SUPERTRAMP

For over 35 years I have been using the Uni-Knot, in the North American Fisherman knot test it tested stronger than any other simple knot they tested. There are some doubled up knots that were slightly stronger, but this one is simple and I have never had a knot fail. I

I guess to each his own on the leader material, I tried 30#Seaguar on my coppers and leadcores, and it was a disaster, went back to 25# Big game for leaders and no problem. I do however use 40# PLine floro carbon leader material for flies..

20# Ande for riggers until the sea fleas hit us. The we have been using cortlandt flea flicker. That is no longer made so I got a bulk 2500 yard of blood run seaflea. If you continue using regular mono it can cause a lot of issues when the fleas get on it. We also run power pro divers in the early months March April and early may then switch to wire for the dipsy's . I know people using the red line and they catch fish. be sure to use good quality mono for leader material on your copper and Leadcore, the Fluoro Carbon is really expensive for leader material. The regular fluoro Carbon doesn't cut it as leader. Way too brittle.

Riggers dipsys and 300 copper's all get meat at times, just remember to slow down. U can't troll 3 mph with those rigs. Lately we have had a really good Silver Horde bite in St Joe. We have taken Kings, Lakers and Steelhead on Green and blue Splatterback and Wonderbread. 10 color and 4 color both and off deep riggers.

I would rather see a boat well lit than those without lights I have had several close calls over the years without lights. I have been behind boats with a lot of lights on and can avoid looking at them or go around them but hard to avoid something you can't see.

Boating regulations state that all power craft must have starboard green markers and port red markers on the bow, a white lite to the stern to identify direction. These must be displayed from sundown until sun up and are a true safety issue. Having a large array on while underway is as big a danger as no lites. I have red lighting strips on the gunwales inside the boat to allow me to work and not be lite blinded. Sounds like some fishermen need to read the coast guard regs.

Good point here. We actually postponed a trip last week to wait for the ships store to open so we could replace a bulb on our starboard forward lite. I actually have 2 lites for my stern, one on transom, and my mooring lite is either or.. Being visible is a must in the early and late hours at the pier heads. BTW it is a large fine if you are ticketed for improper running lites.

Captain Craig, In the southern lake, fishing has slowed a bit for the last few weeks, but we are still getting between 5 and 10 fish per trip. Today was a short day due to the Captains alarm clock not going off becasuse of a power issue Saturday nite. However we managed to boat 5, 2 steelhead 2 Kings and a nice Laker. In St. Joe we are fishing in shallower than normal and taking advantage of the off shore winds bringing the cold water in. So Fishing not as good as it used to be? Not too sure about that, I have been fishing the Lake since the early 1970's and we certainly don't have the numbers we had prior to the Zebra mussel becoming an issue but we still have a lot of fish.

Mike, we haven't hand too many issues with fleas, yet to need to pick them off while reeling in a fish at least.

On my board rods I actually have 30lb mono filling up most of the reel, then a 250ft section of Power Pro Depth Hunter (metered braid, each color is 25ft with 5ft tick marks throughout), and then a 50ft 20lb mono leader. I use the metered braid because I'm running mooching reels on everything but my dipsies so I don't have counters. This allows me to know exactly how much line I've let out so I know exactly where my baits/torpedos are off our boards....or at least close enough to catch fish . I stick the torpedo on the braid about a foot up from the junction knot with the leader. We also run Yellow Birds (that I've painted orange, Ken Neidlinger style) set to trip with an OR16 clip on the back so they hang in place rather than sliding down the line. Oh and did I mention we use $25 6'6" med spinning rods from Meijer? You get a great fight out of the fish with this setup

Kenny Neidlinger would be proud of you. That was his method for years. U know the rigs I run, and its all about having fun. I will say that 60 years ago we ran leadcore for trout fishing in Washington and Oregon Inland lakes worked just like it does on Lake Michigan. I do prefer Leadcore to copper its a lot less work and a lot easier to handle. I have started putting Dive bombs on my leadcore to get it deeper. Lately though just 4 colors and 6 colors of leadcore have been the ticket for Steelhead and Kings.

