Trolling Multiple Lines

Can anyone recomend any good books or videos on trolling paterns with four or more rods,lure depths on inside vs ouside rods?

Am no expert here–but I fish Lake Superior often and I use the V pattern and seems to work ok for me–meaning deepest lures or depths closest to the boat and work your way out to shallower lure’s or depth–planner boards also—but then I run 8 lines out–not sure if this helps you or not??

Precision Trolling google it and it’s a place to start… I sure hope none of the rest of you have this chest infection that is going arouund it is kicking my butt.

We troll 6 lines all the time, with boards. Put your rods with the boards furthest away from the boat up front. Middle boards in the middle, and closest to the boat in back. When an outside board goes back, let line out on your middle one (which now becomes your outside board), and reel in the outside one with the fish on it. The closest ones usually aren’t much of an issue, or can be reeled up to the boat quick.

Typically you want your shallowest running lures on the outside, and your deepest on your inside boards. It takes practice, but once you’ve done it enough times, it becomes second nature.

I also posted this above in the other thread where info about three-way cranks was asked… it’s from my webite.. and two pictures from James

THREE WAY CRANKS

THREE WAY CRANKS For those of you not familiar with this technique, I will try to explain it. First it is a very accurate form of trolling. By that I mean a person can very easily position their lure in the walleye-sauger strike zone, again and again. Heres how you do it. First the equipment I most often use with this technique: A bait casting or trolling rod and an Abu Garcia 6500 C3 reel, Trilene 10# XT, and 1-5 oz bell,or pencil sinker, Rapala Original floaters, or husky jerks. Attach one eye of the threeway swivel to the line coming from you rod. Then to one eye of the three way tie about a 24(about 18 inches after tieing and cutting) inch piece of line to a snap swivel and put the sinker on it. This seems to be the universal drop length. (18inches) I’ll explain why later. Then to the third and last eye of the threeway swivel attach about 45 inches of line(40 inches when tied and cut). then attach another snap swivel to this 40 inches of line and place your crank bait on it. Now drop your rig into the water with your boat going the speed you intend to be moving and in the depth you intend to use as your goal,(more about speed and depth latter). Let the line free spool backward until you see the line (sinker) hit bottom. NOW COMES THE SECRET TO BEING RIGHT WHERE YOU WANT TO BE!!!!!! AFTER THE SINKER touched the bottom it almost immediately is lifted off the bottom by hydraulics and forward momentum. You must continue letting more line out again and again until you can drop the tip of your pole backwards three times and see the sinker put slack in the line all three times.(consecutively..in a row-WITH THE BAIL CLOSED). Trust me two times is not enough. Now if you put your rod in the rod holder or hold it in your hand when you come over little bumps or over shallower depths you will see the sinker bumping the bottom. There are several reasons why I say that a 18″ drop and 40″ leader are the universal depth and lenghth. With thousands of hours using this technique I have found that the 18 inch drop and 40inch length puts the bait where the walleye will see it and it will still snag less often than a lesser drop does. My snag up over the same area on the same day seems to almost double when I drop to 12 inches or less(the distance from the threeway swivel to the sinker),even when I adjust the leader lenghth, and the 12 -16 inch lenghth seems to snag more also. Remember we have two things that can snag here. The crankbait and the sinker. Now I know somebody out there is saying why not use a bottom bouncer to avoid snags. I have found that the bulk of the bottom bouncer and it’s design snag almost as much and collect weeds,many times faster, on rivers.. One thing I should point out right now is that with a three way you actually have direct connection to the lure(bait). With a bottom bouncer you don’t. This becomes very evident when the rod is held in your hand while trolling or the second you lift the Bottom bouncer out of the water with a fish on. With regards to speed (slooooow), and depth 11-20 ft. I try to barely make any progress upstream. A football field on most days would take me 45 minutes. Although a lot of people speed up as the weather warms I don’t. Even on lakes and flowages with little current. The rare ocassion is when I’ve lost track of the herd for a while and speed up till I find the fish back. Even then I rarely move much faster than 3/4 miles per hour. When Tony and I won the Mississippi North Regional Championship on Pepin in JUNE we STILL MOVED SLOWLY. When we wanted to move faster we went to Leadcore or longlining cranks. Depth is a deep subject LOL. When I was a young squirt I remember being told that the first major drop from shore holds the most Eyes on the river. Darn it seems like it is almost always 12-18 feet. In our second place finish At the 1999 National Championship on the Rainey River,(Lake of the Woods), we rarely left the 16 -18 foot range. If we moved up off that break it was all No. Pike, and if we when out to the next drop it was all sturgeon. Sinkers are the last item I should cover here. Any day anything from 2-5 ounces will catch fish. In general the shallower you are the lighter you go. Also I usually rig the poles straight out the back of the boat one ounce lighter to get it back a little farther, from the motor. To start I would suggest you just buy 2 0z and 3 0z bell sinkers. They are my most often used weights and a bell sinker forces you to set the depth right. Until you get used to a pencil sinker you may be dragging it on its side rather that just bouncing it on it’s tip, like you need to. Yes that 3-4 inches makes a difference. Now here’s where a lot of people are gonna say WHAAAT??? Forget trying to achieve a 45 degree line angle from your rod tip to the water. It never seems to make a bit of difference with this technique or as far as I have ever been able to figure out with any technique. Still use it as a guide if you like, but don’t drive yourself buggy trying to maintain it.

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Lawrence Ecklor

“It’s all about time on the water”

t posts on three-way cranks:

“Theory of V’s) is right…

Think of a two V’s off the back of the boat. The first V is your depth V, going straight down into the depths. The bottom of the V is the bottom of your deepest trolled lures. the top of the V is your shallowest lures. So the Deepest lures will be right beneath the boat while the shallowest lures will be the furthest out to the sides.

The other V is the length of stretch behind the boat. This V starts with the point of the V right off the stern and the arms of the V extending behind the boat.

So basically, the deepest lures will be run closest to the boat and will have the shortest stretch back. The shallowest lures will be run farthest to the side of the boat and will also have the longest stretch. It might help to draw a boat and the V’s on paper to visualize it…

This system minimizes tangles, allowing the furthest out and back lures to ride over the top of the deepest/shortest back lines when reeling in a fish.

We run this on Michigan with 12 lines at times out of an 18 foot Lund. We run riggers, dipsys, core and boards. Usually, we have few tangles. This can certainly be modified and may not apply in some instances or with fewer rods, but its a good start.

One more thing… Generally our deepest, closest to the boat rods are furthest towards the stern and “laying down” or more parallel with the H2O… The furthest out and shallowest run board rods are in holders closest to the bow and set vertically so that those lines have freedom to clear all of the other rods.

Mike

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Can anyone recomend any good books or videos on trolling paterns with four or more rods,lure depths on inside vs ouside rods?

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Dan Keating has a few books and a few videos… All are excellent; I highly recommend the books. They are salmon-related, but he talks about trolling spreads in detail with many illustrations. He is probably the one who coined the phrase “Theory of V’s”.

http://www.lakemichiganangler.com/store/Keating_on_Kings_Book.htm

Otherwise, get the Troller’s Bible for depth/lure info.

Mike