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Looking for some advice/feedback on deep trolling 35-50 feet for northern and walleye in some of the lakes around grand rapids and hibbing. Was going to spend some time on Swan, Sturgeon and Trout trolling raps but not really relating to any certain structure. Any advice out there about suspended fish or if it would be best to be close to bottom, etc.? Your thoughts.

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I dunno, haven't fished deep with downriggers/lead line much. I do know it's real stressful on the fish so I tryto stay away from it. If you wanna catch eyes, it'd be a lot easier to just start trolling 10'-14' at night on Trout with a Rap on 3-ways. You'll get plenty of fish.

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I imagine you have experience doing this, and with that you know more than I. But I will say that on those lakes at those depths, the bottom probably won't be productive because you'll be below the thermocline (in the summer). In open water, find baitfish and troll at or just above their depth. You can definitely catch fish in the "deep" open water, but they probably won't be near bottom this time of year.

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My wife and I fished Fish A Rama this past Saturday. We concentrated on the 20-35' depth range. lindy rigging creek chubs. She caught a couple of decent northerns 5.2 and 6.6 lbs and had another big fish break off before we saw it. We graphed ALOT of fish in these depths.

We saw the most fish along the shoreline, but we did try a hump that didn't have much for fish on/around it.

Good luck!

Brian

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Saw plenty of fish but had hard time getting consistent bite and when walleye did they were not agressive at all. Used mainly crawler on bottom and didn't have luck trolling as there was so much vegitation floating in lake it was hard to troll. Kept getting caught on line and going down to lure. In hindsight I should have used a three way set up of sorts so weeds got caught at swivel instead of going down to lure. Either way saw suspended fish and also fish hugging bottom in 20 - 35 FOW but didn't see much hanging out deeper like i thought I would. I was thinking I could troll suspended fish over 30 plus FOW and have some fun with walleye and pike but it wasn't too be. Very slow for me. Good luck all.

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I was fishing in canada last week and pulled up several walleye from 80-100 foot down. WTH?!?! Jigging big bucktails for lake trout. Of course they threw up their swim bladders when they came up, and ended up on the dinner plate.

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