James and Paul, question about your drift technique on Bay de Noc.

Just watched the episode on youtube. One thing that stuck out to me was that you were casting with the wind and thus the boat moving towards your raps on the drift.

Was this done for a specific purpose? When I drift fish even if I am casting I tend to always toss into the wind and work the bait back. I have always done it this way because it helps me not work the bait too fast, keeps slack out of the line, and I don’t run over my bait or fish. I noticed on the big fish you caught just over halfway though the episode he went under the boat and the boat is moving over the fish. A friend of mine lost a nice sized northern because of this

Maybe I am looking too much into this but was wondering if you chose to cast with the wind/drift for any reasons other than convenience and comfort.

I would suspect it is to get to the fish before the boat passes over, I guess I always cast down wind, doesn’t really make sense to fish where your boat has already been.

Fish can be very particular in which they like the bait presented. Sometimes they like it going with the wind/current, other times opposite, other times no preference. If you’re not experimenting you will miss out on some fish.

I was also curious about this as well. Did you try spot lock?

Jonesy wrote:

Just watched the episode on youtube. One thing that stuck out to me was that you were casting with the wind and thus the boat moving towards your raps on the drift.

Was this done for a specific purpose? When I drift fish even if I am casting I tend to always toss into the wind and work the bait back. I have always done it this way because it helps me not work the bait too fast, keeps slack out of the line, and I don’t run over my bait or fish. I noticed on the big fish you caught just over halfway though the episode he went under the boat and the boat is moving over the fish. A friend of mine lost a nice sized northern because of this

Maybe I am looking too much into this but was wondering if you chose to cast with the wind/drift for any reasons other than convenience and comfort.

In my opinion it is very difficult to properly work a Rippin Rap when the boat is moving away from the bait. The boat moving toward the lure creates the slack you want in the line prior to the upward sweep of the rod that “pops” the lure up off the bottom.

livinthedream wrote:

I was also curious about this as well. Did you try spot lock?

The fish were very spread out on the sides and edge of a large piece of structure. Making controlled drifts was the most effective option available to us. Using the spot lock would have cost us fish in this instance.

Jonesy wrote:

Just watched the episode on youtube. One thing that stuck out to me was that you were casting with the wind and thus the boat moving towards your raps on the drift.
Was this done for a specific purpose? When I drift fish even if I am casting I tend to always toss into the wind and work the bait back. I have always done it this way because it helps me not work the bait too fast, keeps slack out of the line, and I don’t run over my bait or fish. I noticed on the big fish you caught just over halfway though the episode he went under the boat and the boat is moving over the fish. A friend of mine lost a nice sized northern because of this

Maybe I am looking too much into this but was wondering if you chose to cast with the wind/drift for any reasons other than convenience and comfort.

I fished the same spot doing the same thing as James and Paul on Bay de Noc and I have to agree with them. When you are fishing with the dift into the wind the its hard to work the bait effectively. A lot of the times the bait won’t hit the bottom before the boat catches up with the slack. You want that bait to hit the bottom and then pop it up off the bottom. This can only be done in light wind or fishing with the wind to your back.

livinthedream wrote:

I was also curious about this as well. Did you try spot lock?

I fished the same spot as James and Paul casting the same lures. I will say I don’t have spot lock but I do have a trolling motor I used to stay in on area thanks to my GPS. I did find that the fish were scattered across a reef as James said. However there were spots that seemed to hold fish more often. You could pull one or two fish of the same spot and then drift over it again a couple hours late and land a couple more fish in the exact same area. However if you tried to stay in that one spot for an extended amount of time your bites were spaced out and we found we were better off drifting different areas of the reef but then coming back to that same area sever drifts later.

Thanks for the replies James and everyone. I hardly fish raps but what you’re saying makes sense and gives me something to think about.