Newbie help

[imrsmk]

Understood. For jigging, I would check out the thread "Headed out to the Big Water" which contains some great tips and how to start.

Not saying you can't catch'em using spoons right now, but typically most people will wait until the water warms up some and the fish become more active. Especially if you are looking to stay around Turtle Creek, I would focus on jigging.

Just my 2 cents.

John

[Madd Matt]

Understood. For jigging, I would check out the thread "Headed out to the Big Water" which contains some great tips and how to start.

Not saying you can't catch'em using spoons right now, but typically most people will wait until the water warms up some and the fish become more active. Especially if you are looking to stay around Turtle Creek, I would focus on jigging.

Just my 2 cents.

John

I agree with John. Spoons are not what you would want to drag through the water that far West right now. It is a little early for them to be the most effective lure. Also, while you can use downriggers to troll (obviously that is what they are made for), unless you have the ability to know exactly where in the water column they are then down riggers would not be what I would start off with the first time out this year on a new boat, when you are used to drifting. Precision trolling takes a lot of precision (regardless of what all the drifters say). One of the main things that I would want to do is take all those line counter reels and make sure that they are calibrated. Mark out 100' in your yard and then run out exactly 100' of line from point A to point B. Look at your counter and see how accurate of how far off it is.

If you are 20% off on your line counters then you can be running above or below the fish and never know it.

Right now the fish are still hitting jigs and there are a lot of limits being caught jigging and drifting crawlers. If you aren't sure of all your gear being "dialed in" right now for trolling, I'd go jig and have fun.

My 2 cents.

-Matt