Lakers on the Hard Line

As the saying goes necessity is the mother of invention. Today was an interesting day on the water. The plan for Kelli and her dad was to go down rigging for lake trout. With an early morning start to the day we arrived nice and early. Uncovering the boat..... DRATS!! I forgot my down riggers! How on earth does that happen?? Getting old I guess!

Oh well, with an hour drive back to town to get them not an option. It was time to improvise. I had been experimenting with leadcore line set ups over the past few years for trout fishing with some success. Today we were forced to forego the original plan and try this method.

My leadcore setups consist of a high gear ratio Daiwa Saltist line counter paired with the 8'6" Jason Mitchell leadcore trolling rod. I run 10 colors of 18lb suffix 832 advanced leadcore line with a 10ft 12lb fluorocarbon

leader. The high gear ratio reel allows me faster line pick ups when changing baits and simply reeling in 9 colors of lead core line.

For baits we were running number 5 and number 6 Salmo Hornets. Trout seem to love the action of these lures. I run a speed of 1.5-1.8 miles per hour. With all this in, we were getting those lures into an impressive 65 feet of water.

It was a great day on the water with a great shore supper of fresh trout afterwards. While the bite was slower than I wanted we still had a great day and I learned a valuable lesson. We didn't need those down riggers after all.