@ Towac78, There is no clear cut way of keeping them off when running meat... it's just the nature of the beast! Sheephead and white bass/perch plagued us at times today at Kellys, but we kept hanging meat until we got our fish. Some have increased their speeds to keep it away from them, but thats no full proof. I wish I could tell you there was some trick, however there isnt one. Sometimes you just plan on going thru some crawlers. The other thing is to move to another area and try that.

 

You can eliminate all trash fish.

STOP FISHING.

When the trash fish take over.....move. Make a run 1-3 miles and set up in a different water depth. Mentally......you get to start over.

Running harnesses/meat can make ya crazy with trash fish. It goes with harness fishing.

Make a run someplace different when the trash take over.

 

Start running plugs or get some minnows and catch some perch. If you have the white perch numbers under control, then things may change. There are no trash fish, just your attitude needs to realize that a balanced harvest of the biomass should be attained.

 

When the trash is that thick we relocate.

 

Yep, move or feed 'em

 

Last friday we were checking our harnesses every few minutes. It paid off as we got our limits and even tossed a few back after that. The flags on the planer boards helped us notice a junk fish strike. We eventually moved to deeper water and got far less junk per walleye. Trolling is not always a picnic. we couldn't really sit down that often last friday unless you adore an empty harness or drowning a 6" junker.

 

Go to large spoons or Reef Runners, and you'll reduce the trash significantly (w/ 3-1/4" spoons you'll cut 75%, w/ Reef runners 90% plus).

Use a white based Reef Runner and you'll catch the eyes that are there eating the pesky white perch. Barbie is probably best.

 

Harness program out here I imagine is similar to everywhere else...Goes really well at first then slows (or least seems to slow) once the junk moves in and clogs up all your rods....Sometimes you can ramp up the speed a bit and still get action, but generally we are trolling that 1.8-2.5mph...

Generally for us we do well on harnesses till the end of July and once the junk moves in its all hardware from there on out. Dipsys with spoons or shallow lipped cranks and boards loaded with spoons or deep diving cranks...

 

Last year we were getting destroyed by the junk. Couldn't get the harness out before a white perch took it. I don't mind that much because I eat white bass and white perch, but we were targeting walleye.

For me, a combination of Gulp ALive (natural looking worms) and tadpole divers virtually eliminated the trash fish (on that day, at least). I don't know that the tadpoles were significant, but that's what we ended up pulling for most of our tickets that day.