Babies and leadcore

Hey all, been a while – This was a good winter to have crappy ice, because we welcomed our second son, Owen, into our family back in January, so lots of baby duty (doodies too). BUT, we did get both boys out briefly one warmer afternoon, so now both of them can grow up and say they’ve been ice fishing since they were 2 weeks old

Anyway, now that the weather is warming, I’m looking to get out and do some trolling as time permits. We live pretty close to Lake Wisconsin/WI River, but am also looking to get on some bigger water this year like Winnebago, Green Bay, and the like. I picked up two new Okuma combos on sale at Fleet Farm (7′ classic trolling/magda 20d) that I’m aiming to rig with leadcore – a spool of the suffix 832 10-color, some fluoro for leader, and nylon backing. I’m totally new to leadcore, so figured I’d ask here with a few questions;

-What are your preferred knots for backing-to-leadcore and leadcore-to-fluoro?
-I was planning to spool each reel with 5 colors, to be able to get down to about 25′ with each rod. Is that ideal, or is it better to have all 10 on one reel (these will be mostly for targeting walleye/sauger)
-when trolling, say I wanted to get down to 25′ with 5 colors out – does that reference the entire length of leadcore starting roughly at the surface of the water, or from reel, or rod tip?
-My other trolling rods I run boards on (church walleye boards) and previously have had a heck of a time getting them to grip onto the 20# braid I run – I like the idea of the boards “tripping” with strikes, so you can bring em in faster, but am considering switching to the locking side of the release so I don’t always have to reset the boards when the line slips out. Thoughts/suggestions?

Any other considerations to think about?

As always, thanks for sharing advice and this community in general. Have a good one,
Nate

Attachments:

1. 

   IMG_6311.jpg
   

2. 

   IMG_6336.jpg
   

Tried to attach these photos to the original post;

5 colors should be just fine; no reason to have a super big heavy reel that has 10 colors; especially for walleye. I just do 3 colors on a lot of my rods. A few other things:

1. Leadcore will give a different action to lures (especially spoons); always good to have it in your arsenal. Sometimes it will outfish the other rods, sometimes not.

2. I typically like running leadcore straight off the back (no boards), one long rod on each side of the boat, and then run deep diving cranks off mono on the boards.

3. Suffix Advanced leadcore I really would recommend.

4. Leadcore is very speed dependent; going faster or slower will greatly change your depth.

5. When you’re factoring in depth, typically add how much the lure would go down without leadcore. For example, I use suffix advanced leadcore that goes down 7 ft per color. For example, a #7 shadrap will troll about 10 ft down unassisted. If I have 2 colors of lead, my depth is approximately now 10 + 2(7) = 24ft. And yes, to answer your question, 2 colors of lead mean 2 colors totally submerged in the water.

6. You’re not supposed to attach lead directly to a planer board, although I have done so here and there without any line breaks or anything.

Phew, I was worried this was another swan related post, I’m glad its not about babies eating lead-core.

Phoyem,

How long and what kind of lead do you run with your leadcore?

I troll leadcore slightly different and I catch alot of walleyes trolling with it also. There are many ways to troll with leadcore and it boils down to what one gets used to and learns to use.
I started trolling leadcore years ago with regular 18 lb. dacron leadcore and still use either the Mason or the Sufix Performance that both sink in the neighborhood of 5 feet/color at 2 mph. I troll leadcore with 10.5 ft. rods and use leads of about 8 feet of 15 lb. Power Pro on each, attached to the leadcore by small barrel swivels that will almost eliminate line twist if a crank becomes fouled which happens. The barrel swivels are small enough to go through the rod eyelets if someone makes a mistake and reels in too much line when reeling line in. Many cranks like to spin when they get fouled and twisted leadcore is a PIA.
Anyway, I just estimate approximately how deep a crank will run trolled with eight feet of 15 lb. Power Pro and just subtract that depth from the total depth. As a rule of thumb, the depth that most cranks run when trolled behind 8 ft. of 15 lb. Power Pro is pretty similar so I generally just estimate 2 ft. for all of the cranks that I troll. The walleyes have never seemed to mind.

In your example, I’m curious how you get a 10 ft. diving depth for a #7 Shad Rap. I’m not Not saying you’re wrong, I’m just curious how you calculated it.

This is how I run leadcore and have been or years. If I want to get a #7 Shad Rap to 24 ft. I estimate that 8 ft. of 15 lb. Power Pro will get a #7 Shad Rap down about 2 feet. I subtract that from 24 ft. so I need my leadcore to get the Shad Rap down another 22 ft.. At 5 ft./color, I need 132 feet of leadcore to get down 22 ft. and adding that to the leader, I’m down to 24 ft..

Some guys will tell you that your leader has to be fluoro or you need the stretch of a mono leader or you will lose fish but the rod also plays an important part in the whole thing. I’ve honestly never had an issue catching fish of keeping fish on once they are caught.

The depth that cranks run may vary slightly from where you think they are running but you know for certain that if you are banging bottom, they are too deep. If that happens just reel up a couple of turns and if you start catching walleyes, make a mental note of the number on your line counter and keep repeating it. There are days when walleyes prefer coming up from several feet to eat a crank and like them higher.

My wife and I troll cranks using snapweights at the same time that we troll cranks with leadcore wherever more than one rod/angler is legal and usually point our LiveScope transducer back to watch one of the snapweight cranks to see how walleyes are reacting. One thing that I have learned from it is that is that walleyes will go up quite a ways to get a crank most of the time. Many times they will swim all the way up to inspect a snapweight. I’d much rather err on the shallow side than run cranks too deep.

