Trolling

[Mnorman81]

Having never owned a boat before how does one troll shad raps and other diving lures to depths of 50 feet or more where the fish are. Can you add weight to a trolled lure?
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[Chad71]

You pretty much need a down rigger. Some of those Dipsy divers work ok to get lures down but depending on ur speed and the action of the lures it will sometimes cause your Dipsy diver to head back to surface. As for adding weights to a lure, haven't seen it done to something like a shad rap and even if you could I would imagine it would mess up the action of it. Down rigging is about the only way I know to target different deep depths like 50+/- consistently.
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[reellittlephish]

You can Carolina rig a shad rap with about 4 ft of leader. I have used up to 3/4 oz. weight and getting into 40 ft -45 ft. maybe. I don't see why you couldn't step up to 1 oz.

You may have to add a bit of weight (suspend dots or strips or sometimes you can solder a bit of lead to the middle treble) to the lure itself to keep it neutral buoyancy.
Definitely the hard way to do it though.
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[wolfs4evr]

When you start getting into adding weight like a Carolina type of set-up one really needs a line counter reel to be able to repeat. One can't make a cast with that set-up for a rough estimate of line out.

I have tried Dipsy Divers and other stuff like that. HATED it. You have to run a fairly heavy rod and line to handle the pull and with the average size of the Stripers on Mead being small that rod makes landing one 100% BORING. Not worth it whatsoever imo. Now if one was catching 5-20 pounders consistently then I would re-look into those types of products or downriggers.

I do know a Strike King 10XD can be hung up in ~55ft of water (15lb Fluorocarbon/~2.5mph trolling speed)... No added weight. Been there done that.
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[Erawk]

You can buy inline trolling sinkers but most have sub par swivels and line twist is a serious issue. The carolina rig would probably alleviate most of the twist.
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[fishrdan]

Leadcore fishing line is another option, but you need a big reel to handle the thick line,,, I use a Penn 309 for 36# leadcore. Leadcore has drawbacks, but makes it easy to repeat your depth and presentation without downriggers, X colors of line out = XX feet of depth. Line weight, line test, boat speed, type of lure all come into play for the lure depth. The nice thing about leadcore is if you want to drop your lures, slow the boat. If you want to raise them, speed up the boat. The only thing I realy dislike about leadcore is that it feels like landing a fish with a wet noodle
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[07yzryder]

[quote wolfs4evr]When you start getting into adding weight like a Carolina type of set-up one really needs a line counter reel to be able to repeat. One can't make a cast with that set-up for a rough estimate of line out.

I have tried Dipsy Divers and other stuff like that. HATED it. You have to run a fairly heavy rod and line to handle the pull and with the average size of the Stripers on Mead being small that rod makes landing one 100% BORING. Not worth it whatsoever imo. Now if one was catching 5-20 pounders consistently then I would re-look into those types of products or downriggers.

I do know a Strike King 10XD can be hung up in ~55ft of water (15lb Fluorocarbon/~2.5mph trolling speed)... No added weight. Been there done that.[/quote]

when we salmon fish in the bay we do counts. basically strip measure about 1 foot anf start stripping aobut 100 feet off. Once you get there take a sharpie and mark the line where it meets the reel. you can then tweak it in or out as needed also.
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[wolfs4evr]

Another way is having the tip of the rod towards the back of the boat, like one is holding the rod and trolling, and then stripping it forward in a big sweep towards the console (wouldn't work too well with a spinning set-up just a BC). Essentially +/- 10 feet of line comes off with a 7' rod. Both ways are a pain but one does what one has to do.
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