I am fairly new to trolling. I pm’d this question to one of the “known” members here but never got a response, so here it is. How to you judge what depth you are trolling? I have a setup with 8 poles up front and will be trolling 1/16 oz. kalin jigs, on two 12’s, two 10’s, two 8’s and two ultra light 5’5"s. Each pole has either a small baitcast or a small spin-cast reel. Now, all we ever did was cast the jigs out, place in the rod-holders, and troll around. We would judge the depth by letting the jigs hit bottom and then reeling them in at an “estimated” depth. I have never felt like we were doing this right. Am I doing something wrong? I have caught fish this way, but I just want to make sure. Oh, another thing, if the fish move up shallow and my rig is set, wouldn’t the lines basically be under the boat, so that I can troll say, 3’ deep in 5’ of water??? Or do you guys even troll that shallow? By the way, my trolling motor is only a 28# motor, but I havn’t changed because on the lowest setting, it trolls very slow. Is this motor big enough though to handle lake winds?
Sounds Like You Have A Decent Idea Of Your Own Thats Kinda What I Do In Away But Since I Usally Fish With My Wife Or Son I Like To Run Two 1/16 On One 6lb Line With The Fish Being A Little Deeper Right Now I Can Get Down Quicker And Give Them More Room In The Back Of The Boat But As Far As The Right Depth I Will Start Either Shallow And Keep Ajusting Deeper Or The Other Way Around Till I Hit The Right Depth If You Hit The Right Depth And Want To Mark It Take A Small Rubber Band And Wrap It Around The Spool On A Spincast And It Will Put You Back At The Same Depth But If The Wind Is Blowing Wich It Uasally Is It Is Hard Sometimes To Maintain The Same Speed. I Am Always Ajusting In Small Increments If Im Not Getting Hit And When I Find The Zone I Just Pay Attention And Can Usally Put It Back Approx Where It Was Practice Makes Perfect Or At Least Better Hope This Helps
Speed and weight is going to determine your depth…Plus how much line you have out…Plus line size…plus jig weight…The list goes on…I wish there was a sure fire theory on how deep you are trolling, but with all the variables involved it’s hard to pinpoint depth…Just find something that is working and try setting all your rods up that way…Trying to figure out all the variables and still not knowing how deep you are trolling takes all the fun out of fishing:confused:
Dereck a whole book can be wrote on this subject, my advice to novice trollers is to simply use small corks to control the depth of their jig or jigs, the only draw back to this is you can’t go to fast or they will swing up and sometimes this is not a bad thing if the fish are high in the water column. The straight jig way is based on years of experience,knowing your boat,height of rod tip to water,visual line angle above the water,speed,length of line out,weight on line and on and on. Very good trollers, experts if you will, have the ability to see everything thats going on when they are trolling without seeing the water. The people that have this ability,what I call water vision, can go catch fish ,anywhere ,anytime, under any conditions.
Listen to tony he is a pro like smitty and shinerunner, cya in about 48 hours
Does any one mark the line to help determine how much is out? (color sharpies) I’m just starting to long troll also. Any other advise from you guys?
I have heard of this but if you are using a spinning reel the rubber band idea that Trollwhacker suggested is the best.
[QUOTE Oh, another thing, if the fish move up shallow and my rig is set, wouldn’t the lines basically be under the boat, so that I can troll say, 3’ deep in 5’ of water??? Or do you guys even troll that shallow? QUOTE]
Gonna have to switch to lighter jig heads to fish that shallow and not be right at the boat…I’d recommend 48th oz tri heads from the crappie shop in Gray…light heads and big hooks…great combo in the spring!!!
derek, trolling is a art like the previous threads said but as far as depth there is really no limit. We use double jig rigs and have fished shallow enough that the top rig or jig was accually on top of the water or slightly out of the water which means we were fishing about a foot and a half. It is something that you really need to play around with a little. I am deffelently not a expert at it so take what I say with a grain of salt but have fished that shallow and caught fish.
The two things that I have done is troll with a heavier bullet weight and a split shot 2-3 feet up the line or rig it carolina style. Last Sat. we were using up to 3/8 oz. weights with the wind. It is easier to control depths with heavier weights because you don’t have all that line out. We usually fish 1 or 2 1/16 oz. jigs per line.
The second thing I learned to do is to set your rod in it’s holder, set the trolling motor on the speed your looking to troll at, then put your jigs in the water. I have 2’ marks on my rods from the spool on my reel and I will start at 5’ of line out of the reel and “guesstimate” the depth of my jig or jigs. Then let out another 5’ and “guesstimate” how deep they are running. From there you can “guessimate” how much line you need to run your jigs at the depth you want them. If you have jigs running at say 2’ with 10’ of line then in “theory” you will have them at or about 4’ with 20’ of line out. Once you find the right depths, you can just hand pull the same amout of line out using the 2’ marks on the rod after each hookup.
This is not an exact science but that’s they way I learned to help me get started with trolling.
As mentioned earlier there are way too many variables to to make it an exact science but it helped me.
Hope this helps. Good Luck and leave a few for seed.
Trolling at 2’ to 3’ when fish are shallow with 1/16 is not a problem. Length of line and the speed are key. 14 ’ to 18’ rods do help expand your coverage.
