Weekend Walleye Report

[DoubleD]

We fished on the western edge of the pack between niagara and rattlesnake for the most part of the 3 days we fished. Out of three guys, we only managed 9 walleye on Friday, but we got our limit on Saturday and Sunday by about 3 pm. We had to work for them. Harness' worked well and so did spoons. We left all of our tackle boxes in the truck on Saturday so we had to fish with what we had tied on the day before. Early in the day we broke 2 of the harness' off and we were in trouble! We found an old box of "erie dearie" type lures and started trolling them. We actually caught our best fish of the day on those lures! It is a good story of making due with what you have. Also a good lesson to not leave your stuff 12 miles away at the dock! We struggled using inline planers and the long leads behind them needed to get the baits down without using Jets. A guy at the campground told us about the Dipsey divers he uses so we gave it a shot with 1 dipsey. For our purposes, the dipsey worked great. Shorter leads, no planer boards, etc, etc, etc. We ended up catching most of our fish on the dipsey and spoon combo on Sunday. The biggest thing we learned was that for deeper water trolling in our boat (smaller boat w/OUT big boards) we will be using 3 dipsey's on each side this time next year. I also found that with braided line directly to the dipsey and a 17# leader, I lost some fish because there was not any stretch to give the fish some room. Now I understand why the snubbers are needed. We caught fish on most colors of spoons / harness' but the spoon behind the dipsey that caught the most was chicken puke. One question to any of you out there.. We have an 18.5' Lund with an I/O, steering that boat straight at trolling speeds is very difficult. You cannot step away from the wheel for more than 15 seconds and the boat is completely turned in the wrong direction. Does anyone know what to do to help this situation?
Thanks to those of you that I spoke with over the weekend.

[fishin2]

I had the same problem with an i/o outfit. I took a small bungee strap and wrap a spot on the steering wheel to keep mine somewhat straight when I need to move about, just watch for other boats !!! Mike

[walleye2go]

$3000 and an autopilot will help or have a dad that likes to run the boat lol.

Greg

[Lab Rat]

I just recently put a TR-1 autopilot on my I/O Baron and that steers the boat great even into the wind. I tried to use a Terrova with I-Pilot, but the 60 inch shaft wasn't long enough when the water was rough. It would probably work well for your 1850 though. The I-Pilot is awesome with the cruise control function, and record a track.