Custom Baits - Forum
Jigs, Spinnerbaits and Sinkers => Lures => Topic started by: ctom on 10/19/15 15:12 UTC
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My last trip to the cabin and Lake Superior to chase Lake Trout in the boat at the end of September got shortened up some by not having any decent Trout jigs along. I'm taking care of that problem now. Since there is no trout forum in the lead section, I'll post what I am doing here. The mold is Do-It's Banana Jig, model JYS-1055L. Everything I am doing is using the largest, the 2 ounce, cavity exclusively. No alterations to the mold have been made.
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/cttackle/761ad772-bba9-4f73-af88-3ec6917152fd.jpg) (http://s941.photobucket.com/user/cttackle/media/761ad772-bba9-4f73-af88-3ec6917152fd.jpg.html)
Lake Trout jigs almost always will employ a stinger of some sort with most simply tied into the hair as the jig is finished. We've have several of these jigs fail in the past and to counter the problem I am using 60 pound 12 strand wire and casting the wire into the heads of these 2 ounce Banana Head jigs. I make a loop thru a crimping sleeve as shown here in the middle, then the loop goes over the eye of the hook, is cinched up tight and the sleeve double crimped. Then a copper wire wrap secures things further and also keeps the 12 strand close to the hook shank, especially in the end where the wire runs out the tying collar. The second wrap of copper simply keeps the 12 strand in place so it comes out of the collar on the outside of the hook bend. The wire is less likely to bind when fighting a fish when it is kept outside of the hook bend. Once cast this second wrap gets taken off. Where the 12 strand exits the mold near the rear of the jighead there is ample room in the cavity for the wire to simply ride along side the hook without any need to tinkering. I could have used 80 pound wired but I had the 60 on hand so.....
I didn't think to add anything for size reference, but the hook is a 7/0 Mustad 32786 Black Nickel, 60 degree. From the front of the eye to the back edge of the bend the hook is almost 3" in length. These hooks are "sticky" sharp and its my thinking that they will out perform the "tinned" hooks the mold calls for. At this point the heads weight slightly over 2 ounces. The tinned 410 hooks are slightly longer but the Mustads used here have a larger gap and with the stinger they'll be deadly.
The next steps are painting, tying the hair, and adding the #2 Gammi wide gap trebles as the stingers. The stingers will get the same crimp as the loop that's been cast in the head. I'll have another photo showing the finished product....hopefully in a day or so. For those wondering why the large jigs for Lake Trout, Lake Superior can kick out fish in the 50 pound range and very often the jigging is done at depths approaching 175 to 200 feet. The big jigs sink fast and cut down on waiting to for a bait to drop to those depths. A ten pound Trout can inhale a jig of this size, even with a 6" to 8" Cisco hung on it for that little extra.
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Finally a jig in a size that I can relate to. By the time you get to your normal 60 count this bad boy as been on the bottom ready for action. You got enough lead in this chump to make 100 of the other ones. :P
On a serious note I like how you wire tie the wire to the hook before you poor the lead. Gives it a nice clean look and I would think it would be imposable to come undone.
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Slick Idea - Necessity is the mother of invention. This concept seems like it will work on a number of molds. Thanks for sharing.
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I'll bet this would work on inland stripers and maybe even muskies! Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
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I just finished the powder coating in white and in chartreuse. 1/3 or the white got a blue lacquer on top and another third got yellow lacquer on top. I'll get the eyes dotted on tonight while I watch the tube. Tomorrow the hair will fly and then the blood will run as I add the trebles.
I'm going to order some 100 pound 12 strand for the next bunch. The crimps are the same for both wire sizes so I'll add that "extra" as cushion. My largest Laker was estimated at between 37 and 44 pounds by a dnr creel counter based on length and girth for the time of year. I got that fish the day before the fall season closed so the Lakers can spawn without any fishing pressure.....49 1/2" length and 39" girth. I say its my 39 pounder, not that I give a rip about the weight. It took one hour and 27 minutes to land that turkey on 6 pound line. I was fishing off the breakwater in Two Harbors. I've seen three fish bigger caught off the wall over the years. This one went right back in the water, lure and all, as soon as the taping was finished and she never came out of the water to do that. I've caught several in the twenty two to 25 pound range and its amazing what a fish that size can do to tackle.
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I just finished the powder coating in white and in chartreuse. 1/3 or the white got a blue lacquer on top and another third got yellow lacquer on top. I'll get the eyes dotted on tonight while I watch the tube. Tomorrow the hair will fly and then the blood will run as I add the trebles.
