How many decoys?

[hardwaterfishing]

Thinking about trying water this year on opener. Never did that before, im going to set up on a point that allows me to put the dekes in the water and on the sandy shore. I have 18 floaters and 8 doz shells and full bodies. What are your guys opinion on how many to use and do I put them in two groups, or scatter them? thanks for the help. Good Luck to everyone.

[Walleyeguy32]

The earlier in the season the less you will have to use. I always start out with a dozen when hunting either duck or goose, and go from there as the season goes on. Once the birds become more educated (shot at) you will have to use more to bring them in.

[bmc]

It sounds like you have the right idea. A buddy and I hunted a similar situation a few years ago during early goose. We used about 30 decoys, a combo of floaters and full bodies. We had this spot scouted and they used it as a loafing area during the day. I'd say keep them in family groups (4-7) decoys per group. Depending on the wind, make a horse shoe shape with the decoys and sit in the bend of the horseshoe. Keep in mind the geese don't usually get back to the water till after 9am, unless they're getting pounded on local fields.

Good Luck,

Brian

[Scott M]

Family groups this early. Spread around so they seem at ease. Don't need too many decoys. You can leave the better part of 8 dozen decoys at home IMO

[eyepatrol]

Yep, family groups work well early on. I'll put the goose dekes in groups of 4/6/8 and then just toss out a puddle of 1-2doz duck dekes. Leave some gaps for the birds to land.

A week or two after opener, I start to bunch the dekes up into bigger flocks/groups and by the 3rd week in October I'm grouping them up....geese on one side, ducks on the other and a nice big gap in the middle.

[big drift]

This advice is good however a twist was thrown in this year by Mother Nature.

The molt flights are about 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule and really started coming in on Sunday.

I would seriously watch your location to see how many birds are using the location and use decoy numbers accordingly.

Also realize that tempertaures are dropping this week which will adjust the numbers of actively feeding and the times.

Saturday the weather in our area calls for light winds out of the west from 4-8 mph with 67% to 54% cloud cover and a 10%-20% chance of rain with higher humidty in the morning. What the heck does that mean and why should we care you may ask, basically it means that in this system and light motion will be a major factor.

I would use your floaters and only about 6 fbs and maybe 6-12.

Good luck hope to hear things work out for ya.

[dan z]

always depends on how many are on the water. kind of a match the hatch deal. last year we hunted a public lake and used every decoy we had and it still seemd like we were short decoys. put out in groups of 5-9 decoys i would prolly say we had out 90 plus floaters and this year sounds like a couple dozen have added cant waite to put the smack down on some honks

[Quackaddict9]

My group has 7.5 doz fullbodies but I do not think we will put em all out on Opener, depends on the situation and how many birds are in the field we will be hunting in. We have put out everything we had in the past on opening weekend and did well. Works good for running traffic too.