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a_kraker99

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Everything posted by a_kraker99

  1. I guess its easier to put up a fishing report on here when you limit rather than when you get skunked. I have noticed a lot of the time if we are trolling in close proximity to another boat, I don't usually see them reeling in fish. That being said, I do think our boat needs a good washing after all the mechanical work it has had lately. I am sure it reeks of gas and oil right now. Another thing I wondered about was lure scent. Do you all wash your lures every time you go out or put a cover scent on them? We just bought a bottle of THIS but I am not sure if it is helping or hurting. Also, if anyone has something for sale that can tell us ball temps and current speed send me a PM. Thanks!
  2. Thanks to both of you. We will try to wash the boat down. It hasn't been done in a while. Ben, I normally go on what reports are saying since we don't get out more than once a week most of the time. Are you the one on the radio with the Wonderbread J-plug? We were the ones that admitted to getting skunked. I'm sure you heard us complaining :-) How deep did you end up getting them?
  3. Getting a bit annoyed that I can't catch a fish anytime other than the morning. Last night we were doing the exact same thing as everyone else on the water. 60 FOW 40-50 feet down on the riggers with j-plugs spoons and flies. 3 mph SOG south troll. Didn't even have a release. Changed depths, direction, lures, speed. No luck. After expressing frustration on the radio we found a few more people in misery with us but they at least had 1 fish or a couple releases. We had nothing. We were marking bait balls and fish right at 40-50 feet where we had our lures all night, especially when the sun went down. According to the Holland buoy the water at that depth was still about 55 degrees. Is that too warm for them to be interested in eating? Originally I was going to go out to like 80 feet and fish 60-70 feet down, but after getting out there and seeing all the boats at 60 feet I though there must be something going on in that depth. Maybe I should have just stuck with my original plans? I am honestly starting to think that there is some scent or vibration coming from our boat that is scaring the fish.
  4. Thanks for posting on here Ed. I will definately make use of the wave height sensor once it is up and running since I get motion sickness! How deep is the water where you put the buoy? It looks like it says you already have one at around 62 feet right? Would 65 feet be right at the bottom then? Also, I am sure you already have divers you work with, but if you ever need an extra diver to do some work on the buoy or anything let me know. My brothers and I are all certified.
  5. The probes go down to around 60 feet. Isn't the thermocline right around 40 or 50 most of the time?
  6. Looks like they are still messing around with it. The water depths just all reset to 0. Anyone know what kind of temperature drop you typically see in a thermocline? 10 degrees, 20 degrees?
  7. This might have been posted already but it they launched a new weather buoy last night and its spitting out info now. http://bit.ly/hollandbuoy It is supposed to do wave height too but it must not be calibrated or something. The thing I thought was cool was the different temps at different water depths. Should be good for seeing a thermocline right?
  8. Does having other boats close by make for better fishing in your experience? Also, It seemed like the fish were biting a lot more just before sunrise. Is it the same way just after sunset or not as good? Do they typically always slow down during the day or are there times when the fishing is just as good during daytime?
  9. What is the first thing all of you do if you are not catching the fish? Change troll direction, change troll speed, change lure depths, change water depth, change lures, other? I always thought that if I was marking fish and bait fish, then I must be in the right spot. Yesterday our graph was not really marking much at all, but we were still getting them. Other days the graph is full with no bites. Where are the fish coming from if I am not marking them? Also, off the thread topic a little. How much does troll direction matter? Should we be trolling with, against or cross current most of the time? I know Salmon face into the current but how does that affect what direction you should troll?
  10. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we put a green j-plug on lead core about 20 minutes before we left and got a hit in about 10 minutes in. Didn't stay hooked unfortunately.
  11. Well I don't go out too early most of the time but today my brother and I got on the water by 5:30. Do Alewives normally jump all over the side of your boat in the channel at that time? Anyway, got lines down at around 5:45 and fished until 7:30 and went 8 for 13. Had one copper that wasn't hooking up and eventually lost the lure. We started just south of Holland at about 80 FOW on a SSW troll at 2.8mph SOG out to about 98 feet . Got 5 lines out and wasn't able to put the 6th line out until we had about 5 fish in the boat. The hottest lure was a white/glow paddle with a glow fly with a 20" leader on a rigger 60 foot down. We couldn't keep it in the water. The next hottest was a Magnum blue glow spoon with an eye and black ladder pattern in the middle (sorry, don't know the name of it). They were hitting everywhere early on but when the sun came up it seemed like we only got them closer to 100 feet of water. When we headed in the pier was completely lined with people fishing. Must have something to do with the alewives we saw there in the morning?
