Trolling Question

[albiechaser]

Hi Guys, on my lake here in Raleigh we have a nice river channel that drops from a 20foot flat area to 35/40 feet, with my finder I always see fish along the edge, whats the best way to attack em, should I start from the 20' side and run over the ledge back an forth, or is it best to run along it?

Thanks

["G"]

I usually just run along the edge of the ledge and try to keep my baits just slightly above the fish. They will come up a little but they won't go down.

[feeshrman]

What "G" said, it works very well.

[jimp]

If running with the ledge doesn't work, then start from either side of the ledge, and see which way they will hit. Sometimes the direction you approach the fish from affects the hit ratio, not always, but crappie can be pretty darn picky at times. I usually go from shallow to deep and then u turn and go deep to shallow, especially if they are schooled up in one area, maybe a stump or other structure there they are holding on, or the baitfish are in one spot. GL

[Hitek]

Try zig zagging back and forth across it. You can cover more length and see which way they may like it.

[Dutch552]

I would start trolling right along the channel break and run a slolom course where you are moving back and forth across the breakline to give the fish different running speeds on the inside vs. outside lures and different angles of attack. I'd jump right to the 300 series bandits and if they're holding at 20 feet on the break I would start with 90 feet of 10# mono out and then increase your lead length from there. For speed at this time of year-start at 1.2mph and move up to 2mph until you find what they like. Each time you hook up look at your direction, approximate position on the break, your speed and how much line you had out. It's a lot of information to digest in a short amount of time when the fish are biting but once you nail the presentation on the head you can really clean up when oters are struggling to boat fish.

[albiechaser]

All great info here guys, What I did in the past was put out (3) large floats with around 20 foot of 100lb line an a 4oz sinker. then I would move in the channel drop it down till I got to the edge, that weight/float would hold right on the edge of the channel, Id keep em around 50 yards apart, helps alot in seeing right how the channel runs, never trolled over it, just used to cast to the edge from the Shallow side, looking forward to giving the trolling a shot, I think I'll start on the shallow side just to find the bottom then move over to the edge, but zig zagging sounds good too, Fun stuff
Thanks again