Thread: Lake Lochloosa

Had a very good day today. Perfect weather, fog until about 9:30 and calm
all day. Enough breeze after lunch time to make it comfortable.
Don't know how many we caught. Maybe 60 or more and, gave 41 an all expense paid trip back to Tavares. We cull at 10" if a healthy fish. Weighed 2 of the bigger ones that went 1.5 and 1.4. Had several in this size range.
Joe

A couple of guys have asked via PM how we are fishing Lochloosa... here is exactly what we are doing (although it is also posted earlier in this thread):

We fish out of Don's 22 ft. Sea Chaser... a salt water boat and way larger than necessary, but you fish with what you have.

He mounted a dual seat up in the bow and we both sit up there, but you could troll from other places in your boat if you are not set up to do that. The key is getting as wide a spread as you can. He sits on the left and keeps an eye on the depth, I sit on the right, steer the trolling motor, and drive the boat.

We have rod mounts in front of us. We use these: Page Title

He fishes 5 rods starting straight out in front on his side, then spaced at intervals to the 9 o'clock position on his left side of the boat. I fish five rods, starting from right in front of the boat on my side around to the 3 o'clock position. Since his longest rod is an 18 footer and my longest is a 16 footer, we are covering a 34 foot wide swath of water.

Our rigs are dead simple. I'll start at the bottom and go up the line:

a) 1/32 or 1/16 oz. jig (size doesn't seem to matter a lot) that I make on a number 4 sickle hook... but again, that is not very important. Colors we use are white, hot pink (very good lately), bright chartreuse and a woolly-type jig I tie with white chenille with a 1" orange 'tail' of yarn... My buddy has been fishing a lot of tube bodies on jigs lately, mostly some hot pink color combination. Simple jigs, nothing special.

b) Above that is 18 inches of 6 pound leader with a loop in the end to clip on to the snap on the main line.

c) On the end of the main line is a tiny (size 12) snap swivel so we can clip on pre-tied jig/leader rigs when we want to change colors.

d) 1 1/2 oz. egg sinker threaded on the main line above, and sitting on, the snap swivel. Sounds like too much weight doesn't it? But it is not.

That's it. No dual hook rigs, nothing fancy.

Now, here is why we catch fish when other people aren't:

We troll from daybreak on pushing those jigs at between 1.2 and 1.4 mph. We can cover a LOT of water that way while wind drifters are just sitting there. And that is the key at Lochloosa... covering a LOT of water. That needs repeating. The key is covering a LOT of water.

In most cases, we fish those jigs at 1/2 the water depth reading on the depth finder. But you need to experiment up and down the water column until you figure out where they are.

"Where' on the lake changes. Sometimes they are up on the north end, sometimes out in the center, sometimes on the south end.

But we are moving so fast we can check it all out during the day. When we find fish, we concentrate on that area a lot before moving on. We do big expanding circles and figure 8 patterns over any area where we pick up a nice fish.

You need enough trolling motor battery capacity to do this from daylight to dark. We always stop in the middle of the day and have lunch at Lochloosa Harbor.

We have offered to show other people how we are catching them, but they all just want to keep on wind drifting. Go figure.

If you have any questions at all, I'll be happy to answer them.

Tom