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I am fishing out of a tritoon and have a dock at rossford marina. I have fished a few times out by the lighthouse trying to figure this out. We have caught s couple of walleyes on drifting crawler harnesses but I know there has to be a better place then staying so close . Any ideas would be helpful thanks
Head towards water intake. Last 2 weeks we have been getting them in 21 ft water castingQuote:
Originally Posted by Jgjjr1975
Do you have the ability to troll or just cast/drift? Do you have an electric motor on your toon, or just the big motor? With the high sides I would think you would be able to drift fast enough with even a mild wind. Do you have a GPS/Fish-finder on that thing? If so, you should be able to see how fast you are drifting. You need about 1.2 mph or more to effectively drift this time of the year. 1.4-1.6 is about ideal.
If you have enough speed, then you can drift and not have to reel. If not, then you will need to cast and reel just fast enough to keep the blades turning. When I have enough speed to drift, I like to use regular harnesses with 1 oz in-line sinkers. I back-reel them out so that I can repeat my set-up. For 1 oz weights, at 1.2-1.4 mph, I get about 1 foot of depth for every 3 feet of line that I have out. Most of my reels let out about 2 feet of line with each "turn", so 30 turns would be 60 feet of line out, or 20 feet down. You should calibrate your reels to see roughly what they are. To do so, I just pull out 50 feet of line (use a tape-measure) and then count how many turns it takes to reel it in. That will tell you how many feet per turn your reels are.
If I go to a 1/2 oz weight, the ratio is 1/5. I would need 50 turns or 100 feet of line to be down 20 feet. Make sense? That way, when I catch a fish, I can repeat my set-up. I will usually start by going out 25 turns or so, and then keep trying different settings until I start catching fish. Then repeat it. If you have line-counters, then you can just look at the number.
If you have casting reels, but no line counters, you can either count the number of times the level winder crosses back and forth, or pull the line out manually, 1 arm length at a time. It is more important to be able to repeat the set-up than it is to know exactly how much line you have out, because you will likely need to keep trying different settings before you dial them in anyway.
If I have to cast and reel, then I use weapon-rigs or Erie Dearies and use the count-down method. On your first cast, start counting when it hits the water and then stop counting when it hits the bottom. That will tell you what count it takes to get all the way down. So if you hit bottom in 24 feet of water on a 20 count, then half-way down would be a 10 count and so on. If I am seeing marks at 15 feet, I will count it down so that I am staying above them slightly.
I have a helix 7 gps and fish finder I also have a trolling motor with I pilot so I can set the course and stay on the course. I have fished the river for many years doing the wading thing but life took a change this year
I wanted to say thank you for the information. I was finally able to go today got a little bit of Sun . Enjoyed catching fish the weapons worked great with that drift I just switched to a 1/2 ounce instead of running the 1 oz sinker made the biggest difference . Lots of short guys but ended up bringing home 5 well worth the trip. They were all over the water column but I noticed once we hit the 23 ft mark we started catching
Awesome! Glad you caught some. If you want a more in-depth read on fishing the lake, then you might get some info out of an article that I wrote a while back. Some of what you read in the article is similar to what I already posted, but there's a lot more.
Article: Crankbaits, harnesses or spoons, which option should I choose
– Slimshady Customs
Went out today I am checking the report for waves and usually they are spot on today they were way off. We marked fish mostly at the 22 ft to 15 ft . Used gold weapons with a purple spinner and used crawler harness in a chartreuse and tiger like ran 1ounce weights tried drifting for a hour that was not the ticket. Used the trolling motor at 1.8 did the stop go method and picked up 10 fish biggest being 27 inches . Had a blast thanks for the advice it has worked perfectly . Going to tow the boat next time to anchor point the run from rossford is killing us.
Thanks for the reply and feedback. Glad that worked for you. It's a fun way to catch them too! I love feeling them hit or teasing them into biting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jgjjr1975