Butterfly Jigging
We have been using the butterfly/vertical jigging system now for over a year and have been learning more and more ways to be successful while using the system. On some of the deep wrecks you can be pretty much guaranteed action from amberjacks and almacos, as well as groupers, muttons, cudas, kingfish and others if you can get past the jacks. On July 4 we tried them in a little different way.
My family as well as a couple other families always go camping for July 4th on a lake up in upstate NY. Every year we target lake trout slow trolling using giant flashers chains, and catch fish but usually it's only one or two a day. This year I brought up some Butterfly and Braid jigs with the hope that we could catch them more easily. The first day we missed a fish or two but still not what we expected until one morning I kayaked over to a point with a severe drop-off. The bottom went from the shore to 150ft. depth in about 75ft. On the first drop I get 25 cranks up and get slammed, up comes a 5lb. lake trout one of the bigger fish we have caught on this lake. Next drop up 30 cranks, drop it again and line doesn't go out, he ate it on the pause and up comes another even bigger lake trout. The next day we caught 4 more in extremely windy conditions and weren't able to keep the jigs vertical. I have no doubt the action could have been wide open if the calm conditions exist. We also caught numerous small mouth bass when our drift brought us into the shallows
