Holland 6/15 PM

[zgrinder on Fin Warrior]

Janet was on board for her first fishing trip of the season and was rewarded with a boat load of flies.  Dropped lines just before 6:00pm, fishing closer to Port Sheldon covering 145 to 105 FOW running 4 dipseys and two down riggers, no long lines.  The few times I have been out, most of the action has been on dipseys so I went that route plus it would be easier for Janet to handle versus 300 Cu.  All our action came on northerly trolls where the boat speed was slower.  Boated and kept 2 nice size coho in the 8lb range.  First one came on an inside dipsey with a DW UV Green Dolphin down 54'.  After a two hour wait, the second came on an outside dipsey with a DW UV Mixed Veggie down 33'.  Switched over to darker lures for the night bite.  Stinger Kevorkian on a high diver got three hits:  Once nice king that flipped out of the water, bent the hook and got off, one drive by and the last rod in the water as I picked it up - a small 4lb king that was released.  Netted and released an additional small king in the dusk bite.  Downriggers down ranging 66-85' of cable out with spoons and flies did not see any action.  Overall, 4 for 6 with coho for dinner tonight and a boat to clean this afternoon.

  

 

 

 

 

[littleboat]

Nice coho! How much leader are you using with your dipsey? Are you adding anything to it? (Flasher etc?)
These are not slide divers correct?

Sent from my Z5156CC using Great Lakes Fisherman mobile app

[zgrinder on Fin Warrior]

I store two lengths of 25lb fluoro dipsey leaders on Tackle Buddy Snell Holders in my tackle box.  9' leaders are used for clean spoons and 7' leaders are used for dodger/fly set-ups.  The 9' spoon leaders are tied off with a small 30lb coastlock snap swivels on the business end to minimize weighing down the spoon action.  The 7' dodger/fly leaders are tied off with a 30lb interlock snap swivel.  The different snap swivels also helps me know which is which when I deploy or store the gear.  By trial and error, this is the maximum length of leader I can use to net a fish fishing solo - and that is pushing it.  Most of my divers are clear Dream Weaver Deeper Divers although I have a few traditional dipsey hold overs.  I have a pair of Chinook Divers but have not used them in a long time - struggled to get the releases set right.  I believe the plastic divers are more forgiving in this regard.  I set the depth of my dipseys using a Smart Troll probe attached to the line just prior to hooking up the dipsey.  I have lost a number of probes over the years which has hurt the pocket book but have finally worked out a method of attaching the probe that has yet to fail.  Plus I clip off that portion of mono and retie the snap swivel before each trip to assure fresh line is in the OR-16 clips.  When fishing solo, I set my dipseys at 1.5.  Trolling at 2.3-2.5mph, the Deeper Divers sink about 4' for every 10' of mono deployed.  Traditional dipsey divers with the ring attached perform the same.

One last thing, the weight in the Deeper Divers rattles around in the housing.  I put that extra room to use by picking up a roll of lead tape with adhesive backing (2g per inch) on Amazon, unscrewing the back of the diver and inserting lead tape cut to the size of the weight profile (requires two side-by-side pieces, not one on top of the other), adhesive side down on the existing weight, and screwing the two pieces back together.  Does it make much of a difference?  I don't know but I am running with this idea for now.

I do have two slide diver rods on the boat but have not run them yet this year.  They are spooled up with 30lb Power Pro tipped with 80' of 25lb fluoro (leader and diver attachment location.)  Had a bad string of break off slide diver donations a few years back and got reluctant running this program.  This year, I changed all my knots over to a Double Line Uni Knot, both fluoro and mono.  Formerly, I used a Trilene Knot for almost 30 years.  Believe this knot is fine for mono rigs but suspect it is a poor choice for Slide Diver rigs.  The Double Line Uni Knot will get hung up a bit in the eyelets if used as a knot on the back end of the leader but I am getting used to it.  I have had one break off with this knot when a king hit a  Stinger Kevorkian on a high dipsey at dusk and took the lure.  Fish might have cut it.  I could not find any evidence that the knot failed (no curled up line at the end).