Small deetails- Eliminating mistakes

[Lucky Duck]

I have not fished the last couple years due to an all summer dock replacement and last year our daughter got married and we worked on the house they bought. Anyway I have been thinking what I have done wrong that I cannot catch more fish consistently in the past. This is what I have done this winter.


-Bought a Fish Hawk
- Bought Precision Trolling App (instead of using charts I downloaded)
-Added flags to my planer boards
-Bought 4 new Eagle Claw Starfire X rods for planer boards so my planer rods match
-Bought new Okuma Magna Pro reels for the planer rods.
-Will be using my two matching Diawa Accudepth Linecounter setups with the yellow braid for dipseys
-Will use my two Cabelas outfits with green Power Pro for Tru Trips
-Bought P line CXX mono instead of the Bass Pro mono for the planer reels.
-Calibrated my reels
-Bought a new Garmin unit for fish-GPS
-Bought two Planer board bags to keep boards protected and organized.
-Bought a Lakewood mesh bag to keep my clear tackle bins in one place.
-Bought crankbait locks to attach from my line to the hardbaits.
-Fish stickbaits about 3 ft above the fish and avoid the pack of boats.

My questions today are this.
1. Should I paint my orange Dipsy divers black?
2. Between my Dipsies and my bait, can I use the P-Line CXX or do I need flourocarbon?
3. I bought Pro Cure scent. Use that all the time, or when the Bite is slow?
Thanks
Bruce

[DW72]

Wow, that's pretty impressive.

Calibrating the reels made a big difference for me. I also use the Okuma Magna Pros. I use 15# mono and it's 850 feet per reel.

I also use the ProCure. Primarily in the spring in colder water but sometimes in summer too. Its cheap and can't hurt is the way I look at it.

I also use Starfire rods and a Garmin. For me as I learned to catc more fish faster it was a few things.

1. Once you get a couple fish at a certain lead put more rods the same quick.

2. Run back over biting fish often like when you get a double.

3. Sunny days and clearer water is flashy chrome style baits. Dark days and dark water are brightly painted and dark colored baits. Some baits that are great have flash and color mixed in them.

Those are the most important things I learned through this site and hours on the water in all 3 basins on Mother Erie.

[DW72]

Oh.....and if I fish 30-60 minutes and am marking a bunch of fish and don't get a bite...move. It's hard for me to leave a screen full of fish but if they aren't biting, it doesn't matter. For me, the fish 15-25 down generally seem to be the most active.

Much deeper of course in the central and eastern basins when we fish 60-100 FOW.

[Lucky Duck]

Thank you DW, that info helps a lot!

[cohoho]

Going to sound kind of counter productive but stop over thinking it. Go back to the basics?.. speed and color. Bright days, bright colors, dark days, dark colors. As stated above, find biters?.

Good luck!