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Posts: 731
| With the trend today of high speed, with good reason, I sometimes read that guys will slow roll a bucktail. I'll also add helicoptering a spinnerbait to this discussion. Well, the basic question is when, where , why and how would you decide to slow roll? Cold fronts, dirty water, night fishing,high pressure,weed pockets for helicoptering a spinnerbait? Kdawg |
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Posts: 304
| All of the above 4 sure.
I'm talking spinnerbait not bucktails.Always worth a try and often successful on bigger fish.
Edited by dickP 3/18/2023 7:34 AM
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Posts: 480
Location: NW WI | On dense shallow weedy areas/lakes/flowages where your basic options are topwater,burning bucktails, or selectively picking areas to throw ultra shallow jerks/twitches-ill start with topwater or bucktail, give it maybe an hour than switch to a spinnerbait with single hooks and reel slow enough to try keep the bait low enough it's regularly banging weeds but not so low your constantly fouling. |
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Posts: 1179
| When the fish (Muskies) bury themselves in the weeds it's time for the DickP Grinding action. But also during a front throw that Spinnerbait out and count it down and reel it off the bottom in bare sand. I know of guys catching fish yo yo action too but I never think to do this. |
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Posts: 20179
Location: oswego, il | I think you have covered the reasons for slow rolling for sure. That's certainly one area I don't take advantage of. I go to a different lure type when slowing down. Sometimes I wonder which can be a better presentation in certain situations. |
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Posts: 386
| To me, it's so weird that others have success with slow baits. Last October, was fishing when water Temps were in the low 40s, continuing to fall. Was fishing slow for hours with nothing to show for it. I had just tied up a bucktail earlier in the week and wanted to test it out. Was going through the motions just to test how it worked at different speeds - burned it in. You guessed it, decent (low 40s) fish comes just scorching in after it. Went around the 8 about 3 times. And then she hung around the boat for a few more casts. Reset boat position to make another pass and switched back to a phantom, bit this time worked it fast and erratic, she emerges from the weeds and tries to whack the thing, but completely whiffs! While I never did catch one on that day, I continued to work faster and had 2 more fish follow on spots I had already worked slow.
Another fall a few years back, cold water again. Roughly in that 40 range I got a dawg-ball. I managed to get it on the surface so I could reel it in super fast. The hooks freed themselves just a.few feet from the boat. I went into a figure 8, just out of habit. And sure enough, here comes a looker, though this one was way lower and not as fired up as my first example. Again though, switched to more summer time presentations with longer rips and shorter pauses - continued to see more.action.
Now my question is, could it be I'm just better at working baits faster and my slow game just sucks? |
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Location: Contrarian Island | Flypiker I agree 100%, cold water temps don't mean that muskies can't or won't swim very fast to chase a bait. I have wondered why most guys think that? Guys troll at 3mph in the late fall at night, well our baits casted even burned are not going 3mph, food for thought.... Also, look at how muskies will take off chasing a sucker swimming very fast away from it, our baits are no different... I work baits quite fast in the fall and do pretty well. that being said, I also do quite a bit of slow rolling. As someone who loves to crank blades mach 1, I also enjoy slow rolling. Even in very warm water temps there are times slow rolling will outproduce burning. If fish are active, burning is the way to go. If fish are neutral I have had many 5+ fish days when slow rolling got them to go.
Edited by BNelson 3/20/2023 10:24 AM
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Posts: 1260
Location: Stevens Point, Wi. | Sometimes slow rolling a spinnerbait is the only way to keep the bait in the fishes strike zone in deeper water. |
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Posts: 120
Location: Twin Cities Metro | BNelson - 3/20/2023 4:22 AM
Guys troll at 3mph in the late fall at night, well our baits casted even burned are not going 3mph, food for thought....
Odd misconception here. People burning in bucktails with high speed reels can get their baits moving over 8mph, depending on their cadence.
The most typical range of speeds that people reel are in the range of about 2.0mph to about 5.0mph. If you crank really slow, of course, you can go slower.
I find it interesting that few people mention that if you reel with the same cadence and your spool fills from half full to full during your retrieve, that your line pick up will double. In other words, just by reeling in normally, your bait speeds up as it approaches the boat. And it is not by a small amount. |
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Location: Contrarian Island | I believe you are wrong on the speed reached by burning, ie one revolution of a tranx hg is lets say 1 second and 40 or so inches per crank.. 4 feet per second in mph is 2.7 mph... so theres that...
Edited by BNelson 3/20/2023 2:43 PM
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Posts: 120
Location: Twin Cities Metro | Your calculation is fine except for the cadence. When I am reeling fast, I get between 3 and 3.5 cranks per second. 1 revolution of the handle per second is pretty slow reeling. Typical cadence (NOT burning) for people I fish with is right around 2 cranks per second.
Edited by RobertK 3/20/2023 2:55 PM
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Location: Contrarian Island | 3.5 cranks of a tranx hg in 1 second? Im not buying it but I will test it out this spring by putting the boat at 3mph bombing a cast and see if I can bring in line.... |
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Posts: 120
Location: Twin Cities Metro | BNelson - 3/20/2023 8:56 AM
3.5 cranks of a tranx hg in 1 second? Im not buying it but I will test it out this spring by putting the boat at 3mph bombing a cast and see if I can bring in line....
