06-29-2012, 10:12 PM
I had this same question last week when I was taking 7 other people fishing on Henry's lake. I had 3 lead core rods but for the others I needed to rig my spinning rods with some weight but didn't know how much. I found several other pictures but nothing that was what I wanted. What I did was buy 0.5, 0.75, 1, and 1.5 oz weights and experiment with them. I tied a 0.75 oz weight on and then added 6-7 feet of line which was then tied to a fly. I can say trolling at 1.7 to 2 mph and giving a nice easy cast gave me about 10 to 12 feet in depth. I didn't try other weights to see how deep I would get since what I was using worked. It depends on how much line you want to let out to get to the depth you want, like the chart shows.
Lead core line is pretty good for depth but the rule of 5 ft down per color changes as the line weathers and gets older. I have some lead core line from 20+ years ago and it will not do the 5 ft per color, it is about 4ft per color.
When I have trolled with my fly line in my pontoon boat, an easy cast of say half my overall fly line length using a 7 weight fly line at 1 mph would give me a depth of about 10 to 12 ft. This is on my electric trolling motor speed 1. Now if I go up to speed 3 which is about 1.8 mph, I need to cast/let out all of my sinking fly line get down about 15 ft.
Like others have said and what i can say is experiment and see where you want to be. I use points that entend out where it will be shallow very quickly like the west end of island park for depth experiments. Also, remember that what lure/fly/other you are trolling will have an effect on depth as well. I hope this helps.
Justin
Lead core line is pretty good for depth but the rule of 5 ft down per color changes as the line weathers and gets older. I have some lead core line from 20+ years ago and it will not do the 5 ft per color, it is about 4ft per color.
When I have trolled with my fly line in my pontoon boat, an easy cast of say half my overall fly line length using a 7 weight fly line at 1 mph would give me a depth of about 10 to 12 ft. This is on my electric trolling motor speed 1. Now if I go up to speed 3 which is about 1.8 mph, I need to cast/let out all of my sinking fly line get down about 15 ft.
Like others have said and what i can say is experiment and see where you want to be. I use points that entend out where it will be shallow very quickly like the west end of island park for depth experiments. Also, remember that what lure/fly/other you are trolling will have an effect on depth as well. I hope this helps.
Justin