Black River Walleye (Pool 8)

Well we got rewarded from 5 am till 1:00PM today on the Black River….Caught a fish every trolling run we made that we didn’t get cranks hung up on. Fish were pretty active till about 10 AM with Nathan,(TEEN), getting his lifetime best walleye a 27 incher about 9:00 AM. Nearly every fish all morning came on medium size jointed rapalla in bluegill/shad… don’t think they make it anymore. All fish were on top of humps about 10 foot deep in 12 feet of water or 12 foot deep in 14 feet of water…. trolling about 2 miles per hour. Little if any current so both directions worked equally as well.

Thanks for the post! You get my vote for braving the heat!

OK, so to continue my neophyte river trolling questions, I would assume you were using a 3-way? Even with powerpro and a shad rap, it’s hard to get 12 to 14 feet down. What size weight for the 3 -way? 1 oz?

Thanks again. Think I’m headed back to pool 9 this weekend for more torture.

You out near the KFC or Midway? I know there are a bunch of humps out there, although i’ve never tried trolling them. See a lot of guys drifting out there. Sounds like you did a lot better then i’ve done in a long time. All i seem to catch is little bass!

The Jointed raps in the size we longlined get down to 12 feet quite easily, but as you can tell we were just trying to get down to the top of the humps. The jointed we use are about the size of a number 9 shadrap… but as I remember the numbering on the jointed are different. We were in the black river on the paddlewheel run. As those of you know that fish there we had to use 30 or 40 # plus Stren Superbraid because it is so snaggy you would lose a weeks worth of lures there in an hour if you didn’t. Even at that we tore three sets of hooks and split rings off.. but only lost one lure. I basically get out my 8.5 foot slop poles and line when we troll there.

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OK, so to continue my neophyte river trolling questions, I would assume you were using a 3-way? Even with powerpro and a shad rap, it’s hard to get 12 to 14 feet down. What size weight for the 3 -way? 1 oz?

Thanks again. Think I’m headed back to pool 9 this weekend for more torture.

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Ripper,

You can get a #7 Shad Rap down to 12-14 without too much trouble. I don’t have my Precision Trolling Guide right in front of me, but I think it would take about 100 feet of line to get that deep.

I have started to run leadcore on the river and have liked that because I don’t have to run as much line out. This is helpful because it takes less time to run out your lure and less line will help reduce tangles with other lines. It’s not as easy to tell if you’ve picked up a weed on your lure with the leadcore, but after some practice you can figure it out.

I agree with the leadcore the more I use it the more I like it too… one thing you notice right away is the way forward momemtum and liquid hydraulics make the leadcore follow bottom contours better and I also seem to snag less with lead… and after while you get so you can see the subtle change in the action of the lure cause by a little grass or a leaf, too but I still keep checking it anyway.