We believe in lite line fishing using the the lightest line possible to get the job done. In this post, we will discuss some of the basic set ups that we use on our charter boat the “Ace“!
Seasonal Differences
The beginning of our Lake Ontario Charter fishing season finds us using the lightest lb test of line that we deploy all year. We match the line diameter to the target species that we are chasing. Spring is usually brown trout season for us. With water temperatures up high, browns will shy away from heavier lines in clear water, especially up near the surface. Hence, lite line fishing becomes imperative to up the chances for trophy brown trout bites.
As the season transitions into salmon season, our line diameter increases accordingly. Keep in mind though, that we still use the lightest line possible to get the job done. Obviously, average adult king salmon run bigger in size than typical brown trout do.
Brown Trout Rigs
In the spring in stained water, we typically run 15lb main line. Berkley Big Game clear is our preferred choice. We then leader down with Spros to 8 lb test fluorocarbon. In clear water, we sometimes go to 6 lb. These set-ups are for our rigger rods. Coppers, flat lines, and lead cores have 12 lb main and fluorocarbon leaders, We sometimes add in Spro power swivels and leader down to 6 or 8 lb floro depending on water clarity and/or fishing pressure!
King Salmon Rigs
Our spoon rigger rods are one in the same as our brown trout rigger rods except we up the leaders to 15 lb floro. We predominately use Ande Fluorocarbon for almost all of our applications except for one. We run 17 lb test Seaguar XLS fluorocarbon available at Fat Nancy’s on our spoon dipseys. Our divers have been known to be leadered down as well!
30 lb Berkley Big Game clear fills our attractor rod set-ups. Any less than this and we found ourselves breaking off too much. Earlier in the season, we leader down to 25 lb test Ande fluorocarbon. Later, we go to 30lb Ande floro!
All of these rigs set up this way have served us well, that is, until the water fleas show up. This past season, waterfleas put the halt on lite line fishing almost over night around mid July. In our next post, we will discuss some of the tactics we used to combat the fleas that blossomed this past season. As a precursor, you may wish to read an earlier article we wrote about combating waterfleas !! The fleas were so bad this last year, 2018, that our typical strategies failed to keep the fleas off riggers and dipseys . We will discuss some of the newer techniques we employed in 2018 to keep the fleas off or at least combat them, in our next post.
A few related posts you may want to check out include:
https://acecharters.com/blog/fishing-in-a-crowd/
https://acecharters.com/blog/getting-multiple-hook-ups/
https://acecharters.com/blog/what-lures-to-run-on-lake-ontario-for-salmon/
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