I'm going to order some 100 pound 12 strand for the next bunch. The crimps are the same for both wire sizes so I'll add that "extra" as cushion. My largest Laker was estimated at between 37 and 44 pounds by a dnr creel counter based on length and girth for the time of year. I got that fish the day before the fall season closed so the Lakers can spawn without any fishing pressure.....49 1/2" length and 39" girth. I say its my 39 pounder, not that I give a rip about the weight. It took one hour and 27 minutes to land that turkey on 6 pound line. I was fishing off the breakwater in Two Harbors. I've seen three fish bigger caught off the wall over the years. This one went right back in the water, lure and all, as soon as the taping was finished and she never came out of the water to do that. I've caught several in the twenty two to 25 pound range and its amazing what a fish that size can do to tackle.
Good for you for releasing her. Big fish make big blood to fish for tomorrow.
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That big girl was hooked past the gullet, but not bleeding so the release I feel was successful. I cut the line leaving the bait and swivel in her. I've taken a few fish that were over the 20 pound mark that had been hooked in the gills or were and the hooks tore out and were bleeding badly so those have gone home with me. I try to release any Lake Trout that are past the ten pound mark.
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Those are going to work!!! That's a giant Laker you got! Wow!
Have you ever made the Stannard Rock trip? That's always been on my Bucket List!
Marc
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I have not Marc. Most all of my Lake Superior fishing has been in Two Harbors and a couple times out of Duluth. I did a charter out of Grand Portage once with Isle Royale as the target but weather and wind made us vacate the trip about half way out.
I've hooked up on fish I figured were BIG Lakers that simply run the line off the spool and never stop. I usually carry a couple of spare reel-filler packs of line along with the lures for that reason, especially in late September. Guys ice fishing off 21st Street in Duluth - when ice allows it - catch some seriously huge Trout too. The ore docks in Two Harbors sees some unreal Lakers too thru the ice. I know of three that have inched up on 50 pounds.
Big trout are like bulldozers locked in low gear. They don't really fight like a salmon or big brown will fight, they just swim and hug bottom. I think some of those monsters that have spooled me are the Sissowet strain of Lakers, the deep water fish. They are able to get to unreal sizes. The only time I have seen any of the Sissowets is in late September when the laker masses flock to that sandy shore off Park Point in Duluth to spawn. Sissowets will spawn down to 600 feet but they'll also follow the Redfins when they get the spawning urge. Sissowets spend most of their lives in very deep water and they are not a table fish. They aren't even good in the smoker because of the high oil content of the flesh.
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We have been seeing Lakers in the upper twenty pound range the past few years. Those are beast... I cant even imagine a 50 pounder.
All of the avid trollers in the area will report a "Screamer" once or twice per year. These are fish they can't stop or get off the bottom. The consensus has always been that they are big Lakers. They just pull and pull and pull. Magnificent fish!
So you are using the 2 ounce off the breakwall up there?
Share some photos when you score one of those beasts.
Marc
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I was looking at google maps and that Two Harbors area. Can you get out on that breakwall by the boat launch/parking?. If so, how deep is it out there?
Looks like some serious breakwall!!!
Marc
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The heavy jigs I use in the boat when its available. There are a series of humps that top out anywhere from 52 feet to 75 feet in water that is generally from 117 to 130 feet deep. The tops and edges of these near-vertical walled humps are baitfish and trout magnets. Its hard to describe the number of huge arches we mark in and around bait balls the size of football fields that can cloud the hump tops or along the bases of them. Its not unusual to find twenty big arches just sitting in limbo atop a hump. If these fish won't respond to a trolled lure our next approach is to pop the lines from the ball clips the instant we see an arch and cut the throttle. The rods go back in the holders while the cannonballs are lifted. About 50% of the time the fish will chase the lure as it flutters upward as the drift pulls the slack from the line and being light-weight baits they climb quite fast. This technique will get a mess of fish, but when those big guys won't chase vertically or horizontally, we'll break out a couple heavy rods and drop jigs with strips of cut Cisco added for some meat enhancement and jig them. We use stiff poles and twenty pound braid with a ten foot length of 40 pound Vanish tied in as a leader. The terminal end of the line is a Sampo 30 pound swivel. We use the electric to hold over the tops of the humps and do a lift-drop on tight line that is about 10 to 12 feet. There is no doubt if there is a hook-up.
We also know of several deep holes (175 -225 feet) that the Trout will hold in and we'll jig the heck out of them there as well, but man is that work when you consider the line's weight that one has to heft up each lift. A lot of guys use gloves and steel hand-lines to jig the deep trout. They'll un-wind the steel line ( some use copper line) until the heavy jig thunks on the bottom, then they lift the line up about 10 feet and re-wind it on the line board. Then its a matter of just putting a couple wraps of the line around a gloved hand ( very heavy leather gloves at that) and they stand there and jig the heck out of the rig. The fish come in hand over hand. I tried this once. End of that chapter. Some of the more serious hand-liners use jigs upwards of 4 ounces, but I've never needed more than two using a rod.
