Captain's Blog w/ Tom, Jeff, & Jeremy
How to Run Big Planer Boards – Captain Tom Ullum
With the power of the internet these days, you can jump on the computer and learn new fishing tactics fast. With that said there doesn’t seem to be a ton of good information floating around the interwebs about big boards. It could be that it’s just not that popular of a system in many places other then the Great Lakes. In this article I will detail and illustrate how we set up and run them on our boats. We don’t claim to be the leading authority of big boards, however, we do spend a lot of time running them. To put it simply, you have a planer board that you’re attaching to a line. As you let out line, the board planes
Understanding Sonar Displays – Part Two
Cone Angle The transducer’s cone angle is an important thing to consider when using sonar. Generally, lower frequencies tend to use a wider angle, and higher frequencies use narrower angles. Every manufacturer is slightly different but for the most part, 83khz uses a 60-degree cone angle while 200khz is around 20 degrees. This is important to understand because in 40-feet of water, a 60-degree cone will ‘read’ a bottom diameter of 40-feet (60-degree cone diameter is nearly equal to depth), and which is about 1250-square-feet of coverage area – while at 40-feet with a 20-degree cone will cover a diameter of about 1/3 the depth, making it a 13-ft diameter or 130-square-feet or coverage area. As you can start to imagine this
Understanding Sonar Displays – Part One
Have you heard fishermen talk about “great marks” or claims of big fish on the screen? Have you caught good numbers of fish while you’re not marking fish? Your success on Lake Erie can often be directly linked to your ability to use and understand your electronics. For a good majority of the season, Lake Erie walleyes are found suspending. In most inland lakes, fish relate to some sort of cover such as points, rock piles, river channels, etc. On Lake Erie we find that walleyes tend to school up and follow bait fish and preferred water quality (temperature, clarity, dissolved oxygen levels). The single most important aspect of catching fish on Lake Erie? You have to be on the fish. Fish
The Value of a Lake Erie Charter
Hire a Walleye Charter? Or “Do It Myself” Fishing? If you talk to the majority of successful entrepreneurs or business owners from just about any walk of life, the claim seems to be the same. The best return on investment they see is always investing in themselves. They use webinars, lectures, and classes to short-track them to success. In the Lake Erie fishing industry, you can spend thousands on: fishing gear, rod holders, jets, snap weights, rods, reels, different types of lines, and the list goes on. At some point, the purchases you made on gear that wasn’t really relevant to the goal you’re trying to achieve may outweigh the cost of a knowledgeable guide. Hiring a charter could save you money
Jigging for Lake Erie Walleye
Jigging for Lake Erie walleyes can mean many different things depending on who you talk to. There are many different presentations that we fit under this umbrella. The types of jigging I intend to cover with this article will pertain to Lake Erie. Most of the jigging is done in the Western basin from Port Clinton to Toledo, OH. Pre-spawn Jigging This type of jigging isn’t the typical method that most anglers think of when we talk about jigging. You will be fishing deeper flats just outside spawning areas, targeting fish that are staging and waiting on the spawn to get underway. The easiest way to explain this is to imagine ice fishing from a boat. The boat will be anchored and
Casting & Drifting for Lake Erie Walleye
In this article, I will be covering what I feel are the important parts of cast and drift fishing. Otherwise, this could be a 300-page book – and still may not cover it all. Before we get started I would like to mention a few things. The vast majority of our fishing time is spent trolling. It fits the clients’ needs better in most cases. We don’t recommend casting for inexperienced groups. As far as fishing goes I personally consider myself an apprentice. Even more so on this particular topic. We’re always trying to learn new things in trying to be a better walleye fisherman. In my claim to not knowing everything, I hereby reserve the right to be wrong. Drifting Drifting