Heavier ‘rigger weights help a little, but it’s easier to spool up the downrigger reels using a similar strategy as is done on the diver reels. This time fill the reel almost to capacity with a premium monofilament for use early in the season when the fish are less than 40 feet deep. Most trollers will use 17- or 20-pound-test. Once the summer progresses and the fish head deeper, add a top shot of one of your favorite braids in 20-pound-test. Only 150 feet or so is needed, so you can outfit all your ‘rigger reels with one reel-filler spool. Remember, 20-pound polyester braid is thinner than 8-pound mono.

After making the switch, watch the belly in the line between rod tip and downrigger weight all but disappear. Blowback is minimized, you’ll get better hooksets and with no stretch in the line, and catching fish will be more fun than ever.

Choosing one of the ultra-bright colored lines now available for both your monofilament and braided lines is a strategy many experts employ. It makes it much easier to instantly track the lines, maneuver hooked fish around other lines, helps prevent tangles or alerts you to a small tangle before it becomes a major one. Though the bright-colored line often puts off fish, a fluorocarbon or clear monofilament leader often solves this problem.

HEAVY METAL
As the spring “surface” bite fades away with ever-increasing water temperatures, Great Lakes anglers need to get their lures far under the surface to put them down to the eye (and mouth) level of hungry salmon and trout. Conventionally, downriggers have been the tool of choice to make those presentations, along with directional diving planers. Many anglers, however, have rediscovered the advantage of combining these traditional presentations with the “old” technology of using lead-core lines in addition to monofilament or braided lines normally spooled onto their reels.

Lead core is a stealth tactic that gets a lure way back behind a boat so the fish don’t associate the shiny confederate twinkling at the end of the line with the noise and commotion of the passing vessel. It works well, but that’s the only good thing about it.

Lead core is a two-part line. It has lead wire to give the line weight, and is encased in a braided nylon line to give it strength. The weight makes it sink ever deeper as more line is deployed. The downside of lead-core line is it’s bulky, about the equivalent diameter of 80-pound-test monofilament. That bulk requires using a reel with a large line capacity. The reel itself will be heavy, so adding 100 yards of lead core to the reel means you can forget any notion about having a rod-and-reel combo with “balance.”

Lead core works very well, and catching a fish with 100 yards of lead-core line deployed is only slightly more fun than not catching a fish at all. Though there’s not much stretch in the lead-core line itself, there’s plenty of sag in the heavy line, like power lines stretched between two rods. It can’t be eliminated totally and because of the sag, much of the head-shaking, tail-pumping feeling of the fish doesn’t make it to the rod tip. All the angler feels is a heavy pull.

Depending on trolling speed, the type of lure used and the speed of the boat, figure each 10-yard segment of lead core will pull a lure 3 to 5 feet below the surface. Most anglers will use 100 yards on a reel, which will position a lure an average of 40 feet deep. Sometimes that’s not deep enough.