I will be setting my jug line Saturday night. I'm
Thinking 40ft long, jug on one side, heavy weight on other..

So on my 5 hooks? What should I
Bait them with. I was thinking

2-little whole perch 3/4 inches
2- little cut mudcat, or if small enough ones whole
And deepest hook a chunk of cutbait covered on dip bait

gonna be set way too deep and dont need any where near 40' of line i would set it in 20' or less but bait wise it sounds like you have it figured out but dont be scared of using monster baits either

Ok I figured 40 ft was too much, but never set anything but limb lines, so didn't know

most of the year the shallower the better from about oct-jan is when the fish are deeper

10 ft at the most and cut shad and live bluegill for bait is my 2 cents.

20 feet will be plenty deep

so should i set 2-3 juglines around the area im gonna fish, the lakes not very busy since its drying up and im only gonna leave it from sundown to sunup?

I have been catching a lot of fish in the 30-35ft range lately. Do not be scared to fish deep!
And this is coming from a shallow water angler!

2 hooks per jug is much safer than 5.

i think after some thinkin and alot of help from yall, i will rig up one jug line at about 35 feet with 5 hooks, and one closer to 20 ft with 3 hooks. i will also be fishing R/R from campsite probably all night and walleye before dark and sunup

What should I use going from rope to hook, and how long?

you must be headed to greenbelt. keep us posted

Yes sir tomorrow night

There is no thermoc line right now so the fish can be at any depth. Lots of fish in the shallows but nothing keeping them out of the depths right now either. Lots of fish can be found in deep water or suspended over it if the lake damn is on the north end. Lots of shad will be on the north side of the lake due to the predominent south wind. There will be catfish scattered from surface to bottom in this kinda circumstance. Eventhough there are still lots of fish in deep water on the north end of the lakes I have better luck with them in the shallows towards the back ends of the lakes. I went out a few days ago to a lake and fished both ends. Back side in 2 foot of water and did great. Also went to north end by spillway in 34' of water. Caught 6 in a couple hours fishing on bottom. Caught a couple on floats fishing 7 or 8 foot down also. Shad were on the north end by the millions. Blues were porpusing and really feeling good. Eventhough there was lots of them suspended and even porpusing I still had better luck fishing on bottomed with a Santee rig than I did close to surface while I was over the deep water. Back in the shallow water is where I'd go though

just talkin' out loud here but if I'm gonna bother with setting jugs out, i'm setting 20 or more. One hook per jug. Never deeper than 20'. Most are set in 3 to 15 foot of water. Shallow flats near structure. Over and around humps. Along creek beds.

Might be lots of other ways to do it and have it work great, but I've got close to an 80% catch rate so far this year on jugs. So I'm doing something right.

PS. I only use one hook per jug for two reasons. 99% of the time I'm fishing alone so one hook per jug is just much safer for a solo fisherman than multiple hooks. And reason number 2 is if you have ever tried to untangle the mess 5 channel cats can make of a jug line and 5 leaders you'll think twice about mulitple hooks on a jug line too.

how far and what should i use as a leader of main rope