Get your baits deep in summer with these trolling techniques
On any given weekend night throughout the summer, you’re very likely to hear music rolling across the water.
The summer crowds love to come to the lake to party and get down to the beat.
On Lake Greenwood in South Carolina, Dale Brown from Waterloo is likely to be at the source of the music. As the owner of Brown Entertainment, he can jam with the best of them, providing music and karaoke to several lakeside venues.
During the day, Brown loves to get down on the water. By getting down, he means trolling baits behind his boat. He trolls for almost anything that will bite during the summer heat. He’s not alone. Trolling is a great way to cover water, create a breeze to keep the heat under control, and catch fish. The remaining factor is targeting the right depths for the fish you’re seeking.
Surface to 10 feet
When he’s on the water, Brown targets long stretches of water that have enough current to keep the water a bit cooler than the surrounding areas, and with relatively clean bottom so there’s almost no chance of fouling his lines.
“The stretch of water I like is only 8 to 10 feet deep through the whole run,” he said. “I catch everything from bass to crappie, perch and even stripers.”
From the rear deck of his pontoon, Brown will cast out four to six lines. Most of these lines will have crappie jigs on them ranging from 1/8 to 1/32 ounces. Another favorite bait is a sinking blade bait called a Steel Shad.
“I cast the lines out and then check the depth,” he said. “If I can lift the rod all the way up, then pull the line with my other hand and it comes to the top, that’s about the right distance out.
Brown sets his speed on a variable speed trolling motor for just under 1 mile per hour. He then makes passes up and down the stretch of river.
“I see bait in here most of the time,” he said. “I know my baits are covering different depths, some up close to the top and others near the bottom. So I don’t depend much on electronics, I just troll until I catch fish.”
10 feet to 20 feet
Lake Gaston, N.C. fishing guide Zakk Royce fishes for a number of different species during the year. When white perch and striped bass, along with a few black bass and even a catfish or two favor open water in the mid-depth range, Royce uses a crankbait/jig combo that lets him keep his baits securely in the mid depths.
“I run a three-way swivel from the 8- to 10-pound main line that goes to my rod and tie two, 2- to 3-foot leaders off of it using 20-pound mono,” he said. “I tie the crankbait on the shorter leader and the longer one gets a Beetle Spin or something with a small blade attached.”
Royce uses the crankbait as a depth planer. He said a Bandit 200 will run to about 10 feet and the 300 will run deeper. The lighter jig runs above the crank and tends to collect smaller fish like perch and crappie while usually only the bigger fish will hit the crankbait.
“That’s not a hard and fast rule,” he said. “I’ve caught two smaller perch on the same crank.”
Royce uses the 112-pound, 36-volt trolling motor on his guide boat to troll the rigs, one on either side of the boat. The optimal trolling speed is from 2.0 to 2.5 mph. He has tried to run more rods but said when he’s in a school of fish, it’s tough to handle more than two rods.
“I run the lines way back, like 100 feet behind the boat. So it takes a little bit of maneuvering to get turned around. But if the perch are in the area, along with catfish, bass, and crappie, I’m usually catching fish all through the run,” he said.
20 feet to 50 feet
Around the Albemarle, North Carolina area, Rodney Crisco of Joe’s Bait, Tackle & Guns said August is the time to troll deep, especially if there is a thermocline. To get in the right zone, he prefers to fish with lead core line.
Lead core line is a continuous strip of lead that is sheathed in nylon braid. The appeal of lead core is that it sinks better than standard line — getting to the depths fish are holding.
Lead core line is multi-colored with colors changing every 10 feet. The color variation is used to discern the amount of line out by counting colors. Crisco uses the color coordination in a formula for depth control.
“Although all boats are a little different, at a trolling speed of 2 to 2.5 miles per hour, a bait on lead core will sink 3 ½ to 4 feet per color” said Crisco. “By watching your graph and marking fish, you can let out the numbers of colors to get down to the fish.”
At the tag end of the line, Crisco attaches a 50-foot section of 20-pound mono or fluorocarbon leader via a double uni-knot. To the other end of the leader, Crisco ties a three-way swivel with either a double bucktail rig, a bucktail and spoon or he may use a combination that includes hard stick baits.
“Trolling with lead core lets you cover a lot of water, which is essential since fish may be in a number of different places. And it creates strikes,” said Crisco. “Most of these are reaction strikes rather than feeding bites. I believe a lot of stripers follow white perch schools around and let them do all the work of injuring baitfish because they don’t want to expend the energy. Then, right out of the blue, here comes this rig with all this action, noise, and color barreling right down on them and they hit it on impulse.”
50 feet plus
Lake Jocassee in northern South Carolina is well known for its depths, down to 300 feet in some areas. To fish depths of this magnitude, downriggers are a necessity. Guide Sam Jones said with downriggers, he can put a bait right in the face of a fish at well over 100 feet deep.
Downriggers work by suspending a heavy weight hydrodynamic ball from the stern of the boat. A heavy boom allows the ball and cable to hang free while the length of cable and subsequently the depth of the ball are controlled by a metal spool. The spool is equipped with a depth counter to give the angler precise control over the depth of the ball. A sturdy line clip is just above the ball. The release has rubber pads that hold the fishing line tight enough to troll the bait. It releases when a fish takes the bait. This allows the angler direct access to the fish without having to hassle with the added weight of the ball.
“Trolling with downriggers is my specialty,” said Jones. “I can cover a lot of water and target fish that I see on my depth finder that most people would never dream of trying to catch with regular fishing tackle.”
Using downrigger balls staggered anywhere from 80 feet deep up to 115 feet, the guide uses his main outboard motor to troll along the edges of the river channel. He keeps the motor at idle speed which he measures at between 1.5 to 1.9 miles per hour on his GPS. His typical spread is a six-rod setup: two lines stacked on the outside balls and one line from each of the inside balls.
His arsenal of baits is a mixture of trolling spoons and shallow diving crankbaits. The most popular spoons for downrigger fishing are Sutton Spoons, Doctor Spoons and another locally-made flutter spoon. All of these lures are light, flutter-type spoons in the 2- to 3-inch range with an occasional 4 incher deployed in hopes of a trophy fish.
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