Fish-Hawk.Net

rex.stpierre wrote:I have a very short temper for disrespectful/oblivious/ignorant boaters on a waterway...Full speed in the actual bay or through the narrows?

If you're asking about Nobles Bay, both, but way, way more often in the narrows. To be fair, the narrows is a navigation channel and only a few hundred feet wide, even though they may stay well away, the average boat zipping through there is around 20' or more. Often you'll find yourself getting pounded by their wakes long after they've passed.

I wouldn't even attempt fishing for lake trout in the narrows in my 18' deep-v unless it was very early in the morning or just before dark, the rest of the day its just so busy that you'll spend all your time fighting wakes. Like I said, its a navigation channel. For lake trout I'd stick south west of the narrows in the area a little north east of the boat launch and south west from Murphy's Point. I've caught a few lakers around there.

Nobles bay is pretty sheltered, the waters very calm for the most part, but every now and then you'll get a guy ripping back and forth pulling a bunch of kids on tubes, though that activity tends to be along the northern side of the bay for the most part. If you stick to the bays west of Murphy's Point, along the southern contours you'll be sheltered from the wakes caused by the vast majority of boat traffic. There I've caught lots of bass (mainly smallmouth and rock bass, the odd largemouth), some pike, and there are probably as many pumpkinseed and bluegill under the water as there are flies above it. I've also caught the odd perch. The points of the bays and the deeper water going from point to point are where I tend to catch the bigger smallies.

We will stick to the bay and we will only troll at sun up.

In a perfect world, we would each get one nice Laker Saturday night, release them back and go back to the campsite for super.... Fishfry would be nice but I can't depend on the attitude of the fish to fill our stomachs.

I could hide in shallow bays period and just cast for pike bass and musky...

Looks like the jeep with be packed with gear...

When you come out of the launch at murphys go to the first bay to
the right and troll in water around 100ft deep give or take.
There is plenty of Lakers in there and you should be fine for boat traffic.
I use a bait needle and thread a trebble hook through the minnow with about 18in
of floro behind the gang troll. Another good option is a J9 rap in blue or black.

chappee77 wrote:When you come out of the launch at murphys go to the first bay to
the right and troll in water around 100ft deep give or take.
There is plenty of Lakers in there and you should be fine for boat traffic.
I use a bait needle and thread a trebble hook through the minnow with about 18in
of floro behind the gang troll. Another good option is a J9 rap in blue or black.

After two years of abusive spending on lures, I can proudly say I have everything you just mentioned and its even packed!!! Fluoro check, rapala (a few types) blue and black check, gang troll check, bait needle check...

Is there a minnow size that is too big?

rex.stpierre wrote:

chappee77 wrote:When you come out of the launch at murphys go to the first bay to
the right and troll in water around 100ft deep give or take.
There is plenty of Lakers in there and you should be fine for boat traffic.
I use a bait needle and thread a trebble hook through the minnow with about 18in
of floro behind the gang troll. Another good option is a J9 rap in blue or black.

After two years of abusive spending on lures, I can proudly say I have everything you just mentioned and its even packed!!! Fluoro check, rapala (a few types) blue and black check, gang troll check, bait needle check...

Is there a minnow size that is too big?

I usually use minnows about 3" long or a little bigger.
You will catch more lakers on minnows but i find you will get bigger ones on a J9
I've boated 29 lakers in three morning fishes and the majority were on minnows
15 of the 29 were on leadcore

chappee77 wrote:

rex.stpierre wrote:

chappee77 wrote:When you come out of the launch at murphys go to the first bay to
the right and troll in water around 100ft deep give or take.
There is plenty of Lakers in there and you should be fine for boat traffic.
I use a bait needle and thread a trebble hook through the minnow with about 18in
of floro behind the gang troll. Another good option is a J9 rap in blue or black.

After two years of abusive spending on lures, I can proudly say I have everything you just mentioned and its even packed!!! Fluoro check, rapala (a few types) blue and black check, gang troll check, bait needle check...

Is there a minnow size that is too big?

I usually use minnows about 3" long or a little bigger.
You will catch more lakers on minnows but i find you will get bigger ones on a J9
I've boated 29 lakers in three morning fishes and the majority were on minnows
15 of the 29 were on leadcore

With the above stats, I will follow those exact directives. I hope I can give you good results on Monday.

After a total of 5 hours of trolling, we got 2 around 20 inches. They both went back in the water. Mine shot straight down like a rocket... I got a picture of mine but my buddy was really quick on the release of his. We got them both with Dipsy Divers and a flasher. He has a spoon behind his flasher, I had a minnow. He got his at 8:30 pm Sat when we turned into the narrows. I got mine the next morning at 5am as we trolled south on the narrows. The Boat traffic was very limited at those hours. We left the narrows around 8 cause our girlfriends were calling and there were 5- 6 boats trolling.

Thanks a lot guys. We tried nobles bay with no luck. I also spent Saturday night using a gang troll on leadcore with no luck. I watched my buddy pull his out with the dipsy so I decided to do the same the next morning.

It was a good time and we are glad we had success our first time out. Next time will be glorious.

Way to go on your success. Nice enough fish that would have hit the Q whole or the fry pan with fillets for me. Its nice to reward yourself, and family/friends too for a job well done. Wifey would not be as happy if I didn't bring back dinner too, lol. Better fresh eating than the big ones anyway, but I have nothing against putting a nice load of laker fillets in my Big Chief smoker.

I'm kinda surprised the lead core didn't work, but it depends on the gang troll you use sometimes. Plus the depth you fish compared to with the dipsy. I prefer a 30" leader, but I almost only use the #1 Big Hammer, or the #77, both real long gang trolls. Plus for me, its imperative that my minnow doesn't spin, and I always use a swivel on the back of my troll.

Cheers

way to go!!

smitty55 wrote:Way to go on your success. Nice enough fish that would have hit the Q whole or the fry pan with fillets for me. Its nice to reward yourself, and family/friends too for a job well done. Wifey would not be as happy if I didn't bring back dinner too, lol. Better fresh eating than the big ones anyway, but I have nothing against putting a nice load of laker fillets in my Big Chief smoker.

I'm kinda surprised the lead core didn't work, but it depends on the gang troll you use sometimes. Plus the depth you fish compared to with the dipsy. I prefer a 30" leader, but I almost only use the #1 Big Hammer, or the #77, both real long gang trolls. Plus for me, its imperative that my minnow doesn't spin, and I always use a swivel on the back of my troll.

Cheers

I had an 18-20 foot leader, and the gang troll was gold and about 18 inches with red beads, by lucky strike...I had a longer one but I was afraid of scaring the trout(my bad)! My minnow did not spin. I also used a small barrel swivel, I nose hooked it with a size 12 treble and two hooks hung under its bottom lip so the minnow was always upwards.

I think my biggest problem was, we didn't know nobles bay really well and my buddy was changing speeds an turning a lot so we wouldn't bottom out... We spent an hour trolling the narrows Saturday night, 8:30 till dark. I fooled around with my colors a lot, in hindsight, I should have stuck to 6-7 colors cause I was getting 8 feet per color. I think I have that new thin suffix and the gang troll gave me a bit of weight...

We weren't quite sure how deep they were biting until the next morning when I caught mine and double checked 99 feet on my line counter(55 deep with the dipsy)... My buddy reeled his up Friday without noticing the depth.

Trout on the smoker...yummy...We were camping so the timing of our catch was everything...past supper and way before breakfast!!

Cheers!

Awesome advice and great report... people helping people!

Very Nice!