Willard Bay trip #6

[Tin-Can]

Those rat-l-traps don't dive very deep, how deep do you think you were fishing?  I was using small jointed shad rap, i  think running about 10 or 12 feet down.
The lure get lots of action because my boat really rocks, in the constant wave action.

  Rat-L-traps will go all the way to the bottom if you let them sink. They have no buoyancy at all, and no lip to drive them down when trolled. I pretty much control the depth by the speed of my boat.  From 16 years of playing with traps at WB I have been able to develop some pretty close guesswork.  I know that if I'm in 9-11 fow, and I have a 3" trap on the line, if I run at speeds from .5 to 1.8, my trap will "bounce" off the bottom in a fairly regular pattern. The faster I troll, the higher the trap rises in the water. When I see most of the fish marks on sonar in the upper 1/3 of the water depth, I speed up to 2.5 - 3.5 mph. When I see the fish marks in lower 1/3 depth, I slow down and watch my poles. When they start a regular "bounce" I know I'm hitting the bottom in a semi regular pattern. When the fish are marking all thru  the water, I randomly vary my speed, and do wide S turns. Doing wide turns while long lining causes the line on the inside of the turn to bounce the bottom, and the line on outside of the turn to speed up and climb up in the water. I also use jointed lipped cranks, diving, suspending, countdowns, plastics and swim baits. As well as very slow drag weighted San-tee rigs. They all have their own success rates like almost anything. And no one thing works 100% of the time. Especially at Willard.............   that's what keeps us all going back.