Too Many Flashers?

[Drezler]

I just started fishing out of my own boat last year.

Typically I am running 4 downriggers and 2 dipsies out the sides, and sometimes 2 boards.

When I start out in the morning, I usaully run my 6 lines behind the boat with half flasher/flys and half clean spoons.

Once the flasher flys start popping (and it seems like they usaully do), I tend to want to bring in spoons and swap them out with more flasher/flys.

I only get out 2-3 trips per year so I don't have a lot of data to go off but it seems like my flasher/fly rigs may become a little bit less effective when I start to put too many out.

Does anyone else notice this?

Does anyone run all flashers with great success?

Does anyone feel as though sometimes that clean spoon although is not actually catching fish, may be still helping out the spread and is best to just leave them down? (so that the spread does not become too flashy)

Or if flasher/flys are hitting, just put out as many as I can?

Thanks in advance.

[hornets nest]

Everything has its day in the water. After 2 trips out of South Haven last weekend and only taking one fish on flasher fly and 0 on meatrigs, and no fish on flasher fly and meat rigs on a 7-2 st jo trip I left all those in their boxes on the 4th trip yesterday and ran all spoons (mostly smaller or regular sizes) and went 10 for 11. Orange was the ticket, earlier green was was the ticket. Next week it may be blue. I would stay away from 4 riggers. With the lake so clear now you can get to much too close and hurt your spread. Keep things spread out as much as possible. My normal 3 man spread is 2 riggers, 2 divers, and 5 boards with either copper or leadcore. I have a chute rigger and use it for the x4probe and when I'm bouncen bottem with a trash can and spin and glow for Lakers only when action has been slow and have some new people on the boat and want to get fish for them too catch. When the bigger Kings start smelling the rivers anytime the flasher fly's will start going down and the meat rigs along with some plugs. But I have never put everything out with flsher fly's, maybe some people do, but thats a lot of noise in a small area with divers and cannonballs also making noise. Generally to much noise after the early bite has shut down.

[BenLubbs]

I read a book by Capt. Dan Keating, I can't remember what one it was exactly. In there he talked about trolling dynamic, or how all of the lures/attractors/presentations you are running work together. Every time you change a lure or presentation you are changing the whole trolling dynamic. If you are changing from a mix of spoons and f/f's to all f/f you have drastically changed your spread and the way it attracts fish. Personally I have never run a spread of just f/f's. I guess it's really just about figuring out what the fish want. If the bit turns off once you start changing over to f/f's, go back and put spoons back out.

[mayvillemark]

Later on in the year like late July and early August I run 5 flashers andmeat rigs on 3 downriggers and wires and a clean meat head on copper and plugs and spoons on core or copper and on 1 rigger and cant tell you how manytimes last season a half hour after dark the spoons and plugs were the only thing left in the water.

[anonymous]

While I don't typically run all F/F's, every day is different and there are days where that might work best. In addition to changing lure types, you need to pay attention to how close together they are both vertically and horizontally. If you make a small change because only certain lures are working, sometimes that shuts everything down. That is the reason that I try to change only one thing at a time and give it time to work before changing something else. If that small change shuts everthing down, I can go back to where I was and hopefully get bites again. Sometimes a lure that is in your spread is attracting but not getting bit. In that case, you might have to settle for bites on some but not all of your lures.