Decent lead core bite

I hit the water Friday morning hoping to get some eyes rigging before the crowds showed up for the weekend. 4 hours of rigging with leech and crawlers, corking, and even shallow cranking produced only one 19″ smallie.

I decided to head deep on the gravel and pull some small cranks on lead core. The bite started on my first pass and lasted all day. I ended up with 16 fish by myself, only one keeper, but I had a blast with fish from 23″ to 27.5″. Spent the majority of the rest of the weekend pulling lead and the bite stayed pretty good. Not many for the box, but lots of fun with big healthy fish. River rocker#3, flicker shad #5, and Salmo hornet #4 in perch, firetiger and black silver were my best baits. Tried some larger baits with no success.

what speed were you pulling at??

How many colors??

Stu, you sure do ask alot of questions for being an ex “guide”

Most of the time on michigan we were using DRs or Side boards. My experience with lead was from 55 to 66 on the wing dams of lower P4, so i don’t have a lot of experience on how it’s being used NOW as opposed to THEN.

also, i’m used to posting reports similar to this:
http://www.idofishing.com/forum/showflat.php/Number/1135229/fpart/1/milwaukee-fishing-lake-michigan-salmon-report-529

when i was guiding we were reporting thru magazine articles so the reports were much less specific.

i’m not saying that we all have to put every little detail of success into our posts, NOR that that is necessarily desirable, especially when it regards L&L. That CAN cause an over harvest.

but something left out that is critical, i.e. trolling speed, can take up a lot of time when you are reinventing the wheel. Stuff that is sensitive can be shared by PM if the poster is concerned about over pressuring a resource.

i hardly know everything. i barely know enuf to catch enuf to eat, most days. if i don’t ask, i don’t learn.

does that bring any clarity to WHY i would be asking questions?

NOW, having said all that, how long a leader is being used? On michigan they are having to use 30′ on Zeeb clear water similar to ML. Is THAT the case here also??

Stu, we will pull 2-2.25mph typically.
I run a 30′ floro leader. At 2mph 18# core dives about 5′ at 2.25 im finding dives of 4′.

thanks mark. appreciate the help. hoping to put in a 1/2 doz days this spring pulling cranks mostly.

is flat lining working there??

how about 3ways??

3 colors and 40′ of mono at 1.8 to 2mph.

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thanks mark. appreciate the help. hoping to put in a 1/2 doz days this spring pulling cranks mostly.

is flat lining working there??

how about 3ways??

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Flat can work. it depends where the fish are. we dont have many suspended or high fish. when I have done FL it generally 25-32′ deep and I run a TDD9 rap to dig deep. However in windy cloudy days a HJ10 can do the trick FL in 10′ of less on the rocks.

I only use 3 ways on my crawler/spinners. I have never used it for cranks. Im sure it can work as crawlers rigs do well.

so a slow death rig would be useful in the arsenal???

I had a great longline bite Monday between storms, maybe 3-4 hours total with my 4 year old pulled 10 over 22. Bright colored #9 deep taildancers in 30 ft. Started as a search method but found many fish were 10′ or higher off bottom and aggressive. Here’s a couple pics, A fat 25 and a double we got right away on our second time out after the hail

Thanks for the report Tim and I’m glad to hear that you found a good lead core bite. Some of my most memorable days on the water is when I was all by myself catching fish and not having a care in the world.

Tim,

Sounds like you had that bite dialed in pretty good. Pulled LC for a couple hours Saturday. Picked up a few overs in the 21-23 inch range. #4 hornet here too. Switched back to rigging for the keeper size fish.

-J.