Slow trolling - time to transition to jigging??
Hello. I have a question and maybe a solution to the slow fishing experienced by many on the forum? First, i am NOT a seasoned expert koke fisherman. My wife and I really just got into it mid-summer last year when we sold our Hobie fishing kayaks and bought a new 20' Lund. Since then we have had multiple trips to Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge, Fontenelle and one trip to Strawberry. Most of our experience has been at Blue Mesa and when the trolling died off last year we were introduced to jigging. We have a Lowrance sonar that came with the boat that was very limited in finding the schools so I invested in a Garmin Livescope which has helped enormously. My experience and the benefits of this outfit will be the topic of another post.
When i read the posts on this forum I do not see much about jigging. At Blue Mesa there is almost a complete transition during the summer from trolling to jigging. My question is this: is this the case at other koke lakes? We went to the Gorge late last summer after the jigging had kicked in at Blue Mesa and the only people that appeared to be jigging were going after lake trout. If this is the case could fishers at other lakes improve their success by jigging? If not, why do you think jigging would not work like it does at the Blue?
Any insights will be appreciated.
Thanks for your input Mike and Bduck
When i go to other lakes this season i am going to try to get on some schools and see if they stay put. Next trip is to Navajo starting this Sunday. Never fished it so should be interesting.
If I do find some stationary schools I may try jigging. In my limited experience at BM some schools will not show any interest in the jigs, while others are more "active".
Tight lines to all!
Thanks for your insight, SilverBullets and Kokanee64 - very interesting.
Just got back from our first trip to Navajo. Best koke fishing we have had in the 1.5 years we have been doing it. Had some double, and even a triple hookups while trolling. As you mentioned Kokanee64 the fish seem to be very active as my wife and i caught limits on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Fish we not too finicky about what they were hitting. Stopped the first day after nine fish to see if jigging would be productive, and it was. Had several bites and finally landed one. Downside is fish are a bit on the small side as Rob1973 (?) mentioned in an recent post. Ours were between 12.5" and 14.5".
When we first started fishing it on Monday around 6:45 AM we noticed quite a few fish distributed between 30 and 60 feet, and some schools at 70 feet. Caught a few fish from 40' to 65' initially then the fish at 70' became more active and we targeted them exclusively. We found a wide, fairly thin (2 - 3' thick) school at 70' that were very cooperative. What I find interesting is how the schools differ between two lakes. The last several days we fished BM this year the schools could be up to 15 - 20 feet thick (most were 5 - 10') but only 10 - 15 feet in diameter (X and Y dimension). At Navajo there was a "band" of fish stretching more than 80' in some spots, but only a couple of feet thick. I am basing these observations on my use of a Garmin Livescope which I can look out in any direction from the boat. It is a great tool for locating schooled fish in a radius around the boat. I have the "forward" looking distance set to 70' but not sure what the max. effective distance is. I assume if I push the distance too far it will lose sensitivity but need to experiment further. The different shapes of schools at the two lakes is probably due to the nature of the thermocline and concentration of plankton.
The second day we fished a guide boat came out with several clients and they were very successful at jigging.
I understand from a friend that the Elk Creek ramp at BM has closed because of the low water level. They are sending the water to Lake Powell to help their very low water condition. The Lake Fork ramp is suppose to close this weekend.