  12. Is the connection down? I havent been able to get on it in a while.
  13. Nice dave, sounds like you got a few right after I called you then. The fishing never really slowed down right up to when we headed back in at 12:00. Thanks for the tips this morning. Never realized how much the trolling direction mattered until today.
  14. Thanks to Dave Ash we were able to find some fish between 120 and 130 FOW between Holland and Port Sheldon. We fished from 9:30 - 12 and came back 3 for 5 all on full copper. The we had 2 releases on riggers 70 feet down that just didn't hook up. Like Dave we caught them all on a 330 troll around 2.5-2.6 mph GPS. Standard sized spoons and dark colors. The 2 we missed on the rigger was an orange spoon.
  15. I plan on going out of Holland 6/6 am as well. I haven't seen many reports since we went out on 6/3 am. That morning we were marking them at 110 feet +/-10ft. I think I am going to stick around that area or possibly a little deeper since surface temps look like they went up a little. Looks like it will be a nice day. I think spoons are still the best bet but someone else might say different. Not sure if they are hitting large or small spoons though.
  16. I am trying to figure out where the interference might be coming from on our Lowrance Elite5. I get more noise as the engine RPM's get higher. That leads me to believe the interference is coming from the outboard motor itself (Evinrude 135 hp 1973). I do have the transducer cable running along with the other cables to the back though. Has anyone had exeperience with that type of problem and what did you do to fix it?
  17. Thanks for the info, We were going around 2.8 mph according to the GPS in 170-180 FOW. We only put the riggers down to where we were marking fish in about a 30 foot spread. We were a little higher up than you. Do you normally fish just below where you mark them? Do they see the lures better underneath of them?
  18. Okay so do you get better detail with higher ping rates or lower? Why don you just run 100%?
  19. Okay, we are getting used to our new Elite-5 fish finder and I have a few questions about it. 1. What frequency is best? 83 or 200? I didn't see as much on the 200 frequency so I used 83. I can see the downrigger lines on 83 but not 200. I assume that is because of the cone width. 2. Which frequency can you see the thermocline on? 3. Leave surface clutter filter and noise filter off or on? 4. Is it okay to just turn the ping speed all the way up? Any reason not to do this?
  20. Thanks for all the responses. I have to admit that I have no idea what a slider is. Is that what you use to stack lines on a rigger? We have 4 riggers so we don't do that. We usually run 4 riggers, 2 dipsys and a lead and/or copper with planer boards. We trolled straight out West and then back in East. I wish we would have trolled North or South right at about 180 feet, not sure if that would have helped. ekbelt, we were marking them down there too but after reading all the reports we stayed up a bit higher. Guess we should have lowered them. Do you guys just try different depths where you are marking them until you get something or do your put your lines right where you are marking them?
  21. Went out tonight for the first time this year out of Holland. After an awesome close to the season last year we were pretty dissapoined. We were marking them like crazy in 170-180 FOW with lines down between 50 and 80 feet where we were marking fish. Also had a copper line out and a couple dispy's. We went until about 9:00PM before heading in with nothing but a release. Is night time fishing just not as good this time of year? Maybe it was the lure selection? What are people using? Spoons, Flies, j-plugs?
  22. Headed out this morning before the storm rolled through. We stayed out from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and went 7 for 8. Only had two people in the boat and had a triple almost immediatly after putting lines down. They were all in about 120-130 feet of water straight out from Holland. I wanna say most of them were around 70-80 feet down, but in reality they were everywhere. We got one on every pole with every setup we used. Lead core out 300, dipsy diver (not sure of the length since we got the fish while letting the line out), glowing spoon on riggers, j-plug, and a couple on flies. Now that was fun!
  23. How long do you typically go without a bite before you know you need to change something?
  24. Thanks for all the tips guys. Our typical setup is 4 downriggers 2 dipsys and a copper core. We try many different combinations of lures on the setups but it is usually mostly spoons with a couple of flies. As far as depth is concerned we are usually just listening to the radio and doing what they say. I would like to be able to figure out what depth to run by myself in case the radio is silent. Somewhere near the thermocline I assume? How do you figure out if you should be in 100ft of water or 200ft of water when both depths show a thermocline? As far as speed goes we are usually at 2.7mph using a GPS so it could be more or less depending on the current direction.
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