It all takes experimentation.

I’ll run maybe a 20 ft of leader. 10lb power pro if I’m on the st croix. 12 or 14” flourocarbon Seagar on Lake Superior.

I know the package on a #7 shad rap says 5-11 ft. is the running depth which is quite the range. I’m guessing especially with the lower diameter power pro, the dive is on the higher range of the 5-11 ft so that’s how I came up with 10 ft. I don’t mind being 1-2 ft off the bottom on the st croix trolling lead, and some of my bigger fish seem to come even higher off the bottom.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a fish break my line trolling lead except for maybe a king or on Lake Michigan. I’ve done little barrel swivels which work well; otherwise I’ll tie a connecting knot.

Hey Nate, first off a big congratulations to the newest addition to the family!!! Nothing better in the world

As for the fishing side of things, you picked out some easy and lightweight set-ups that that will catch any walleye in the world, but still be “fun” to reel eyes in on.

Hank and Ben were catching leadcore walleyes when they were 2 years old and in diapers with the exact rigs, and I still use similar weight rigs today

When building a weighted line set-up, the biggest question is if you’re running boards (which sounds like you will). If that’s the case, you’ll be building “short cores” (anything less than a full 10 color).

I highly recommend 12lb Suffix 832 for walleyes. It packs onto small reels, leaves room for backing, and is adequate for walleyes. It’s what I use for eyes and I wouldn’t change a thing.

If you’re running boards with backer you need to build them to your desired depth. 12# 832 runs 6-ish’ per color depending on speed, leader length, and your bait’s dive curve.

You mentioned a desired depth of 25′. For that you’re going to want to build a pair of 4 color 12# 832’s. 5 colors will be too deep (I use 5 colors of that line to reach the 30′ range)

YOU NEVER WANT TO CLIP THE LEADCORE ITSELF TO A BOARD.

If you feel the 4 colors isn’t reaching quite to what you need, simply let more backer out. Even though your backer isn’t weighted, letting more line out let’s your leadcore fish deeper. Letting 30′ of backer out is very similar to letting another color out (30′ of LC). After that you’ll reach a point of diminishing returns, but more backer will still get you deeper (to a point).

Lightweight Power Pro is especially slippery in board releases. I’d recommend either going with a cheaper 4 strand braid in 30# (like Kast-King) or cheap China braid in the 30-40# range. Both have a rougher texture that the pads bite onto better. Church boards don’t have a rear release, but if you ever run pinch pads on the back of Offshore styles, always double wrap the rear to prevent slippage (and play with front release tensions as well).

Another option is to run mono backer. The downside is mono is thick (eats up reel capacity in a hurry), but it release pads grip it the best out of any line. For walleyes on boards, if you got a couple hundred feet on you’d be good, but the caveat is a near empty spool when starting to reel in a fish (super slow since the spool is thin).

To get around that (to keep a fuller spool and have more backer), is to run a 5-30′ segment of mono between you LC and braid backer (it’s how I run most of my stuff on the great lakes). This gives you a solid board attachment, but allows for substantially more backer and a fuller spool when you start to reel a fish in or clear lines (faster).

As for knots, you’ll hear about the Willis knot a lot when using leadcore. It works awesome with standard leadcore, but is a huge PITA with light 832. For my LC to leader I use a tiny SPRO #10 swivel with any 832. Then the same if you’re using a mono splice to the LC for board attachment, or you could do an Alberto. Then from your braid to splice you could do either again. If you’re skipping the mono splice, you could do a uni-uni to connect the 12lb LC to your braid backer.

With any/all of your knots you always strip the lead out before tying.

To finish the topic off, the easiest way is to build your reels backwards.

I’ll be brief, but feel free to ask for more details.

With two empty reels, build the first in reverse.

Reel on your leader. Reel on X colors. Reel on any mono splice (if you choose to), reel on braid until the spool is an 1/8th inch from full. Reel on 10′ of mono (to grab the spool)

Now, the important part. Get a pen and paper.

Zero the counter on the empty reel.

Count passes.

Be ready to keep track and write them both down.

Start reeling all of the line from the full reel onto the empty reel. The counter will be inaccurate (going in reverse and a thin spool), but that’s irrelevant.

Reel all of your backer on, counting the passes and noting the counter. Then burn on your colors and leader.

Now one reel is filled to perfection.

On the second reel, start with your 10′ of mono tied to backer. Count passes and match the counter with backer, then burn on the same amount of colors and leader.

Now you have two matching set-up’s, literally down to the foot.

Hope this all helps and isn’t sounding too complicated. Everyone has their own ways of doing things, but when running short-core’s it gets a little more detailed.

Here’s the video of the critters catching fish on 12lb 832 LC, 20 size Okumas, and medium-light Okuma rods.

Literally in diapers fighting over who gets to reel them in….back when a fish was a “SHISH, SHISH, SHISH!!”

Thanks so much for all the great information, guys!

Taking the kiddos fishing is just about my favorite thing to do, it’s especially a bonus if I can get on some fish, too. That is a great clip, Bman! Sending you a message here shortly.

Karry and Phoyem I appreciate the tips, that’ll def help get me started in the ballpark, then like ya said lots of adjustments. A livescope is on my someday list for sure, I think it’d be really informative to see those realtime interactions.

Any of you guys in south central wisco?