Yes on our planer boards, but we don't run lead core or copper, just not a fan of the fight with the weighted line. So on our planer boards this year we've exclusively run dive bombs and torpedo weights to get our baits where they need to be. With the charts that come with the torpedo weights you can really dial in how deep they're running based off your speed and how much line you let out. We use the 1oz dive bomb when the fish are in the top 10ft of the water column because the lightest torpedo weight is 2oz and it sinks too fast to target that range very well, unless you don't want your baits running very far behind your boards. Depending on speed, the 2oz torpedo has been working well to target the 10-40ft range, and the 4oz the 40-60ft range. Haven't needed to go heavier or deeper than that this year with the cold water.

Old school Kevin. How are u doing with the sea fleas? When we run clean mono the Fleas hang on the line.

The best knot I have found is a figure 8, pass the loop twice through on an over hand knot pull tight it forms a figure 8 and is slip proof.

Check out drspoons.com, they have some really great and innovative colors and the UV stuff is really killer. My buddy Dave owns the company and he fishes out of St. Joe. U won't be disappointed with his stuff. Here is a link. http://www.drspoons.com/Store.asp

FYI

One minute of Latitude or Longitude is approximately one mile for purposes of fish finding.

If you wanted to be more precise on the distance it gets a lot more complicated. I'm a Land Surveyor / Engineer . . . .trust me you don't want to go there.

Thanks for that information, I had only assumed that 1 minute equaled 1 mile. Now I have solid confirmation. The good thing is that GPS is a lot m ore accurate than our old LoranC positions. My current GPS readings can get me to within 10 feet of my way point, close enough.

We fished St Joe as always Sunday, and the radio traffic from Holland, Muskegon and Port Sheldon was non stop. I am not sure why the traffic was audible in St Joe, but it was nice hearing guys finding some Kings. St Joe has been spotty, with 5 to 7 fish per trip and a lot of guys filling out with Lake Trout to get some fish in the box. We released our 2 lakers on Sunday and had 2 nice Steelhead and 2 Kings in the teens. Water temp was 68 on the surface, and 43 degrees down 65 feet. all of our hits came between 20 and 45 feed down, 4 color 6 color and walker deeper diver 124 on 2 out 90. All on spoons.

Any on have any Ideas on why radio traffic from that far north was audible in St. Joe. Radio wave propogation must have been off the chart..

?Fishing is spotty in StJoe, we fished Sunday from 6:30 til noon, 6 strikes. Boated 2 Steelhead and 2 kings, released 2 lakers. 80 to 120 FOW, and everything came fairly early, when the sun got up it died. Took me a while to get started but put away the meat rigs and went all spoons then we got bit. North and South trolls worked best there was a strong current. Temp at 65 Was 43 degrees, and at 50 it was 47. Speeds around 2.8 on the Fishawk at the ball and 2.3 on top. Stinger glow Christmas and Stinger bloody nose were the best.

Perch pack was straight out and south to the pump station. Don't know how they did.

Just checked the Cook Plant buoy, and its reading 66.8 o surface and 66.1 at the 8th thermistor, really kind of different! Is this accurate?

You might want to try a wide gap single hook instead of the treble, they usually give a better hook up. Just try to match hook weight. As for releases I still think that the #33 rubber band on a big jon band buster is the best way to hook fish.

Got to watch that program today, very nicely done Captain. Very well explained on technique and also on lake configuration at the rock.