When I am casting the breakwater I can get to water about 90 feet deep and that is right on the periphery of the rock that is laid in there to help keep the breakwater from shifting. The Lake Trout and Salmon along with Herring love the way the rock helps to create hidden eddys and up lifts in current. Steelhead and Loopers get suckered in by the constant influx of bug life. Honestly I catch as many if not more fish from the breakwater than while in the boat, but the larger fish come more consistently to the boat. The rocks at the base of the breakwater also offer refuge for smaller Lake Trout form the big Lake Trout as they are terribly cannibalistic and the small ones are considered dinner. I was getting ready to net a 14" Lake Trout one morning when one about 24 pounds charged up and grabbed it. The big fish had that small fish completely down the hatch in ten feet. The big one came to the net about 15 minutes later and was released. A guy never knows what is going to happen when Lake Trout are around and one never knows when that tanker will show up. I don't think those huge ones even know they are hooked, they just swim away like nothing is happening.
Maybe next year one of those tanks will get to the net. I lost two big ones this summer between August and September's first trip. I do carry the camera out there on the off chance I can capture a sunrise that's unique. If a tank arrives I can grab a picture. I may have one that was in my avatar for a while from there. That fish was 26 pounds....I'll see if I can dredge it up.
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I just caught your second post Marc. The breakwater is over 1/3 of a mile in length. From the dogleg to the end on the lake side one can fish 70 to 75 feet of water. STraight off the end there is a pocket of water right around 90 feet at the end of a long cast. You can park in the lot and walk out on the breakwater no problem. There is a second wall across the bay of the harbor that can be gotten to by boat.
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That sounds like an awesome piece of breakwall.... Access to 70-90 feet of water.... Wow That's even a whole different world than what we have here on Lake Michigan. We max out about 30 or so.
Very fascinating fishery... I have always been drawn by the elusiveness of big Lakers.
Thanks,
Marc
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I gotta make me some of those jigs! Stinger hooks are a necessity on lead head jigs sometimes. Love jigging lakers. It's fun enough catching what I call schoolies, but the chance of hooking into a big one keeps it even more interesting! It's all relative though, where I fish a 10 pounder is a very good fish, and a 20 is a once in a lifetime behemoth. Cannot even imagine a 50! :o
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Tom, on that breakwall, how do you get from the upper part of the wall to the lower shelf?
Thanks,
Marc
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There are stairways all along both sides from the top to water level walkways. The stairs are every 100 feet. It's roughly 4 1/2 feet from the top to the lower walkway. There is a two wire safety fence along the top on the harbor side from land to the light house. I've had to come off the wall by walking atop the bottom wire holding onto the top wire....get to fishing and not paying attention to what's happening between me and landfall lol. Its not unusual for waves to roll over the top when the NE'ers blow.
The wall can be spooky when fog sets in. One morning I was out there all by my lonesome with fog so thick I could not see beyond the lighthouse. I knew an ore boat was out there because it was sounding its horn. The lighthouse has a horn too but it has to be called for it to sound. I started to the thrumming of the props when they slowed down and all at once the horn in the house goes off. I damn near left my white right there. Then the ore boat sounds and he's only about 40 feet from the end of the wall....I was able to look up and see the sidewalls of the boat slide past, but could see nothing of it by looking straight ahead. Its absolutely amazing how silent a 1000 foot ship can be and in the fog that is the epitome of eerie. It took an hour for my heart to work proper after that horn shot.
It's a super cool area with campgrounds for tenting as well as larger wheeled units. OR, I know a guy with a cabin that fishes up there a lot. In his own mind he's not a bad guy but there are some here who may beg to differ.....and what do they know? I know it takes between 4 and 4 1/2 hours for me to get to Two Harbors from home and where you're at you'd maybe have to add another couple if you come up 90/94 to 694 then 35E. The two periods I'd suggest are mid-May to early June as one and the last half of September as the other. Your best shot at a pig trout on the water is the September number, but if ice develops heavy enough near Duluth that's another option. I don't ice fish that body of water any more. Looking down the hole and seeing the gravel bottom moving is not a good feeling and running anymore is not an option. Small boats can handle the water as long as the wind stays out of a direction other than NE or straight East. By small, I mean like my jon boat that I have had out there on several occasions. 14' to 16' fishing type boats are common.
If you want to try something different, give me a shout.