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Arrived at Strawberry Bay at 6:30 a.m. and fished until after 11:00 a.m. with my son. Caught 21 fish trolling; four cutts under the slot limit, four Kokes about 2.5 lbs a piece and the remaining were cutts in the slot. Caught most of the fish with down riggers at 40 feet. Also picked up three sets of doubles on one pole; an all time record for me. (You can generally tell how good the fishing is by how many doubles you get. We had one spoon at 36 and the other at 40 feet) Saw alot of fish early at 20 feet, could never get any of these to bite. By the size of the schools, I thought they might be kokes?? When the schools moved to 40 feet (at about 9:30) we started picking up the kokes using mostly RMT dodgers and spoons. The bite was over at 10:30. The weather was beautiful and suprisingly not many people on the pond for the 4th.
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Excellent report! It would be a treat to catch a few kokes. Seems like the fishing is starting to pick up at Strawberry.
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More and more reports of Kokes showing up I guess I will have to give them another try soon. Your report is encouraging thanks.
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I hope this isn't a dumb question. How do you rig your down rigger to fish two different lures on just one rod? The only way I can think of would be to have the deepest lure only a few feet behind your release.
Please explain how you are rigging your down rigger.
Thanks ZugBug
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You naturally hook the first hook to the release on the ball. The second hook can be hooked two different ways. The easiest is to use a swivel or cross over snap and tie 4 ot 5 feet of leader to this snap. Tie you second hook to the other end of the leader. Once you get the first hook and ball to depth you want to fish you then just snap the second hook onto your line and the second hook will sink to half the depth of your ball. (i.e. if the first hook is at 40 feet, the second hook will be at 20 feet or half of the depth).
If you want to be a little more fancy & more effective, often I will drop the down rigger ball to 10 feet, snap on the second hook and then hook my line to a second down rigger release on the down rigger wire and then drop the down rigger to depth. (i.e. in this case the first hook would be at 40 feet and the second hook will be at 35 feet or half the 10 foot distance). In this case you can get both hooks through one school of fish & get double hookups, which we did three different times.
When you troll with down riggers you will notice that there is a parabolic bow in you line from the end of your pole to the down rigger ball. The second hook will alway drop to the apex of the bow or half the diatance of the depth.
I often find that you can increase you catch rate by about 50% with this second or cheater hook. It is a great way to fish!!
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this pic should explain it pretty well . click on the multistacking once on the website
[url "http://www.shastatackle.com/flash/index.html"]http://www.shastatackle.com/flash/index.html[/url]
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OCF and Petty4life, Thanks for the downrigger information. I'll give it a try this weekend. Zugbug
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Question!!!
Does the lure make any difference on the second line (LIKE a Diving lure) or will it still run in the middle of the apex?
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the second line (drop line) shouldn't have any action of its own use something like a squid or a koke-a-nut
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Needle fish, humdingers, & cripple lures (both Shasta tackle) seem to work very well as the cheater. I have experienced problems with triple teazers & rapalas - would not recommend these type of lures.
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