Most will agree out here in the west that salmon often prefer meat, especially prior to their accent into the spawning streams and rivers. However there are exceptions to that (you know how fishing is!). Salmon take hardware often very well but most anglers agree that in saltwater (their main home and feeding grounds) a herring or anchovy is the "go-to" bait. Even out here where these types of baits have been the standard for over 50 years, many anglers have difficulty rigging a herring. Conditions such as current, trolling speed, hook placement, and terminal rigging, all must be understood and it is not too difficult once you see the set-up. Yes I am biased. I manufacture Sure Spin Herring Helmet that has made experts and the new angler highly effective at using bait fish, giving them a very effective way to "match the hatch." Typically bait trolled has a short life span as water pressure degrades the bait and then the action is lost making the bait ineffective. Sure Spin allows you to troll with downriggers, buck heavy current, or troll with weights, my LongLiner, or metal lines with confidence. Sure Spin has become very popular here from Alaska to California, even inland for trout, in 2 years. So for any fish that eats baitfish Sure Spin will be an excellent approach to trolling. Take a look at my fishing partner Dick Jacobs rigging the Sure Spin:

and visit my website: www.anglerinnovations.com Good fishing to you all!, Steve Lumsden, Boring Oregon (yes, that's Boring, Oregon, just 45 minutes from Mount Hood)

Steve:

I live in Michigan and have since the late 1960's, but I know Boring well, my mother taught school there from 1962 until the middle 1980's. Her name was Marjorie Stafford, she taught English at the 7th and 8th grade. She still lives in Milwaukie, at Willamette View Manor. In Michigan I have been fishing Salmon since the early 1970's, and we have been primarily a hardware fishery. We run meat but it is only for the late summer King fishery. We are just now getting into that time of the summer.

Pro's and cons on meat! I run it when nothing else is working. If I don't have to I prefer not to. I hate running Spin docs, Paddles, dodgers and attractors. It changes the presentation a lot. That said when we are forced to go with big attractors, we do use DW and Big Weenie meat rigs, I buy commercially brined and frozen herring strips, u can refreeze them if you don't use them up. Biggest draw back is they are smelly and expensive. An average meat rig cost is around 15 to 20 bucks, then there is the Attractor, Depending on Brand 12 to 15 bucks. I am personally not a fan of running big flashers on copper rigs, its hard enough bringing in a 300 or 450 copper with a spoon on it. As of today I have not run any meat rigs this season. We average around 10 fish a trip and spoons have done 95% of our work.

STRAMP do you ever have slider run all the way to ball and get with main line?

That has never been a problem, The slider goes to the apex of the bow in the line, and it is impossible for it to go against the current and get down to the ball the bow of the line prevents that problem. Sliders have been really good for years. If you are afraid of that problem go to fixed sliders but they are usually set closer to the ball than I like. Most guys fix them at 10' above the ball, and that doesn't seem to work as well as the free slider.

STramp: How many rods do you usually run

We run anywhere from 12 to 15 rods. 4 downriggers, up to 8 boards and up to 4 dispy setups. Our normal set up is a 12 rod set up with 4 riggers, 2 wire dipsy set ups and 6 boards. I plan on adding a chute rigger soon to up my set up to 16 rods max. I so run free sliders on all of my riggers.

Not bad at all, got a few on the wire dipsy lines but not any more than an inch or so .The rest of the lines were clean. I am going to order some of the Bloodrun sea flea, I still have a spool of Flea Flick'r but don't like it. I think it costs me strikes.

U got it . That is good information! USE IT.

Got a late start, left the slip around 7AM and ran out to 90 and started setting lines, my buddy told me there were trout on the bottom there. I decided to try to avoid them. We got to 130 and first fish came on 4 color nice coho, on a stinger glow Christmas. We played around and got out to 190 taking a fish here and there all the fish came on 4 color, 6color and 10 color with stingers. We ended the day with 2 Coho, 1 Steelhead and 2 lakers, and 1 laker released too small. Had no hits on dipsy's and only one on a rigger. Water is about 66 on the surface out in 170, and 43 down 36. Before we started I changed out reels because of all the Sea Flea talk and should have stayed with the regular mono.

Bloodrun tackle sells their flea flickr line, go on line to see and order there is a link in a previous post to get you there.