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Any good techniques or ideas for trolling. I'm pretty new to it and it's hard for me to decide a lot of things Like, how deep to fish, close to the bank or out in the lake, speed, pretty much everything. I troll mostly for Walleye and occasionally striper.
Any help would be great.
I'm no expert, but through experience I have found that 2.6 to 3.1mph works for crankbaits and 1.2 to 1.8 for bottom bouncers for walleye. The most important thing to remember is something Dave Stewart taught me " Find the shad and the fish will be there".
If you want information on trolling, order Buck Perry's book: "SPOONPLUGGING A Guide to Lunker Catches". Don't be put off by the spoonplugging part, it is the most informative book you could ever read on fishing and how AND WHERE to catch fish, including a couple of chapters/sgements on TROLLING. The book talks about Bass but also points out that "a fish is a fish is a fish is a fish" and what they say about how to catch Bass also holds true for Walleye and all other gamefish in lakes. The site to order the book is:
[URL]http://www.buckperry.com/product_info.php?cPath=122&products_id=1232[/URL]
After you get on this site, you can also order other good stuff by clicking on the left side EDUCATIONJAL MATERIALS.
Good luck,
Grumpy
I have successfully trolled for Walleye and caught them on Eagle Lake up in Ontario Canada. We found some rock piles that held the walleye. Find some area where there is really deep water close to the shallow waters and that's where the fish may be at times.
We fished out of a LUND type aluminum boat with 20 hp mercury back in 1970. The trick was to go very slow while trolling with the gas motor. Up in Canada they troll the boat BACKWARDS. Use splash guards on the back of the boat if you have a low transom. We used a hand held tiller steering on the Merc so I sat at the back of the boat. We let the rods hang over the side of the boat and let out enough line to just tick the bottom every so often. Depends on the depth but the Eyes were normally on the bottom. Well that's where we caught ours. Maybe we missed some suspended walleyes. One never knows for sure.
We used live bait. minnows Not sure what species they were as that was a long time ago and back then I just called them minnows. :)
We used a single hook on a single blade spinner setup. These came with wire because the walleye's have teeth and so did the northern pike that we occasionally caught. Using wire prevented them from biting though the line. Not sure if the line we used was mono or braid. Can't remember when the industry started making mono line. Either on will work I guess.
I do remember that we did better when the spinner rig had a small red bead next to the single spinner blade.
Remember this was a Canadian Shield lake with a smooth Rockey bottom. Old igneous rocks that has once been covered with a glacier during the ice age. Most of the top soil had been moved down South into the USA by the moving glaciers during the the many ice ages. So the water does not have a lot of sediment like Southern Reservoirs. Water is very clear in these Oligotrophic type Canadian Shield lakes. You can easily see 30 ft down into the water at times. This lake was feed by a nice river. The river was about 100ft across in most places near the lake.
We fished this in June and or July. Summer time up there. Air temps were in the 70's most times. At times we had to wear long sleeve shirts so it got cooler some days. The angle of the sun is shallower the further you go North. We were near Kenora Ontario. Well that was the closet big town that had a airport.
Back trolling slows the boat down and that's the key to catching walleyes by trolling. That's what my experience showed me. There may be other ways that work. I am just telling what worked for us. We were told how to fish by the owner of the lodge and some of the Indian Guides. The Indians were excellent fisherman as they fished for a living and knew the lake well. This lake was huge and full of Islands. If you were not careful you could get lost up there. We had a paper map but you still had to pay attention to where you were and check the map from time to time to stay orientated. This was pre GPS days. LOL
Hope this helps you some. Remember this lake we fished didn't have a lot of wood or obstructions to get snagged on. Other than getting caught up in a rock crevice the bottom was pretty smooth and allowed us to drag the baits along the bottom without fouling up. Your lake may be different and this method may not work as well. Your lake may have more snags.
I have also caught lots of Sauger on KY lake by trolling crank baits. We often would just let a bomber out behind the boat and troll pretty fast and the sauger would hit the baits from time to time. I did this a few times when moving from one spot to the next at around 2 or 3 mph or so.
I can't remember how much line I let out. But if I hit bottom I would reel in the line to get the baits up off the bottom so that I would not get snagged. KY lake is full of stumps where we fished. The heads and ends of long Islands were a creek channel cut in between the Islands was best. There was usually a sharp drop off at the end of the island where the creek channel ran though the area.
We also caught sauger while casting crank baits for bass. Our baits normally ran about 10 ft deep and this was also on KY lake.
[quote=igodou;289062]Any good techniques or ideas for trolling. I'm pretty new to it and it's hard for me to decide a lot of things Like, how deep to fish, close to the bank or out in the lake, speed, pretty much everything. I troll mostly for Walleye and occasionally striper.
Any help would be great.[/quote]
I've trolled Ky Lake in the summer for sauger from our pontoon boat and a buddy's ski boat....the trick was to make sure we had bottom contact. The spots we trolled were on flats and drops right next to the secondary channel. Usually anywhere the water went from 20-25 ft up to 10 ft we caught fish - not just sauger but crappie and bass! Our crankbaits usually run in the 10 ft depth and we always trolled at the slowest speed possible. Typically from sunrise until 8 a.m. was the best.