Gino & Jim on Lake St. Clair

[Duplex]

Spoonpluggers,

Here's part 1 of our St. Clair outing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd6NVKvm ... e=youtu.be

Jim

[Kevin McClure]

Way to Funny! Jim sounded like the, "Soup Nazi", on Seinfeld......."No pictures for you!" Great videos, Jim.

By the way, What kind of boat is this, Manufacturer, size, etc.?

[Steve Craig]

LOL!
I bet i know what kind of lures Gino will be making next!!!!!
Great video Jim!

[Duplex]

Kevin & Steve,

Glad you're enjoying the videos. I hope they convey the fun and camaraderie we had during the outing. Gino's boat is a 20' Yarcraft tiller equipped with a 150 Yamaha 4 stroke. He made his own Pointer jerk baits, which were successfully used on the trip. He's a master craftsman.

Jim

[jimmyfins]

Very nice Jim. Thanks for the cameo!! Gino I had to chuckle as that lure swung over and caught your hat.

Jim

[beckman44]

Great video Jim; Just wondering what made you choose spinning gear on the troll instead of traditional spoonplug rod and reel. Bill.

[Fran Myers]

Great Video Jim. I can't wait to see the other 39 hours and 50 Minutes of video you have. I'd even pay for DVD's.

Bill - I feel somewhat responsible for the equipment choices Jim and Gino made. Over the past 5 years of this type of fishing at the Bass Islands on Erie, we've come up with a few things that work REALLY well although don't apply most of the time of the year. Anyway...

I didn't speak to Gino or Jim the whole time leading up to the actual trip because I knew that Brett and John were talking to them. Unfortunately, it appears that no one mentioned the rods that make the kind of fishing we do easier. So when Jim and Gino got to St. Clair and saw what we were using, they had to use what they had available.

To make their lives much easier they should have had 20 pound florobraid on a 7' or so casting rod in the medium heavy class (on the stiffer, fast tip side of the scale) with a line counter reel. It took 5 years, Kenny Hyde, and a lot of sore muscles to come up with this combination. I still feel pretty bad about not telling them.

Line counters...
This year it didn't seem to matter but NORMALLY we have to let the lure out 150-220 feet out. Line counters make this so much easier to deal with. Especially with the big handles that allow for literally winching the line in, in a hurry. Brett/Partner and Jim/Gino were able to keep line lengths shorter because they used a bigger lure. John and I used #7 and #8's and needed 175 to 220 feet to get the lure in position. Believe me when the conditions are tough these things make a HUGE difference.

Medium Heavy Rod...
Again this year it didn't seem to make that much difference however we have found that LONG sweeping jerks which result in long pauses between jerks (where nearly 100% of strikes occur) are physically less demanding on the body and result in more lure movement during the jerk when actually moving the rod instead of the whippy rod just bending. Trolling a lure 200 feet out, jerking it even slowly, all day long, over a period of 3-7 days is quite a beating. The heavier rod makes it easier. Everyone I've spoken to can barely pick their nose after a couple days, so its not easy. AND we're getting slammed by fish very often.

When the fish were going in the shallows Kenny and John found that viciously jerking a Lucky Craft Pointer 100 about 5-10 times then giving the lure a few seconds to fall literally sets the Smallies off. You can get away with a regular casting rod for this.

I've used the standard Buck's Baits rods and they work great but I think if they were the longer ones, they'd be better.

[beckman44]

Thanks Fran; I kind of figured it was situational. Sometimes a small adjustment in equipment for the situation or species is what it takes to make a catch. Bill.