lfoster607

Beautiful pup! I tried to take my Coonhound to Cayuga once, but he was disturbing the peace with his yowling hahaha!

This is what we saw for a good mile or two on the West shore on the south end. Perhaps we would've had better luck with meat rigs? The Humminbird was lit up like this for a few miles, but no takers.

We were on the water by 7am Saturday, launching from Treman. We drove out to about 150 FOW and started seeing marks so we got our gear set. I got the first hit off a Dipsey and blue/silver Cleo. It felt like a good fish and I got a good look at it, but lost it boatside. It was a nice brown. Based on what I was seeing on the finder, I felt no need to set the rigger close the bottom. I ran anywhere from 60-75' clipped right to the ball. I ran a Green Rainbow Cowbell with a Slimer Gambler 32" back, and 15' back from the ball. It finally produced the first fish on my rigger since mounting it back in May. It was a 15" LL that got put back, but hey, I'll take it! We only ended up with a few other barely-legal LL's the rest of the morning. So, at least I'm feeling little better that I'm starting to make the right adjustments as far as my rigger is concerned, but still don't quite have it dialed in yet. The bucket trick worked pretty good, and we stayed anywhere from 2.0-2.5. The amount of bait down there was insane. I just wish it would've produced more fish. I think the next thing I'm going to add to the arsenal are some wire Dipsey rods and Chinook divers. Hey...there's quite a learning curve to this, but it's starting to come together. Thank you all very much!

Thanks for the info. I don't have a probe at the moment. I'm trolling too fast though, as I've recently learned. The best I can do on a calm day is 2.8-3.0. I'm going to try a couple buckets to remedy that. I'm taking off out of Treman tomorrow AM and I will certainly post a report. Tomorrow will be my first time giving cowbells a try, but I'll take what you said into consideration and will see what happens. Up until now, I've been fishing the rigger anywhere from 60-80FOW with UV Moonshine spoons, sometimes with a dodger and sometimes without. All my fish this year have come on the Dipsey's with silver/blue or bronze/blue spoons. Just trying to get my rigger game dialed in a little better...

I've been trolling for the last four years, but this is my first year with an electric downrigger on the back of my 16' Tracker. I hear a lot about guys letting their cannonball hit bottom and then drag it when laker fishing. Doesn't that make anyone else a little uneasy!? Perhaps its because I'm new to it, but it always makes me nervous when things starts to shallow up and I've got a lot of cable out, let alone to let it hit bottom on purpose. I mostly fish Cayuga, but is this common practice and is it safe? I've only been out 5 times this year, and I haven't had my rigger fire once yet. So, I'm looking to try something different. I'm going to start off running cowbells with Gambler rigs and will either be close to the bottom, or on the bottom depending on what you guys think. Any input is appreciated, as always!

You don't have to put anything in there for flotation? Also, how far back from the boat do you run them? The slowest I've been able to idle on a calm day is 2.9. I'd like to slow it down a little...

So you're telling me I need to drag my butt out of bed earlier even in the early season? I suppose I can handle that!

Here's my report for Cayuga out of the South end. We hit the water around 8:30am. We had a slow start in the AM, hence the late start time. The ramps still have quite a bit of debris washed up, but we cleared a path easily enough. Water levels were good and we had no problem getting out. The inlet is in its typical 6-10' range. There's still plenty of debris floating around out there, FYI. Headed out and started trolling in 150-200 FOW. Plenty of good marks and bait out there. Not a single fish wanted to cooperate. We threw every kind of Moonshine spoon, fly/flasher, and Little Cleo that we had at them. Dipsy's and riggers. We also hit the shoreline on the east side of the lake with stick baits off the planer boards. Not a thing. I typically don't get out and troll this early in the year. I only talked to one other guy and he said he got skunked too. Just chalk it up to an off day? Anyone got any early season advice? Should've went turkey hunting instead!