While fishing by trolling, speed control is one of the most important factors.
- Speed affects the action of the lure.
- Speed influences the likelihood of triggering strikes.
- Speed influences the depth of the lure.
The Trolling Angles app cannot tell you at which speed you should troll your lure. That’s between you and the fish. But it can show the effect speed has on the depth curve.
For an introduction to Trolling Angles, first check out this post trollingangles.com/the-unique-trolling-angles-method/ and the top website page trollingangles.com.
Diving lures with no added weight do not change depth much if at all depending on speed, because drag force is balanced by diving force. The Trolling Angles app will show you how deep your lure is travelling, and you can usually vary your speed without greatly affecting an unweighted lure’s depth.
However, sinking rigs like downriggers, jigs, and lines with sinkers, snap weights, or weighted divers are heavily influenced by speed. The Trolling Angles app, at version 3, has been enhanced to show how deep your lure is travelling at any speed. It will allow you to specify the trolling speed before generating your depth curve. But this requires a little setup work.
The basis of a Trolling Angles depth curve is a “Calibration”, which is a set of line angle measurements at different line lengths for a single speed. The app uses this data to calculate the depth curve.
If you collect a few different calibrations for the same rig at different speeds, the Trolling Angles app can generate a curve for any speed you enter. Set this up in the app by creating a “Gauge” with different calibrations for the same rig: one at the slowest reasonable speed you will troll, one at the fastest reasonable speed, and maybe a couple more at intermediate speeds you are likely to use. When you enter a new trolling speed in the app, the app will interpolate between the known calibrations to generate and use a temporary depth curve.
The Variable Speed Gauge screen above shows all details including the known calibration curves (in green) the generated calibration curve (in gray and red), and the trolling depth control. All trolling screens also allow you to enter your desired variable speed.
See the following pages and posts for more interesting information.
