Finally made it up for our first time out. Long day, left house at 3:30 am and backed boat in last night at 9:30. Started out having motor trouble. Would start and idle on high but as soon as was put in gear it would stall. Finally got it going and headed up towards power plant. On the way up my Lowrance started reading 3' of water. Stopped boat and screwed with unit for 1/2 hour til it started working right again. Started with putting downriggers out with cowbells and spin and glows. Had a tough time with manual downriggers slipping and going down too fast and releasing the line. Currently using rubber bands and clothes pins on back of balls. Releases will be ordered today! Was a good workout to keep cranking up the balls though.
Next put out the 10 color leadcore down the chute with a spoon. Takes a while to run 10 color out. Figured out how to hook up the dipsys with a flasher and spoon and set the setting at 3. deployed one on each side and we're in business. Start trolling north at 2 mph figuring out how to use the remote on the minnkota and setting straight line course. Lead core starts bending and shaking. Buddy "fights" it the whole way in to take weeds off of line. Redeploy. Downrigger goes off and he fights the cowbells in thinking he had fish, No go, false release? Crank up downrigger and take three times to get it redeployed. Work out getting pretty intense now. Other downrigger goes off. Same story. Get a drink and dipsy starts bouncing. Buddy fights it in to realize that dipsy didnt release and we're dragging weeds. Redeploy and now leadcore is bouncing. Reel it in and it's weeds. Redeploy. Buddy and I are serious fly fisherman, musky and river fisherman and are rethinking trolling. Rigger releases again. Same story. Leadcore starts bendin and buddy starts reeling in weeds again. Half way in he gets excited and says he feels it shaking. I tell him his PTSD is screwing with his head and he's hallucinating. Reels some more and starts yelling get the net. Finally got this trophy to the boat. Pic didn't load, 12" rainbow. At least he had some excitement.
Start seeing lots more weeds and now I know what you guys are talking about when you say weed mats. Decide to pull in and head to west side. Redeploy a lot easier. Got rid of clothes pins and used rubber band directly to ball. Feeling good about ourselves that we're not total idiots. Had dipsys with dodger and spoons out 200 on 25 pound braid. Get a bouncing on one, Fish on. What is that ball slime on the line clogging up the top eye? Clear it and keep reeling. More slime, more clearing, repeat. Finally get fish in and try to land fish in long leader with dipsy bouncing around. Realize what a pain in the a$$ the rolled up low bimini top is. 25" laker in the net. Buddy is excited and we know know about fleas and braid. Keep heading south and other dipsy goes. Repeat of previous story. Fleas suck! Another 25" laker. We're finger lakes trolling experts now!
Keep heading south dealing with a fewer false trips on downriggers. Buddy says look up the lake. White sheet of water heading for us. Look at radar, oh crap. Start pulling lines, too late. Awesome amount of rain in 4 minutes. At least we're not sweating anymore. Lines are in and Trolling motor was going dead any way so we decide to slowly motor towards Taughannnock and find a place to jig. Lake was glass smooth all morning but was now kicking up. Went into bay south of park by swimming area and marked a few fish. Still enough juice in trolling motor to use the spot lock and started jigging and drifting between marks. Missed a few and I got one 27" on a retrieve.
Decided to call it a day and show buddy the wrestling complex at Cornell. He got to meet Kyle Dake our wrestling world team member, Yanni the returning national champ and coach Koll. Called his wife on way home and told her he couldn't think of how he could have had a better day between the fishing and wrestling. Made me feel good to help him out. When I dropped him off last night he wanted to know if we could go again this weekend since we're "experts" now. I wish I could get the pictures to load so you could see the smile on his face.
It was a good learning day. Thanks to everyone who posts here it helped learning curve greatly. Wife not happy last night when I started talking about electric downriggers, wire line setups, more dipseys, planers and releases, better boat etc.
Fleas Suck!
