls. If you go too fast and have light weight rigger balls, they may blowback so far you can’t see them. Also, you will need to turn the gain/sensitivity setting up to see stuff down deep. Here is a photo from the Humminbird instruction manual that will help you Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

I’ll try to reply with more detail later but I would touch base sometime with LOU member Yankee Troller. He is the wizard on Cannon products. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

I generally use 3ft to 12 ft as my distance from bottom. 3ft for Lakers and 12 ft or so for Browns. Blowback setting will depend on speed, downrigger ball weight, and current. If you are a math wiz you can do a A squared plus B squared equals C squared calc. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

I have used bottom tracking and did not have your experience - I fish Cayuga Lake with dramatic rises and dropoffs. With practice and experience - like many, many things fishing, you can get bottom tracking to work as advertised. Most importantly, use your sonar screen to watch your downrigger ball to track your relative closeness to bottom. Unless you are really deep, this is usually possible. Also watch your boom and cable for signs of touching bottom. Believe it or not, there is a technique called bottom bouncing that calls for you to intentionally touch bottom with your downrigger ball. You may need to readjust your transducer angle and use a setting on the finder to use a wider transducer cone to be able to see your ball. Adjusting gain helps too. Play around and you can figure it out. You need to stop expecting a video game fishing experience. Cannon is not going to do ALL the work for you - (just picking on you). Sounds like you are well along the learning curve that comes with these riggers and their new technology My pet peeve with bottom tracking is where you troll into a bait ball and the system thinks that it is actually a hump in the bottom structure and it raises the ball up, over, then back down the top of the bait ball. I learned to tap an up or down key to instantly stop that unwanted action. You then have to restart bottom tracking again once you clear the bait ball. I am unfortunately so hooked on the other features of Cannon's downriggers I know I will spend the extra coin on the Digitroll or Optima riggers when my current setup needs replacement. The digital readouts. The simple up and down keys. The preset depth settings. Easy to use Auto Up. Jigging function. Plus much more. Overly expensive, but addicting. ps. - You should not be losing rigger weights very often at all. If it snags, your clutch should slip and you will have about two hundred feet of time to figure out and execute a game plan. All part of the fun chaos that gives you great stories for back at the dock.

It might be that the super cold spells gave the bubbler some challenges. My trips out mid winter have sometimes been through a very narrow path of open water. Busting up a turn around in the ice is normal for me. During one mid winter visit another boat had drifted out of the channel and was stranded up on the ice in a strong wind. The guy wanted me to come out with my boat and get him. I opted to stay on shore and we used an anchor line to pull him back into the channel. I decided to bail on going out that day. The other challenge at Taughannock can be how shallow it gets just after you go under the bridge. Knowing to stay to the south side of the chute has been crucial in past years. Speaking of the bridge...it is a big boat stopper for sure.

Drove by Meyers Park boat launch and saw heavy equipment in the town boat launch/marina area. Looks like they are dredging out the entire marina. I can only hope/wish/dream they get it cleaned out deep enough to allow for some mid winter launching. (not counting on that to ever happen) As of now, once the lake level is lowered around January, Taughannock is the only viable launch on the lake.

You have a PM

????? You are thinking of going out today ?????? We are starting to worry about you Doc! We knew you were hardcore...

You troll tandem flys near the surface. Two splitshot, one splitshot and even no splitshot. Short cores would work too, but I like my tandems up, up high in the water column. Way back too (100ft plus)

FlyShack.com Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

Here is a picture of the most common set up for a spin doctor (and flashers). That shows a traditional/common trolling fly and a spin doctor. Spin doctors and flashers roll in a circular motion. There is an item called a dodger that is similar but only moves side to side. (I run my tandem flies (the ones like Pete's) bare with no attractor (no flasher,dodger or spin doctor) near the surface spring and fall) And to return to your original question - yes we use flasher fly combos regularly on the Finger Lakes. They seem most successful mid to late season for me.