late 5/3 report and question

Fished Lake Marion last Saturday afternoon. Went to a spot I caught fish during the pre-spawn and marked a lot of bait and fish. I put out 8 rods, two 14’, two 12’, two 10’ and two 7’6” and started long lining. Trolled about 20 yards and fish on, got rod back out and bam! Fish on, the same rod 7’6”. After this going on for a while I changed 6 rods to the same color (chartreuse 1/16oz head, pink/chartreuse tail triple ripple grub). The wife had a blast, we caught 42 in an hour. Now here is the thing. All of the fish except 5 came off the same rod. I was trying to make sure there was the same amount of line out on each rod. This has had me stumped all week.

Anyone have any idea what might have been going on?

By the way, caught 6 white females full of eggs.

Could it be the line is of a different size or perhaps you have a smaller/larger jighead in the mix? If you changed colors on a few other rods to the color that caught fish then they all shoulda caught some of those fish. Something is different that made those fish hit that rod and I'd suspect that if you had the same color out on different rods then it was the depth the jig was running on that one rod that made the difference. JMO...

Don't know your set up but I am guessing the 7'6 is by the motor. If so I have had that happen a lot and JMO I think it has something to do with the movement of the water created by the motor. Like I said my motor rods have out caught my others plenty of times but can't say I have ever caught 37 in 1 hour off a single rod. WOW

Had the same thing happen to me last weekend but my rods have all the same line on them but all mine was on my 12ft rod

Sounds like u had a great time 2

Congrats on the catch, sounds like a fun day of catching :ThumbsUp


If all the jigheads were the same and the baits -
Were you catching fish on both 7-6'' rods or just one side of the boat? If both of the 7-6'' rods caught fish they were running at a different depth than the other. If those rods were beside the motor the jigs were running deeper than the others. The way to fix the bite would have been to let more line out on the longer rods. Each length rod as they got longer would need a little more line out to get to the depth.
If the short rods were on the outside of the boat then it would be opposite, the jigs were running shallower than the others and you would need to reel in some line.

Another thing that goes unmentioned is that I run 8ft rods - 16ft rods and cannot cast near as far with the long rods as I can the short ones. So if I am trying to fish a good cast length out I have to keep adding line out on my long rods and that is always just a guess until they start catching

The two 7'6" rods were next to the motor. I have 6lb test seagar flouro carbon on all my rods. I can cast the longer rods a long way. I just give them a toss, probably 40' or a little more or less and try to make sure that they are all running the same distance behind the boat. It was a little windy but I had all the rods as close to the water as I could without them hitting any waves. Going in the morning to try em. If that happens again I will try different lengths of line on the longer rods.
By the way, I was fishing 12 to 15 feet of water trolling .8 to 1.0mph on the edge of a creek channel with some brush piles I put out.

A lot of times I'm running out to 100' behind the boat maybe more pulling 1/16 oz jigs. Just have to keep adjusting until you find the sweet spot. Good luck, hope you find them biting.

I troll with six rods and usually catch most fish on two of them and those rods vary for whatever reason

Great sounding report, glad to see you making the troll bite work for you. Many factors could be involved with the one rod, I've never heard of that many fish being caught on one pole with 8 out. I have seen where one out fishes the others, but not by that margin. Interesting!