I have been doing real well with this method for a couple of weeks. The first ten days after ice out I long lined live smelt on all lines and did excellent but, then there was a fall off. This has happened in the past years (yes, I keep a fishin' diary.) So, I talked to A.J. who suggested the above method which he said was working for him. It worked for me, big time.
I have an 18' (Alum.) Lone Star w/ cuddy cab and a tan canvas top w/ a 2nd windshield (A.J. calls her 'The Tank'.) My kicker motor is a 5 Hp Merc. When it's fairly calm, I tie one bucket (w/ a 2"dia. hole in center) to the rear and idle the 5 hp. motor. The "works when it wants to" paddle wheel speedometer reads out, .5 to 1.0 depending if I'm going up wave or down (when going down I often put kicker in neutral as she kinda turns into an aluminum sail-boat!) so, yes I do go that slow (I think.) If it's choppy I try to maintain the .5 to 1.0 going into the waves but, it ain't easy to do when it's gusty. If I err I try to do so on the slow side. A lot of the hits lately have come when trolling cross-wave (go figure.) Or on a turn (normal).
Hey, I'm NOT saying faster won't work. I'm saying what works for me, if faster works for you go with it! If not, this method might be worth a try. What have you got to lose?
The water is still pretty cold and I've noticed that most of the larger fish (the one's I want) are still a bit sluggish when they come to the net. This indicates to me that they may not want to chase things going fast just yet. (When the top layer of water warms to 50-55 I'll speed up, you bet!! and the fish that are sluggish right now, will fight like H--- and take a long time to come to the net.
I troll live bait on two lines on outriggers and two flies on lead core on fly rods w/ long (100 ft.) 6 lb test mono leaders. That way there's a good 'spread' and I don't tangle up constantly (just occasionally.) The number of strikes on the flies has been 3-1 over live bait. ie; Friday: I had 1 short hit on bait & caught all the keepers (plus, 1 short) and two that got off on the fly set up.
Just trying to share what works for me. In any case enjoy the beautiful lake (saw 2 bald eagles last week) and the sunset Thurs. was awesome.
