Trolling with jet drives, trolling motor, and/or bags

[YamahaKub]

Will be going on an extended freshwater fishing trip. Worried about having enough power for trolling motor for more then a couple of days.

Looking for knowledge of anyone combining an ILink motor for heading control and tracking while running a combo of the engines running and trolling bags to target certain speeds. Goal is to minimize trolling motor power draw to just what is needed for steering.

Am hoping to go out tomorrow and test some combinations, but was hoping someone might have experience (does not really need to be jet boat experience on this) they could share.

Thanks!

 

[Eric Ballard]

I have an SX190 and i have a Minn Kota Riptide with 70# thrust. I could easily have gone with 55 for lake trolling. If you want to troll in the ocean than I say 70# is right.

 

[ClemsonTiger]

If your gonna be in the ocean a trolling motor won't work, period. Your going to have to use your engine to troll.

Trolling motor offers more control and steering but not enough power to troll the ocean.
Jet drives offers enough power to troll in the ocean but your gonna need someone to man the wheel at all times...let go of the wheel and your boat is gonna spin in circles, literally.

Your in a no win situation with a jet boat when trying to troll in the ocean....

 

[Eric Ballard]

If your gonna be in the ocean a trolling motor won't work, period. Your going to have to use your engine to troll.

Trolling motor offers more control and steering but not enough power to troll the ocean.
Jet drives offers enough power to troll in the ocean but your gonna need someone to man the wheel at all times...let go of the wheel and your boat is gonna spin in circles, literally.

Your in a no win situation with a jet boat when trying to troll in the ocean....

If you want to troll as in ocean fishing trolling, yes you cannot do that because you would never have the power. But you can troll as in keep your general location and move around a bit.

 

[Julian]

freshwater fishing trip

Looks like we are talking about freshwater trolling....which is much different....and will depend a lot on the wind and currents (if any) - and speed desired....trolling for Salmon for example, needing higher speeds.

 

[tim h]

@YamahaKub

Where will you be fishing ?

What are you fishing for ?

 

[YamahaKub]

@tim h

I was looking to troll for Muskie and walleye. I have trolled a bit for Muskie without much of a problem running the boat. Still plan to use both the i-Pilot along with engine power to get auto pilot type functionality. Have not had a chance to play with it much, but am seeing evidence of plenty of people doing it for trolling speeds. If it works, should be really functional. With two bags, two engines with a variety of no wake speeds and a decent trolling motor I am hoping to have ok trolling performance. Yet to be proven.

I did a bit of trolling for walleye at very slow speeds. Only used the trolling motor for that. Worked fine. I comfortably sat off the back swim platform while the boat did all the work following a contour line at a prescribed depth. Still looking for insight from anyone that has used the combinations for trolling in freshwater. Normally a max speed would be 5mph down to just under 1 mph (dragging walleye crawler harnesses among the bottom).

I have fished some flowages and Lake of the Woods. New to this. Plan to spend some time in Green Bay later this summer and fall.

 

[tim h]

It sounds like you have all that you might need for your targeted speeds/fish .
My experience on Green Bay is limited to just a few outings. My old fishing grounds is Port Washington. The wind was blowing strong enough that I didn’t need the motor at all trolling for walleyes...

I’m interested to hear if it works out for you !
Good luck

 

[Julian]

Huh...never trolled for Walleye when fishing LOW...always jigged for them on the bottom. Perhaps we are using the term trolling differently? Trolling to me typically means fairly deep water straight line driving, with 2+ lines out the back with lures/spoons etc on designed to hold a particular depth at different speeds.

 

[YamahaKub]

Your right. Trolling is almost non existent on LOTW. But very common further south. I had a couple dedicated walleye fishermen tell me to troll in LOTW for the big ones. I tried it a bit and caught a couple. We had more luck catching eater size casting in the weeds closer to shore. Middle of May fly hatch curbed the bite in general.

Trolling for walleye seems pretty common in my home state of Wisconsin.

Most of my desire to learn is around running the jets with the trolling motor running as a auto pilot. Different specific fishing tactics for different species varies significantly based on many factors. Many are successful and many not.

Good discussion.

 

[ClemsonTiger]

Walleye.......yes?

 

[YamahaKub]

Well. I tried the jets at no wake speeds combined with the auto pilot of the trolling motor. Only tried for a few minutes. It did get confused a bit. Under damped response. Bearing would oscillate back and forth. I think my issue was I did not set the trolling motor cruise control fast enough. Boat over ran the trolling motor. So the trolling motor would sometimes try to turn around to get back on track. I think I should be able to get this to work. Just have to mess with it a bit more. I also had it trying to run along a track vs auto pilot towards a waypoint.

 

[pmustico]

Thanks for the innovative idea. Good luck.