SUPERTRAMP

Personally I would not go with any weight line presentation longer than 300'. If you need to get deeper than that add Dive Bombs or Torpedo Diver weights. It might catch fish but who in their right mind wants to reel in more than 300' of it.

As for backing, consider that you will be deploying the entire weighted line then connecting to a board and let the board out to the side of the boat. If you let it out 50', that is 50' of backing from the rod to the board. Now when a fish hits it is going to take line. With many 25 to 35 pound Kings being caught on Lake Michigan, I would not want any less than 200 yards of backing on any weighted line outfit.

Right on the button, any kind of in line weight and you get the desired depth without all the hassle of more than 100 yards of heavy fight killing line out there. I hate catching fish on copper. No fight and its hard work. I run 300 and 200 of 45# but if I can get away with all Lead core and just add dive bombs I do. My most active presentations this year have been on Downriggers with free sliders. My wire dipsey presentations have been on fire too. Since May we haven't had a lot of action on the copper set ups. The Leadcore has been on fire. My real reaction to 450' or more is how much fun can it be pulling in a fish that has gotten all the fight taken out of it by the line.

I Fish St Joe and we have been fishing out to 300, but last weekend after the blow we found fish inside 110 and had a lot of bait. The key find the bait, fish are eating the alewives and the ones we are seeing are the 3 to 4 inch young alewives, try using all regular size baits instead of the magnum sizes. I usually run meat rigs and this season we have not had to use them. small spoons on free sliders and run SOG of 3 mph to 3.5 mph and the Coho and Steelhead are really cooperative.

Great job Slim...Kelly - a policy from Boat US for towing is CHEAP...best insurance you can buy and it comes it handy when you need it - but hopefully you don't.

I second that, if you have to call the Coast Guard they send Tow Boat US and the bill is $450.00. Membership is less than $70.00 cant remember how much I paid this year but its well worth it.

Fished St Joe Sunday Morning, was worried that the fish had scattered after the blow, so we ran to my last way point and started south. Was not marking any fish or bait in 170 all the way out to 240, turned toward the beach and headed back in. We started marking the bait again in about 110 FOW, and had lots of action after that. We took hits on riggers down 85 and 95 with free sliders. All spoon action, and mostly on The Free Sliders, The catch was 2 Coho and ! steelhead landed. But we lost 9 fish, 1 that got cut off on the wire dipsey right behind the boat another the just came unbuttoned as we were about to net it, 1 broken swivel on a 300 Copper. Speed was 3.0 to 3.2 on the Fishawk, and water temp at 60' was 47 degrees. East West troll and West to East were the only direction we got hits. Kinda a sloppy early but laid down about 10 am. Baits that worked. Stinger Modified Coyote and Modified Blue dolphin. Match the hatch the magnum spoon never took a hit, and the fish were full of 2 to 3 inch alewives.

ive tried different speed beads and came to the conclusion i dont like my boards releasing.

The only time I use speed beads is early spring when I am running mono long lines for Browns and Coho lwith Yellow Bird boards., that set up works better in really shallow water. But for the rest of the season I run church board and I agree I don't want then to release. Tighten them down lower your rod tip and get the board into the boat take off the board and then fight the fish. (If you try to keep a high angle on your rod the board will dive on you, I lower the tip and keep a tight drag until I get the board off.)

Biggest problem with the Dacron is spiny sea fleas cling to it. I had it on my riggers several years ago and it lasted about 2 trips in the middle of summer and I went back to wire. The 200 power pro will work because it is very slippery and the fleas don't cling to it.

Hey guys,

with the fleas being as bad as they are im thinking of makin the switch to wire divers. My question is, i run okuma glt pro dipsy rods, would i need to add some sort of twilli tip? or are the guides ok without them.

Also any brand/type of wire better then the other?

The fleas will still get on the wire but it is no problem to get them off and they only stick to the last 4 to 5 feet of wire before the dipsey. It doesn't interfere with the guides on your rod like the Power Pro or mono dipseys, and the Fleas come off easily by comparison. Good call on the wire and go ahead and use a good Okuma dipsey rod I put the Twill tip on mine and have no problems. remember to keep tension on the wire when you store the rod or you will get curly wire.

Nice night to be on the Pond, nice job on the fishies.

I have 6 reels all spooled up with Flea Flicker and can change over in a few minutes when fleas start being a nuisance. I had the problem 2 weeks ago and switched when we got back to the slip. I tie the Uni Knot and it never fails me. The biggest thing that I think is a problem with the line is that it tends to twist after a while. I spool full reels and can cut of 75 to 100 feet and not effect the way the drags work.

I put the wrong date on this post it was 7/14/2013 Sunday.

