I have been outfitting a new Hobie kayak with the various accouterments that I like to use for trolling. I finally got it finished, so I hit lake Ballinger for the test run of a cut down Scotty 1050 DR, boom. It was blazing feaking hot out.. water temp 80.7 on the sonar. Great trout fishing time, NOT..
I trolled mostly the Sound end of the lake between the South island tip and the south lake shore. It is the deepest part of the lake, averaging around 30'. There are ton of fish to be marked on the sonar, mostly 15-20' in depth. I trolled a various dodgers followed by Wedding rings, mini hootchies, and a Black Wooly Bugger. I got no love what so ever.. I did pull up a shopping bag at a depth of 25' while trolling, as well as a fir tree branch. I wondered out loud at the date of the shopping bag coming up from the depths. There was a faded advertisement about keeping people off drugs or something. (-:
Down rigger worked like a charm, probably will need to make some adjustments to placement, angle, etc. Saw a few fish jump even in the 80 degree bath water.
Interesting thing to note is that when you are regularly using large boat launches in lakes that accommodate a lot of boats, 'most people' generally get boat launch educate.... but when you are launching a trailer in a little lake like this, with 50-60 people playing around in floaty toys etc. You get a lot of rookies at the launch. I am backing down trailer, to retrieve kayak. This is a large heavy kayak that requires a trailer.
I get people dragging their yaks into the launch and then running off to wherever. Then said person goes down and moves their yak, as I did nicely kind of point out that it was going to get run over.
So, I back down, very quickly place Yak on trailer... and as I am about to pull forward, previous Yak person backs their vehicle right down into the launch blocking me in. What?! Oh well... I didn't have to work today, anyway.

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