Losing Fish on Leadcore

I know there has been plenty of leadcore talk on here this summer, but I needed to do some ranting. I only caught half of the bites I had this weekend up on Lake of the Woods and it is frustrating. To add salt to the wound, we had two nice fish come loose half way to the boat. I was running 5 colors of lead with a 40 ft. mono leader. I tried running the drags loose and tight with the same results each way. I swapped out rods, pulled the boat out of gear when we hooked up, and sharpened hooks. The hooking percentage was still only 50%. Next on the list was ditching the mono and going to fireline. I\\\\\\\’m done pouting now.

Just curious, were you using chrome or metalic colors?

I would definately switch to fireline. Also I would shorten up the leader a little bit. I generally run a 15 ft. leader. Keep your drags fairly tight. I always tell people in my boat to pull some line from the reel and picture it like you had a hold of a crank bait. You want the drag tight enough that it would bury the hooks in your hand. One thing to keep in mind is that lead core is sagging in the water, so you don t want your drag too loose when that sag needs to straighten out a little. Another thing I do when I am driving the boat pulling lead is to not throttle down until someone picks up the rod and starts to crank.
These are the adjustments I made this year when we were faced with missing half of our fish and it greatly reduced lost fish, it even won a tournament for us.

I agree with Ben. I will run maybe a 10 ft leader of fireline or power pro and don\\\’t put the motor in nuetral. Keeping the boat going forward will help to take some of the sag out of your line.
Thanks, Bill

Sorry to hear about your frustrations,I myself have never used a leader that long with leadcore.I use P line floro for my leaders about 10 to 12ft .I keep my drag loose and dont loose to many fish that way,I do take my boat out of gear for bigger fish.Mustad triple grips have made the biggest difference in holding on to fish imo…

Why would switching to fireline from mono help hook sets? Because there is no stretch in the braided line??? I’m not sure if I agree with this theory especially if you are only using 10 or 15 foot leaders.

I used leadcore all year on Mille Lacs with both mono and braided leaders up to 50 feet and there was no difference for me in regard to hook sets.

I agree with Ben and Bill – a little bit tighter drag helps with hook sets when using leadcore. There is a lot of play down there because of the S factor.

Here are a couple of other things I like to do with leadcore as it relates to hooksets.

I angle my rods almost straight back behind the boat or at a very slight angle versus a 30, 45 or 90 degree angle. The reason why is there is a lot of slack in the leadcore line and when you add a soft tip rod, there is a lot of play amongst the two and therefore you don’t get a good hook set. By positioning the rod straight back, the reel sets the hook and the drag comes more into play. Another reason is that I can hear the clicker right away. Sometimes when I angled the rod at 45 degrees, a fish would hit on leadcore and the rod would start bouncing back and forth without even taking out drag or sounding off the clicker.

Another thing I do is to make sure the line is in the center of the reel versus on one of the sides. Leadcore line has a tendency to kink and ball up on the sides of your reel. We all know this because sometimes we have to hand feed it out away from our reel when putting our line out. By having it in the center, I know that the drag will work properly.

It is also very important to grab that leadcore rod as soon as possible and dig those hooks in further. The longer it takes you to grab that rod, the more likely the fish will get off because of the slack in the line. I grab the rod, place my thumb on the reel so the drag tightens up and hold that rod straight up until the slack is out of the line. I then tighten the drag making sure it still gives a little and then switch the clicker off. Now I’m ready to start reeling.

Another way I have done it is to reel the slack up first until you feel the fish and then take the rod out of the rod holder. This is very common when fishing with down riggers.

I agree with Ben and Bill – do not take the boat out of gear. Maintain consistent speed and always put consistent pressure on that fish. NO ROD PUMPING! You also do not want that fish to break the surface. Let it swim as naturally as possible until it gets close to the boat and then make one big sweep into the net!

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen with people losing fish on leadcore is pumping of the rod. Pumping the lead will give the line alittle slack allowing the fish to get off.

Thanks for the advice/comments. I forwarded the comments about pumping the rod onto my fishing crew from this weekend. If I only had a dime for every time I said “Don’t pump the rod.” My Uncle and Dad are both pretty stubborn and took exception to me giving them fishing pointers. Pretty hard to get upset when my Uncle is letting me run his new boat and make all the decisions. I am going to take some of the other advice and do some experimenting. We still had a lot of fish that were off before I could even get the rod out of the holder. I am determined to figure this out, so I will be experimenting a lot more.

Look in the LOW forum for a report. We might have lossed fish on the leadcore, but there were plenty that didn’t get away.

Are you sure you were losing walleye? Sounds like you were getting hammered by Tullibee. Losing 50% of your fish on Core is a pretty bad hooking margin. I will be up there this weekend pulling core, I will let you know how we hook up.

I would love to think it was bottom or pesky fish, but I had brand new shad raps with teeth marks when I reeled them in. Maybe is was a 75% hookup ratio, but still way less than ideal. Once I figure it out, those fish don’t stand a chance.

One other thing to keep in mind…. A couple of times out on Mille Lacs I kept on missing hook ups. I was getting pretty frustrated and then finally one time I caught a jumbo perch! They will occasionally hit those larger crankbaits too and get off right away at higher speeds.