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| ryan bass pro in their salt water trolling section has 80lbs mono like 1000 ft for $70, ill prolly buy some anyways soon |
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Posts: 3240
Location: Racine, Wi | See your PM SVT. Also, for line, I don't think you have to go with 80# mono. I would go with either 80# braid, or go with braid on 2 rods and mono (say 30-50#) on 2 rods and go from there. For starters though, you would be okay with all rods having the braid on them. Then as you get more into trolling and are looking for specific presentations, pick up some rods with mono...... then you're sucked in. Next thing you know, you have 20 different trolling rods for different presentations. lol It's a vicious cycle. |
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| For sure, 40# Berkley Big Game is a real tough mono and the stretch can be your friend in lots of cases. Nobody ever talks about Dacron but it's a great middle of the road between superbraid and mono, it has a fair bit of give. 63# Cortland Musky Master is an excellent line for shortline trolling or letting baits further away/out and keeping them high on longer leads. It's very thick with way more stretrch than braid and way less than mono. |
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| Mike Baratta is one of the best trollers I've ever known. Hit him up for some info.
www.muskytrollingsecrets.com
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Posts: 140
| Donnie is way too kind and I still need to kidnap him and his boys to spoil them sometime this fall.
I agree with Tuffy, stick with 1-2 setups and learn how to use them. I usually use 80-100# braid and keep the baits as close to the boat as possible while achieving the desired depth of lure presentation. You have much greater control over your baits location and can follow contours like rocky fingers or renegade weed clumps much better. You don't need that heavy of a pound test for break strength. It's more for abrasion resistance and not getting imbedded into the spool on a nasty snag or decent fish. I've found that in the majority of cases the fish aren't boat shy and at times propwash trolling is the ticket. Using flurocarbon leaders has helped my catches.
Don't be afraid to run a small glider or Super Shad Rap 5 Ft. behind a board up on weed flats. The past couple of Falls rather than just running flatlines off the back and following behind the boat path, I had a surprising number of fish hit a bait run off a board on the open water side of the boat. I run that bait 8-10 feet down.
Lots of good stuff in this thread.
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| Mike, have you tried much with surface baits in the way you described with the boards...Canadian Side of the boat, 5 feet or so behind the clip? I think this could be a real winner, You could run a board+topwater on a short leash along anything from a distance with next to no chance of hanging up. Baits like the Krook could be dynamite here too, I'd think. In the spring, I have caught rainbows to twelve or thirteen pounds literally plowing boards into shoreline sand, skipping them off ice floes, hitting exposed shoals with J-11's back about 48" . The bottom edges of my walleye boards look just like a crankbait lip, all hacked and scuffed from hitting stuff. A surface bait worked like this would be really interesting I think. You'd need very little water to run the combo in. Muskie would probably ignore the bait and hammer the board ha ha. I know striper guys in real clear water will run live herring right up into shoreline deadfalls, wing dams etc. They paint the bottom of the board flat black to hide it better, I guess. You're right, this thread just won't die and is getting pretty awesome. |
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Posts: 140
| I have run prop style topwater off of boards with some success. Some, not alot. I usually catch floating weeds quite readily and get frustrated quickly. So then I prefer to cast after my dad is done peppering the bottom of my boat with poorly discarded sunflower seed shells.
I do find that I get maybe 1 out of every 10 or so hits on the board itself. I know guys who put big trebles off the back of the boards to catch floating weeds actually hook and land a few fish after they hit the board. I know Herbie had a few monsters attack his boards over the years. Ethical, hmmmm.
Like you said about spring cohos and trout, I'd run a J-11 or Storm Thinfin back 5 feet or so from a Big Jon Little Otter board and weave that sucker in and out or rocky breakwall and icebergs. It was reall alot of fun to scale down your tackle and fight those fish on bass gear. |
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| If I am trolling along a weed edge and using a board, I'd recommend running something more snaggless like a spinner bait.
It becomes a pain in the neck having to reset the boards because of weeds, the spinner bait runs pretty clean. |
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| Hoop,
Spinnerbaits on boards are tough to hook fish. Boards with baits behind them seem to need multiple treble hooks. If you were to be trolling at a high rate of speed, and keep the board from popping off, and staying attached to the line, then you have a much better chance of hooking the fish. Regardless, nothing is absolute in muskie fishing, except that "Nothing is absolute in muskie fishing!!"
Trolling weed edges is tough if the weeds are tight to the surface, and you're using a board. We speed troll spinnerbaits with 4-7 feet of line out at 4.5-7 mile per hour, and it is like guerilla warfare...pretty awesome though!!!
Donnie  |
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Posts: 10
| You should definitely check out a new DVD video that will soon be released, called "Muskies Live!" It is all about this new Video Trolling method, that is basically sight fishing, while trolling. You use an Aqua-Vu underwater camera to watch muskies follow and strike trolled lures. Unbelievable footage. Saw it playing at the Blaine Minnesota Expo today, and it absolutely blew my mind.
Binkelman |
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