Thanks to all for the encouragement.

Quote Originally Posted by shane1980 View Post
Long line trolling can be a really productive way to cover alot of water and also catch alot of fish. I am still learning something new every time I long line. Best way to learn is just get out there and do it. You will find this a great way to fish when the fish get really aggressive. Good luck!
Covering a lot of water was one of the things that got us to go this route. With night fishing we have a couple of “Spots” that produce fish. Without the intimate knowledge of the lake that more experienced fisher persons have, we needed to cover water and find areas that fish were hanging out.

Quote Originally Posted by mac crappie View Post
I run 6-12' rods out the front and 2-10' and 2-8' rods off the sides when I'm tight lining
We may get to that, but currently 6 was about all my wife could keep up with. I was to busy netting her fish, tying on new jigs and steering the boat to be much help.

Quote Originally Posted by ScooperDude View Post
What a great report! Those Stripers must have been fun on light tackle. They have a way of birds nesting even experienced fisher persons.
Like Shane said I learn something overtime I go out even if it's something really simple that I should have already known.
Keep at it
The striper were a blast, we even like the perch on light tackle. They fight really nice, they are just not the species that we want to eat. I have told my wife that I will not turn the boat around and go back through an area based on one fish, but if we catch several fish in an area, then a go back through is possible after a little bit of time passes. We did a single fish turn around once and came up empty. We did two turn arounds after catching several fish in an area and caught some nice fish on both second passes.

Quote Originally Posted by Rick J View Post
I have not bought any crappie minnows in 25 years. They will bite jigs in cold water. The most critical component of longline trolling is knowing the depth that your lures are running. I pull a tandem rig of 1/16 and 1/32 jigs. By trolling into shallow water, I determined how deep they would run by hitting bottom. Then I added different sizes of removable spit shot and did the same thing. I generally use three sizes of split shot and move the jigs from 8' to 18' depending on how deep I think the fish are.
Rick
This is actually something that we plan to do at a later date. We just wanted to get some time fishing the technique to see if we liked it. Now that we know it produces fish and we like the concept it is time to start fine tuning the technique. My wife was just giving the jigs a nice cast out the back of the boat an letting the trolling motor do the rest.

I assume that when you go into shallow water that you go parallel to the shallow water bottom? Otherwise your boat and jigs would be at different depths and hard to tell what you wanted to know?

Quote Originally Posted by mikefish View Post
That's exactly how I suggest people learn how to fish when they ask me . . . reading some, asking some questions, and then get out there and do it. If you don't catch fish, at least you learned what not to do. How was the water clarity? thinking about pulling for stripers this Saturday down there and can't decide between High Rock or Badin. I think water clarity will be the determining factor.
Mike

Take a kid outdoors!
Water clarity is hard for me to describe. It was a greenish hue and I could see a jig about 2 feet deep barely. Badin has an east and west arm of the upper lake. We fished the east arm. The west arm is fed by Tuckertown. Tuckertown was brown as we crossed over the 49 bridge. I do not know what the water clarity was on the west side of the lake.

It was actually funny, when we started with the plastics my wife just thought they were cute. By the end of the day, she knew their names and which were producing fish and had even asked to change a few non producing colors over to the ones that were catching fish.