Sk8man

When fishing for walleyes lure speed and depth run can be critical to success. On Erie you are not always fishing them shallow as you might be in someplace like Honeoye where the max. depth of the lake is about 30 ft. I know we tend to think of making fishing easier with the autopilot but it offers little in the way of information about actually catching the fish....it is basically nice to have and especially if fishing solo The ones geared to electric trolling motors do offer a special ability if you can hover over fish and stay on spot while jigging . On big lakes like Erie the walleye suspend a lot in some deeper water than other shallower lakes. In the summer months especially, temperature and lure speed can become very important in catching them. Although the autopilot can be helpful in navigating to specific spots and also returning to port from distant spots, the Fishawk X4D combined with a good fishfinder can become invaluable or crucial in locating and targeting active fish. Personal opinion take it for what it is worth...

Have 7 roller rods 4 for wire dipsys (2) 6 1/2 ft and (2) 8 1/2 ft) and 3 for Seth Green rigs and love every one of them. Oh! and another 5 Seth Greens.....almost forgot about them

Part of the problem in any of these situations is that fish vision is different than ours in that their eyes are placed differently on their head (sides) such that they don't have the same ability we do for binocular vision which is required for true depth perception.

Doubletap Rob's post on the coppers is one of the best on LOU. It will give you a great grounding in copper setups..

Don I'm not sure that you want a 5 lb breaking strength for most of the usual setups something about 3 -3 1/2 lbs is usually about right. Otherwise you can carry around small fish without realizing it. When I use rubber bands I use the very small ones that girls use on their hair that can be found in most department stores such as Joann Fabrics, Walmart, Big Lots and possibly even someplace like Dollar Tree. They usually have them in fluorescent colors as well as black and I mainly use the fluporescent ones as they are easy to see etc. You just half hitch loop one end on your line and place the other end in the release arm. With that said if the release tension is set right on the Blacks release the need for rubber bands is avioded. To check the release pressure get one of those inexpensive scales used for weighing luggage at Walmart etc.(less than $10)

One of the things worth noting is how much difficulty the fish has actually catching up with the bait. Note the motion (action) of the dodger....it is being trolled too fast. The dodger should be swaying more side to side and more slowly so that the bait isn't jerked so much away from the fish. One of the things that becomes apparent in most of these videos is the difficulty many fish have nailing a target sideways and they try to come straight from the back. Either the lure has to be weighted more to slow it (and not necessarily the attractor). the leader from attractor to lure needs to be lenghtened, or the speed needs to be reduced over-all to allow them to actually grab it. Dodger operate differently in the water than flashers where speed isn't as critical.

Very enjoyable Pete. Keep up the good work! Nice to see someone having fun out there and it demonstrates that you don't need all sorts of fancy trolling equipment to have a good time

Just don't get your food mixed up

Good luck....I hope I'm wrong.....but last year they clogged up our downrigger wires so bad the weights couldn't be retrieved right about now....be interesting to see how you make out.

I think that they are there and probably large concentrations out there but the lines most prone to them seem to be lines running laterally (horizontal) and moving through large sections of the water column. Copper setups if running the braid backing just below the surface seem much less prone than other stuff where braid is run further out into the water column and riggers and wire rigs seem to readily accrue it and probably part of it relates to there being a lot of line out at an angle in the column. The flea concentrations seem to vary throughout the lakes and within the water column in those lakes. My hunch is that if you were to talk with folks that were trolling for good distances with riggers, leadcore, and braid they'd be complaining about the fleas. The fishook type seem to be more of a pain to get off too. Although the concentrations seem to vary from lake to lake and within the lakes they don't usually disappear until the water temperature gets down below 60 or so toward or in early Fall.At least that is what I have experienced with them thus far.

Real good summation. go with the flow and don't try to fight Mother Nature

It uses a special coated cable according to the literature from the company https://kelloutdoors.com/products/drx-10-speed-and-temp-system