Downriggers for Eyes

I’m surprised at how few people are using downriggers while trolling for eyes. Downriggers seem like a much more effective technique than lead core / planner boards / 3 way rigs, etc. We’re preparing for our annual trip to Lake Michigan, so the downriggers are on the boat. Plan to give it try this weekend if anyone has any input to offer.

IMO..Generally the water is very clear on mille lacs and the fish are not use to seeing the rigger weights. Mille lacs walleyes tend to spook very easy.

Good point, but that should just be a metter of running your line further back from the ball. I would think a 75-100 feet would eliminate the spoooking issue, but it may be something a guy needs to experiment with. If you ar targeting deep water walleyes, what is your preferred trolling method/technique?

Planner boards or flatlines. Most of the open water fishing is targeting suspended fish that are 10-20 feet down. Getting the lines away from the boat with boards is very effective.

If you want to run your baits 75-100 feet back, what is the sense of having down riggers???? With that much line out, lures can dive deep enough to achieve the strike zone. I usually have between 45-130 feet tops of line out, with out using Lead core, dipsy or down riggers. Like Derek said, especially with the fish high in the water column use planer boards to get the lures out and away form the boat. Good Luck and Nail ’em.

Lip Ripper,

I’ve read some of your postings where you talk about trolling areas that are not directly related to any structure, but I didn’t realize the fish we’re suspended so far up the water column. If your fishing the main lake basin, your talking about 33-35 FOW, and the fish are suspending 10-20 feet off the bottom, I can see why downriggers wouldn’t be necessary. I’ll be out on Sunday in a black 2150 Baron, so if you see us, stop by. If the trolling doesn’t produce, we may move quickly to rigging.

Thanks for your input guys.

Make sure to come back and post results. I’m curious to see how the riggers will do.

Absolutely.

Tight lines to all!!!

Sorry for the delay in posting results. We started the day by trolling the west side of Banana Reef and worked our way up to the gravel just west of Hennipen Island. Marked fish near the edges, but no strikes. Headed for 7 mile and started trolling 1.5 miles south of the break with no luck. Once we hit 7 mile, the fished were stacked up on the 23-25 foot break. We picked up a 24 inch on a Firetiger pattern, but unfortunately the fish didn’t break the line from the release, so she may have been dragging for a while. However, she was in very good shape when I released her. We picked up one more fish and then switched over to rigging. Not many boats on 7 mile Sunday, but they were sure stacked up on 9 mile. The results weren’t what I had hoped for, but I think with some fine tuning we will have some success. We we’re using our Salmon Rods with 14lb test, so that may have been part of the issue. Off to Lake Michigan in about a week.