Quote Originally Posted by brian markham View Post
is wireline just for trolling with spoons. How do you judge your depth.
Brian,
you can troll any bait you want off of a wire line. We run spoons, harnessess, shallow or deep crank baits. The wire is just a means to get more depth, same concept as leadcore.
Assuming you're refereing to the single strand stainless (or monel) wire you can get from companies like Cortland or American Fishing Wire, there isn't really much published data on diving depths. I've never seen a dive curve for them. One thing we do know about wire line; diving depth is speed dependant, slower = deeper. We run between 250-300' of wire line out to target deep fish; if on the inside of a to sharp turn we can drag bottom in 75' of water at ~2mph. For us this can happen whether using 10lb test or 30lb test wire. We typically figure we are running around 60'+ down with ~300' out, but that is just a gut feel.

Another type of wire line that is starting to be used for walleye is copper line. Bloodrun makes a 20lb test and has published depth charts for it on their website. Just note that copper lines currently have a much larger diameter than the stainless and require some pretty big reels in order to get a spool (100yds) on. Another thought on this, although you can't infer the dive depth for stainless based upon the copper dive curve, you can infer the shape of the curve since the behavior of the wires should be the same in the water.

I happened to acquire a depth probe recently, so I am planning on using it on my stainless wire setups to start pulling together some depth numbers next spring.