175 to 220 FOW straight out and we hadn't got all the lines set at 7:00 am, and had a double 1 on free slider on rigger down 85 and 1 on wire dipsey on 1 out 85, both were stinger regular size modified blue dolphin, steady action all morning, til we had a small electric malfunction and pulled lines at 9 am, while we were going in on 1 engine my Son solved the electric issue and we turned around and fired up the other engine ran back out to 160 and started setting lines again, The pattern was top 60 ft and small spoons with speed of 3mph or faster. The thermocline is at about 65 ft and we only got 1 fish in the cold water. Ended the day with 1 laketrout, 2 steelhead, 4 coho and 1 small 2 yr old King. Color didn't matter much just speed up and get put past all the other boats.

BTW the flies were ridiculous after the wind went down. Take your bug spray.

Is anyone interested in Starting a Southern Lake Michigan Fishing League out of St Joe? Good chance for guys to get to know each other and share lies.

If you are interested join the ST JOE group and lets figure it out for next season.

St Joe is 68 and 67.

Thanks for the information Paul. Going to fish Sunday if u r out give a call on channel 67, new boat is the Silverking.

Hope this helps you guys at other ports. We decided to head to deep water after hearing some good reports. Our speed & temp. went down as soon as we set lines at 7 am. Took us two hours to dial in. We finally increased our ground speed to 3.0 - 3.2 and finished our 15 fish limit by 2 pm. We lost another 10 -15 fish as they flipped and jumped clear of the water. Set our stuff from 45 - 65 down. Kings, Coho, Steelies, and Skamania. Best day this year! We have been fishing 80 - 100 since June and picking up 3 - 5 fish a day. Full copper, full core, wire dipsy, and riggers all firing. Best bite was when we added small spoons and add lines on our riggers. Go figure. Eventually switched to all small spoons and fish continued biting. Had three fish hit as we cleared our rods with our limit. I think we could have caught fish until dark. Hope this helps.

Nice Job Jim. I have been fishing 150 to 200 for the last month and fishing has been spotty, What water depth did u find the fish? I am going out "Sunday morning and have a full load of family and friends, would like to get some starting info. Pattern and speed sound about right, but the water depth is critical. Were u north of south? My boat is a 31 Foot Chris Commander Sport Fisher, will stand by on Channel 67.

Thanks For the Report

Thanks for a great report, good information and sounds like a great day on the pond.

Its usually air bubbles, it can also occur when u r in close proximity to another boat that has their gain turned way up. Check and see if the stacks occurred when u were speeding up or going with the waves and get a big push.

These fish you speak of....what species might they be?

We had 1 steelhead and 5 coho up to about 6 lbs. A couple of other boats had some nice Kings too. A lot of bait and water temp was about 48 degrees 50 ft down.

Fish are there, Morning program 180 FOW, 40 to 80 down, riggers and dipseys out 100 and 120, Blue Dolphin was the ticket ended our day 6 for 12, the caveat is the Sea Fleas are really bad. Free Sliders took most of the hit North troll and speed 2.8 to 3.0.

That is the reason for my question unfortunately- I have a Lowrance HDS7 and anything past 1/4 throttle and the transducer picks up to much interference and the screen is unreadable. I have adjusted the transducer as much as I can with the same results. The other problem is I do not have a probe so I am fishing blind as well. Obviously I have surface temp on the graph. So many issues...

The surface temp will show break lines, but are useless if there is cloud cover. I check them every day and you can follow trends there. There is at this time of year usually a thermocline set up in the lower lake and it is easy to see on the graph, usually a sharp change in temp. I have Fishawk X4 and look for 42 to 45 degree water at depth. Watch your surface temp as you travel and look for surface breaks for Steelhead on the top, U will usually see a lot of debris on a line and try the edges of the debris.

could ya squeak out a little more info?

Right on Matt we don't brag here we help each other catch the silver fishies.

Good job Dave, nice report.

The more baits you have in the water the more water you cover the better the results, We run 4 riggers with free sliders on all 4, up to 4 dipsy divers, and up to 6 long lines depending on how many we have on board. Our boat is a big one and we can fish up to 24 lines if we have 8 on board. However the best spread includes short lead cores 5 and 6 color, 300' of 45# copper along with the close to the boat presentations. I really like this set up, it gets 16 lines out on 12 rods and covers the entire water column. If the lake sets up u need to concentrate on the temp break and get some stuff on the bottom. As for meat rigs, I resisted until last season, now I am a true believer. After the first of May I always have up to 4 of them out on riggers and dipsy's.

We run one brand only to keep things in line(stinger spoons), or keep a catalog of the major brands to see what other people are using.

There u have it. I run several brands of spoons but have catalogs of their color and description. Recently got some BLL spoons and am lovin them. Tequila Sunrise has been really hot.

See ya Sunday Larry good luck Saturday.