No real need to wait for spring to determine your typical cadence. Just have someone put a stopwatch on you while you crank on your reel at what you feel is your typical cadence for 30 revolutions. 3.5 rev/second is a helluva cadence, I agree, but that is for burning! 
Just one other thing to think about: if a typical burning speed were 4ft/s, that means it would take 4 full seconds to move the bait the length of a 16 ft boat. Count out “4 Mississippi” (starting from 0!) and see if that seems right for someone burning a bait as fast as they can to cover 1 small boat-length.
Cheers! |
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Location: Contrarian Island | went outside made an avg long cast in the road and reeled it in, mind you no drag on the lure bouncing on pavement took about 14 seconds to get in, say it was 90 feet, that is about 4mph, you had said earlier we can hit 8mph, no friggin way that is happening with a big bucktail... I think avg 'burning', is, as I said 3mph, point is, guys troll at 2.5 on up, they are moving their baits faster than we typically are bringing them in casting.... |
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Posts: 120
Location: Twin Cities Metro | Ok, I don't necessarily wanna derail this too much, but let's do a bit of analysis of what you just did.
When you cast out, 90 feet of line came off your spool. How much did the spool diameter change by because of that? Half of where it was when all of the line was on the spool? More than half? In any case, it's less. That means for the same reeling cadence, your bait is traveling at a slower speed at the beginning of your retrieve compared to at the end (eg. if it is half of your full spool diameter, then your line pick-up length is also halved).
So if you take that distance of 90 feet and divide by the time to bring it in, you are calculating the AVERAGE speed over that whole retrieve. Not your maximum speed. Maximum speed happens at the end of the retrieve when your spool is full. Let's assume that as you began your retrieve, your spool was half the diameter of what it was when your retrieve was ending. This means the speed you started with was about 2.66 mph and the speed you finished with was 5.33mph, for an average of 4mph. So even with your rough estimate of your cast distance and the estimate of your retrieve time (not sure if you really got a stopwatch on it, or if you just counted it in...did you start from 0?), the maximum speed coming in is over 5mph, which is pretty significantly bigger than 3mph.
And, again, just to point out a bit about perception here... when I am retrieving quickly, I am back at the boat in about 10 seconds. So some of this difference might be in perception of what is fast reeling. I just remember watching Hamernick on video burning in bucktails back in the day and getting a stop watch on it to see what his cadence was. I had him at around 4 rev/s, but he is a cranking monster.
Cheers!
Edited by RobertK 3/20/2023 4:08 PM
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Location: Contrarian Island | yes, i had a stopwatch. I think the best real world test of speed is just like I described. put on a double 9, stand on the front deck have your buddy go 3mph and see if you can bring it in faster than the boat.. pretty easy. I still doubt they hit 5mph. |
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Posts: 408
Location: MN | Another perspective - have you tried trolling blades? A lot of them will blow out at 5 mph without weight added.
Some data points from the same bucktail: double 12, 5.2 oz.
- long cast, fast retrieve 1-4' down (prob not "burning" because 12s)
- long cast, medium retrieve gets 4-6' down
- long cast, slow retrieve 8-12' down. 12' achieved with blades barely spinning
- trolling, 40-50' line out + 4 oz lead added, 2.5 mph gives ~10' down
- trolling, 40-50' line out + 4 oz lead added, 3-3.5 mph gives 6-8' down
- trolling, 40-50' line out + 8 oz lead, 3-3.5 mph gives ~10' down
My feel is super slow rolling is 1.5-2 mph, a slow to moderate retrieve is 2.5-3 mph, a fast retrieve is 3.5-4 mph, and burning is somewhere up around 4.5-5. 8 mph seems implausible on a cast, especially for bigger blades. A double 10 pulls really hard trolling at 5 mph.
As far as the original question, it is worth a shot almost any time, especially if you are fishing deeper. |
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Posts: 529
| RobertK, Sorry man but there is no way you can burn a bucktail/spinner at 8 mph by reeling it in. This topic has been covered years ago.
Aside from the human limitations, I don't think you can find a spinner that would stay underwater at 8 mph in a casting situation. Not sure you can call it burning a bait if its skipping on top of the water. |
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Posts: 1179
| Some good data above to think about, back in the 90's here in Colorado Quincy Res. kicked out a lot of large 35-40 pound Tigers and we used to say speed kills. At the time I fished with a 700C Ambassduer 24" per crank. I wish I had today's reels back then. Dad and I caught about the same amount of fish and he was the master of the slow retrieve, his average size blow me out of the water. |
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Posts: 2226
Location: SE, WI. | This custom 8 Oz. head mounted on .063 wire, total weight 9.5 ounce would be an interesting Spinner Bait to try to get near the Surface on a Cast....Hmm, Just might be a spinner out there to Keep under the Surface @ 8mph. JD
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