Took a while to reel it in question

[Cane Pole]

I forgot to set the stop while I was letting out line on the Magda 15. The counter showed 890 feet which was all the line. I took a while to reel this much line in.

I was in about 16-18 FOW. The bait was a 300 Bandit. My question is: how deep was this Bandit really running at this length of line??? It never hit bottom that I could tell when reeling it in.

Any experts on not setting the stop and reeling it in?

[M R Dux]

I've had this happen once last year and once last weekend. Had a 6 year old who wouldn't leave the baits alone. Let em out-reel em in. OVEREOVEROVER His Dad finally asked me what was wrong with the reel he was holding--I told him his son had just let out nearly 800 feet of line, now let him reel it in. He did.

Last year I clicked a Magda 15 into free spool, forgot it, and caught it with almost 900 feet of line out. When I started reeling it in, a 5 pound channel cat loved the bait so much he decided to ride it to the boat. Try reeling a 5 pound flopping slimer 800 feet in rough waters. Seems like it took 5 minutes.

I honestly feel a bait will only dive a certain depth with 150 feet or 800 feet of line out. Once it hits max, I think that's all she's gonna go. JUST MHO.

[captankangaroo]

It will only go so deep unless you have a weight on the leader.

[Cray]

With that much line out it was actuall running shallower than it is capable of. You get so much line out it has so much drag in the water it will actually start to lift.

[cevans]

The boyancy of that much line out will keep the bait from going any deeper that is why your line charts only go to 175 ft or so. You could use a small downrigger and a 3 lb cannon ball with a line release just like your planer board releases and get a bait deeper just like we use for trolling for salmon on the Great Lakes. It would work just fine for deep trolling crappie and I even was thinking this yesterday while trolling for crappie. You can even stack lines on top of each other and run several cranks at diff. depths off one cannon ball if you wanted using a release per line.

[DaveB40]

I agree with "cray" and "cevans". Being a long time salmon fisherman on Lk Michigan, unless the line is weighted,
the more line that is let out, the higher in the water column your bait will rise because of the drag of the water
on the line, especially mono, IMHO. Dave

[1187mg]

Makes a bow in the line. Bait reaches max depth the starts rising.

[cevans]

Easy way to take a crank bait below 20' is use a 3 way swivel, drop sinker like a 3 oz trolling weight, 5' of line tide on to a Crankbait and drop it to the desired depth and troll it. Use a sinker like a drop shot raise the crank bait,up the line a few feet tied to a 5' leader on a loop knot, when the sinker hits the,bottom while trolling you know the Crankbait is a foot or 2 above the,bottom. It works on walleyes and will work on crappies if they are down deep. Sometimes when I have a 150' of line out on a crappie bait, you sometimes don't know you have a fish on with that much line out. Shorter amount of line out, less play you have as well as less chance of loosing fish.

[Cane Pole]

OK. Makes good sense. When trolling, I don't stop my boat for nothing. As I crank back in the 800ft, the crankbait should have reached max depth and should have hung on something like the bottom, but it didn't. I just got lucky I guess.

1.5 -1.7 mph with 10 lb mono.

[Ketchn]

i find it interesting for sure that folks fish for crappie like this . never have tried trolling for crappie . interesting stuff ....nice read
silly question time ....do yawl use them electric reels to bring in all that line ? just wondering ?