Downriggers and Bulls Lower K

[jts1]

Looks like we will be dropping the downriggers for some Bull trout on the lower K Thursday.

Have floated it on the pontoon chucking bugs. Have spent many hours in the fat fish staring at a flasher. But this is the first time in a fully rigged fishing boat. Never used balls on bulls before... "sounds like horrible movie title"

Any suggestions on set ups? Wedding bands with some kind of plastics is what I was thinking. Perhaps a meps of some kind.

How shy will they be of a 10lb ball? I assume I need to be back 60 - 100 yards @ 2-3 mph?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks guys

[TROLLER]

Cannon ball will usually not spook em.

25 to 40 ft. behind is plenty and over 2 mph is quite fast IMO A flatfish works good as well as a spoon, keeping in mind the deeper you go the more light you loose so believe it or not a darker spoon like blue or dark red will work best.

Watch the line because quite often they will not pull it free of the downrigger.

[RavYak]

I was using my downrigger this weekend and caught a couple nice fish but fishing was slow so I either never got them figured out or it is just a tough lake.

I just do a short cast hook it up then lower it to the depth I want.

[sanjuanworm]

I've downrigged with that setup and caught bulls.

[EZM]

Originally Posted by jts1

Any suggestions on set ups? Wedding bands with some kind of plastics is what I was thinking. Perhaps a meps of some kind.

How shy will they be of a 10lb ball? I assume I need to be back 60 - 100 yards @ 2-3 mph?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks guys

I'd start with a spoon on one (one with a wide wobble) like a Williams wobbler and run a flatfish/kwikfish on the other.

If the water is clear you are going to set back a little further from the ball. If it's silty or murky you can get closer to the ball.

The closer you can be to the ball the better hook up you are going to get when loading up the rod.

If you are too far back it's much harder to drive the hook home. As a general rule of thumb - the closer the better.

If the bulls are holding at, say, 80 ft down, I'd set one up at 30 ft and one at 50 ft back. See where the bites are coming from. There are very few instances where you need to be further back than 50 ft - unless you are only down 10-20 feet.

Being behind the ball 60-100 yards as you mention ( which is 180-300 feet ) is way to far .... by a long shot ..... you are going to have trouble driving a hook home or feeling a lighter take.

In terms of speed - start at 2.5 - 3 mph and make some S turns - if you are hitting on the outside - speed up - the reverse is true of the inside.

[Cowtown guy]

May be a dumb question as I have never looked at K lakes but... How would a drift boat work there? Is it big water? I'd hate to get up there and have it be a waste.

[RavYak]

Originally Posted by Cowtown guy

May be a dumb question as I have never looked at K lakes but... How would a drift boat work there? Is it big water? I'd hate to get up there and have it be a waste.

It is big enough water and as we found out the wind can rip up them pretty good. The wind also swirls around the mountains so it can be hard to hide from it(figured if we went to the far end of Upper Lake it would be calm but the wind was just coming from a different direction up there...).

[Cowtown guy]

Originally Posted by RavYak

It is big enough water and as we found out the wind can rip up them pretty good. The wind also swirls around the mountains so it can be hard to hide from it(figured if we went to the far end of Upper Lake it would be calm but the wind was just coming from a different direction up there...).

I was afraid of that. Hate to get blown to the other side and have to wait for who knows how long before being able to row back.

[RavYak]

Originally Posted by Cowtown guy

I was afraid of that. Hate to get blown to the other side and have to wait for who knows how long before being able to row back.

We saw a few guys head out in inflatable rafts. My guess is that they probably had to either walk back or get picked up on the other side.

If it is calm like it was in the morning it might be ok but I don't know how difficult it is to row a drift boat to know if it is worth trying or not.

[trouty]

Lyman's and Rapalas work and big flies. It's still lower than normal.

[Bigmountainrider]

I'd suggest 60' of water, 2.8-3.3mph, using a yellow/green dodger with a glow green hoochie at 15' behind the ball. Works in the Kootaney and in Arrow, I suspect Kan would be the same.

[just a newbie]

if your downriggers isnt working, i highly recommend tossing a spinner in there, there are a ton of baby rainbows and if you just let it near the bottom, a big bull will take it. i caught some big ones couple days ago on size 3 vibrax rainbow pattern, those baby rainbows will take them aswell even tho it barely fit in its mouth. i know this isnt what you are looking for and you probably caught wayyy more bullies than me lol, but i thought i share my recent trip

[7magtime]

Originally Posted by jts1

Looks like we will be dropping the downriggers for some Bull trout on the lower K Thursday.

Have floated it on the pontoon chucking bugs. Have spent many hours in the fat fish staring at a flasher. But this is the first time in a fully rigged fishing boat. Never used balls on bulls before... "sounds like horrible movie title"

Any suggestions on set ups? Wedding bands with some kind of plastics is what I was thinking. Perhaps a meps of some kind.

How shy will they be of a 10lb ball? I assume I need to be back 60 - 100 yards @ 2-3 mph?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks guys

How did you make out?

[Duramaximos]

Originally Posted by Bigmountainrider

I'd suggest 60' of water, 2.8-3.3mph, using a yellow/green dodger with a glow green hoochie at 15' behind the ball. Works in the Kootaney and in Arrow, I suspect Kan would be the same.

Interesting how different presentations can work...I'm fishing arrow at the moment and we had a great day fishing bulls.

30 feet down in 40 - 80 fow trolling at 1.6 mph. Had the lines set back about 150 feet. All fish caught on rapalas.

Only the biggest fish at 8 lbs pulled the release so it's important to watch your lines carefully.