The Trollers Bible is a book that I purchased several years ago and used with great success on Blue Grass Pit in Warrick County, IN at the Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area. I got the good at Gander Mountain or I sent off for it and bought it over the internet. I also tried the planer boards that are used to take the baits out to the side of your boat so that the boat doesn't have to pass over the shallow water where the crank bait are running. I quit doing this at Bluegrass Pit got too crowded for me to drive my boat along the break lines (structural drop offs) without running into some other boat. Now if the lake is not crowded and it's a hot summer day around Noon this technique works very well.

I tried to see if Russ ever used or knew about tying a trailer jig to the back hook of a bandit 300 mistake crank bait and use that to catch fish but Russ seem uninterested in this method. But I found that it will catch fish when nothing else will in the hot summer months. What I discovered in using the Precision Trolling bible is that I was not allow enough line out to get the baits down to right over the thermocline. My Humminbird 898C SI unit was no lying to me when it showed lots of fish suspended down around 20 to 25 ft deep. So when I let out more line (10# Stern Mono for the main line) the cranks went down deeper. Make sure that the crank bait is tuned to run straight. That's why I like the Bandits as they are tuned right out of the box. I've also use the old balsa wood Bomber baits (coachdog waterdog) in white back ground with brown spots on it. These will catch crappie and bass. If you wonder where the fish went during the dog days of summer this will show you where they are and hot to get them to bite. They are reaction bites by neutral fish that are suspended up off the bottom but still deep below the surface and over the DEEPEST parts of the lake. Look for areas that drop from 20FT down to 40Ft and then 60 ft which is about as deep as Bluegrass Pit gets. I discovered this by accident. I was going to fish the points and shore line drops on the South end and East side of the pit. But in order get 200 ft. of line out back behind the boat it took a while. So I figured I'd go out over the deep water, deploy the line/bait and then swing around towards the shoreline breaks or drops and troll them. But before I could get the line all the way out just after leaving the ramp area I had a bass on the crank bait and it was up on the surface dragging the fish behind the boat. I had to reel the fish in and put it back in the water. Short Bass as the limit at Bluegrass is 18" long. So all short bass get returned to the water IMMEDIATELY after I catch them. This is critical especially in the hot summer months when the surface water are so hot that they don't hold as much dissolved oxygen as the subsurface waters. Waters in the deeper areas around 15 to 25 ft. is much cooler and may hold more Dissolved Oxygen. I' can't test this theory until I get my YSI Dissolved Oxygen meter fixed and that will cost at least $300 for a news probe with a longer cable on it for my unit. This is a research grade unit that I use.

Now the key to this method is the use about 18" of a 6 lb. Stren mono to tie on a 1/16 oz. lead head jig with a soft plastic bait on the jig head. I use the Squirmin Squirts in White Lightning 1.5" long baits from Bass Pro Shops. Add a crappie nibble to the bait's hook too. Now tie a stainless steel swivel to one end of the line and the bait to the other end. I use the palmar knot for this. Attack the swivel to the back split ring that holds the rear treble hook on the crank bait body. Now your ready to troll this combination out the back of the boat.

Now I'm just really getting started at this. So I only use one pole most of the time. I have my boat setup for two poles as I have two rod holders. I use a ski mirror on my console so I can drive the boat and watch the pole on my starboard Side at the same time. If I'm fishing by myself in the hot summer months I'll put an umbrella up over my seat to keep the sun off me a bit. It also helps me see the sonar screen better in the shadow of the umbrella.

Like Russ said in the lecture last Monday Night the water temperature should be in the 80's or above at the surface. The water temperature ten feet down is around 70 deg. or ten degrees cooler. And down around 25 ft. it's much cooler water than at the surface. This is why the fish are there in the middle of the day. They may be in a neutral mood. Maybe they are sleeping. I don't scuba dive anymore as my equipment sat in the hot attic in my house for years and then dry rotted the straps for my scuba mask and other things. Beside my health won't allow me to scuba dive by myself and even when I was young I never went diving by myself. Always have a dive partner with you in case you get into trouble. I saved a friend once when he ran out of air at 80 ft below the surface and I stopped him from accelerating up to the surface when he panicked big time. I grabbed his foot and pulled him back down to me and offered him my regulator and then we buddy breathed our way back up to the surface slowly so as not the get the bends. He would have died if I had not done that. He forgot to check his tank pressure before the dive. Just as he forget to take his sea sick pills which caused him to puke when we got back to the boat. I ended up diving with some stranger who wanted to spear fish. The thing with this guy is that he didn't bring the fish back up after he got them on his tether line. He cause blood and even worst (thrashing fish movements in the water) and this attracted sharks in about 10 minutes or less. We saw them circling us and I decided it was time for Him and I to get out of the water and go dive some where else. He didn't like that and went and speared another fish. Now he had to live fish on his tether line. The spear went right though the fish and out the other side so the fish had the line that attaches the spear to the spear gun going though it's side. The fish could still thrash around on the long loose tether line. After I got out of the water the dive captain had to bring all 20 of the divers out of the water because of the stupidity of my dive partner. The captain told him before we went into the water that if he speared a fish he was to bring it up to the boat right away. So my second partner ruined the dive for everyone. You learn a lot about fish by observing them under the water.

I wish I had one of those under water TV cameras to deploy at times. But the water has to have good visibility for those to be really useful. Our dive was off the coast of Panama Florida and the water visibility was only about 40 ft. I was used to diving in the Florida Keys or in rock quarries at home that have great water visibility such as 200 ft.

Anyway sorry for the distractions. Try the Precision trolling this summer and see if you don't some fish. Or stay home in the AC and watch summer TV programs. The decision is yours.

PS: When I was very young (8 years old) I started going down to KY lake with my father. We would rent a boat and bass fish on the main lake and the bays or creek channels. We fished some of the islands out on the lake on the West Side of the lake just North of Cypress Bay. We use two oars back in those days and they were much quieter than today's trolling motors. So we often would use the gas motor to go up above a fishing spot and then let the wind push us back over the fishing area quietly. This worked great unless you got hung up on a stump and have to row into the wind or use the motor to go try and retrieve the crank baits. But one day we were motoring from the head of one island to another fishing spot not too far away. So I allowed my crank bait to be dragged behind the boat. Lo and behold I caught fish doing that. In just a short distance I'd have a sauger or a crappie hit the crank bait and I'd reel in a nice big fat crappie. Now this was in the early 1960. I had rediscovered what the Herters Guide Book had been writing about all by myself. I've also caught large mouth bass on KY lake that were in the 4lb. to 6lb. range by dragging Buck Perry's Spoon Bills behind the boat with lead core line and a ocean type fishing reel. That was fun. Have you read Buck Perry's book on Spoonbilling?