Longlining Help

[Woodie14]

I'm sure this has been talked about 1000 times but I am having trouble getting my jigs down to 15'. I troll from the back of the boat using a trolling bar. I am using 1/16 and 1/8 oz jigs. My speed has been anywhere from .5 - 1.2. Do I need to add a weight to this setup? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

[CrappiePappy]

Woodie .... weights can certainly help. They also keep you from having to let out so much line, &/or use heavier jigs to get to that depth.

I've used three different "styles" of weights when Pushing jigs ... barrel sinkers, in-line trolling weights from Crawdads Fishing Tackle, or Bullet Weight's Mr Crappie Troll-tech weights. (depending on how I'm rigged & how much weight is needed)

Fished with a buddy of mine & we rigged with 1oz weights, 1-2 jigs (1/8oz), and Pushed at ~1mph ... to get the jigs down to around 12ft deep with about 25ft of line out. Our lines were not running at a 45deg angle, best I could tell, so our depth is just a calculated guess on my part. I use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate depth ... multiplying length of line out (below water's surface) by 0.6 when lines are running at a 45deg angle. So, since 25 x 0.6 = 15 ... and our lines were at a slightly shallower angle, I calculated the weights/jigs to be running slightly less than 15ft deep. Another way to figure it is every 5ft of line out below the surface would equal 3ft of depth, if the lines are running at a 45deg angle. We trolled over a flat that was 15ft deep in spots & the jigs never dragged bottom, so I'm fairly confident that we were not reaching the 15ft depth with our jigs.

[Kevin22]

Yeah at 1mph and a 1/16 jig you are only going down about 6-8' with 30' of line out. Using double 1/8 you should get down there, or one 1/8 and one 1/16.

Are you fishing in 15' of water or do you want to be down 15' over really deep water? Take your boat into 15' of water and toss out one rod and start dragging it around with it in your hand at your normal speeds. Use different weight combos to see what drags bottom and that will tell you what you need to fish 15'. It's really just trial and error to find what works best in your situation, depends on any current (wind current too!), how much line you let out, the dia of your line, the resistance of your jigs (big plastics vs hackle jigs etc), and angle of your rods even. You just need to keep going heavier until you are too heavy, then back down a little bit. Using two jigs will really help dial in the correct weight, but remember water resistance of the plastic/minnow does play a part... so two 1/8 will not go as deep as one 1/4 for example.

I know I fish a lot of 12' of water and where I fish a 1/8oz weight will let me just tick bottom at 0.5mph, at 0.8 it starts lifting and at 1mph its about 4' off.. so 8' down or so.

[Nutbush]

I normally pull two 1/16 ounce jigs. With those out a good throw and going .6-.8 I will generally be running between 8-12’. Just get you some of those little round clip on weights and add a couple till your tips start bouncing.


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["G"]

Basics for long lining jigs is speed up to go shallow and slow down to go deep. True long lining of jigs is without added weights.Here is a depth chart for long lining jigs This chart is for single and double rigs..

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[skintback]

Double 1/16 jigs on 4# line, a good cast distance, at .8-.9 mph will get you there. And keep your rod tips close to the water.

[SkiffPuller]

I've been having trouble keeping my book jigs down as well. I've starting using a 1/4 barrel weight held in place with a small split shot then a 1/16 ounce jig. Either pulling bobby Garland strollers or slider jigs. With this setup I can adjust my depth by letting more line out, or switching out the split shot for a bigger one. I can get this set up down to about 16 to 18 ft if I need it.

I recently respooled with 4lb line instead of six to reduce drag, especially with the strollers.

I'm from an offshore fishing back ground so I tend to fish all depths at the same time, 1/16 oz at 6 or 7 ft, 1/8 oz at 9 or 10, and then the weighted rig at 10+ ft. I can cover the whole water column until I dial in where the fish are holding.

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[Bals gib]

The jig chart was based off of two inch twister tails attached to the jig head a stroll’r will cause the head to rise slightly higher because of the buoyancy where something like a stinger style bait will fall deeper

[Woodie14]

I am fishing around 18-20 FOW and marking fish around 15 FOW.

[Woodie14]

Thanks Nutbush