I trolled lake gilead many times last season with bellies with no succes just monster bass stealing my bait. 1 9ft daiwa medium action with a okuma baitrunner w/ swivel and 1/4oz egg sinker. 8lb xlt mono with 5ft 9lb floral carbon on the end. Also an FTS baitrunner out the other side same set up with a number 2 split shot. I want to try gilead sometime this week trolling lures instead of live baits can i use the setups i have now to get deep enough for lakers if i rig them right or should i just troll deep diving rapalas. Any infor would help.
John, your setups are fairly common for flatline trolling and will get you some Lakers in
March and April, often into May. Assuming you have 100ft out behind you, one line with the 1/4 oz egg is probably down 5-10ft and the one with the #2 split shot is like 3-5 ft, which I find a bit shallow. If you want to use the sinker method I'd suggest 1/2 oz to get to 20ft and perhaps 1oz to get to 30-40ft. Keel sinkers are more suited to dedicated trolling.You can use deep diving cranks alone but you won't find many lures that will dive
more than 15ft at best.
I have been catching Lakers from 15ft down to 40ft this month as they are still all over the water column. I also don't troll live sawbellies anymore because I don't feel like feeding the bass at a dollar a pop. And I rely on mostly leadcore to troll my target depths.
