rookie questions

This will be my first time fishing the big lake so I have a couple questions on setting up a smaller boat(17ft smokerctaft fazer, about 7 ft at transom). I’m hoping to be able to run 6 rods, 2 leadcore off boards 4 dipseys,possibly getting down riggers if I get hooked into this kind of fishing, haha. Mainly concerned on how to rig the boat with rod holder locations, what rods to put where( dipsey vs boards inside vs outside. Is it realistic to run 6 lines off of a smaller boat? Do you clear all your lines when you get a fish, seems like a lot of tangling could happen? I’ve done a lot of reading but can mostly just find tactics vs the simple questions… Thanks for any help if you think of anything else that might help out a Lake Superior greenhorn I’m all ears.

Kind of depends how many people you have on board to help out,for me its 3,1 driving the boat, one catching, one tending lines when a fish is on. Putting lines in 2. 2 Riggers off the back but off the side on booms.2 dipsies in the middle. and 1 high line off the back.Now thats for salmom om michagan. Lake Superior it could be planner boards and leadcore. Tangle lines will be your teacher , This is just what i do,theirs people here with way more time then me on big water. DK.

The first thing I’ll tell you is that you don’t need to go out and buy downriggers. I’ve been fishing the north shore for about 8 years and have never used a down rigger. Not saying they aren’t very useful, I’m just saying you can catch a lot of fish without them.

I’ve run 8 lines out of my boat pretty easily. I’ll do 4 boards, 2 LC straight back and 2 dipseys. If you don’t use riggers, I’d recommend any combination of that.

When an outside line gets hit, you definetly want to clear one side.

If you haven’t bought downriggers yet, I’d highly recommend investing in some vertical rid holder trees from traxtech instead. Here’s what they look like on my boat.

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You can run 6 to 8 lines very easily. In my old 16′ tiller, I could run 8, but that’s because I ran out of room. Like said before, you don’t need downriggers, especially early in the year until early summer. Personally, I’d go buy 6 bolt on rod holders, whatever brand you want. Mount the first two towards the transom, and space them every 1.5′-2′ up your gunwale. This’ll keep the tips of the rods separated a bit. Buy 4 or 6 boards, maybe a couple leadcore setups and call it good. Sometimes you need to clear the inside lines, sometimes not. All depends on if the fish pulls the board way back and clears the other lines by itself, or if your farthest outside lines are running near the surface and your inside lines are deeper.

Thanks for the input guys, sounds like all I need to do is fashion some holders on and trial and error… For the leadcore setup do you typically split it 6 and 4 color, or just spool all 10 colors on and clip your boards on whatever color your desired depth is?

Although I’ve never had trouble clipping the boards directly to the LC, I wouldn’t recommend it.

I’d recommend at least one 10 color setup and probably a 6 and 4.

I’ve probably caught most of my LC fish on the 10 color. I usually run that one straight back from the boat.