How do you slow down for lake trout?

[RickT.]

Re: How do you slow down for lake trout?

Just maintain enough speed for control and you will catch fish. 2-4mph will be ok in rough conditions, slower on a calm day. Go deep in summer months for
the colder water, after ice out, fish are closer to surface, you will figure it
out, use your common sense, not all the expensive electronic gadgets, they
don't catch fish for you, but you spend a lot of money.

 

[Mark_VTfisherman]

Re: How do you slow down for lake trout?

....2-4mph will be ok

The question was "how do you slow down for lake trout?" I personally have been shocked to catch lakers at 2.5-3 mph. 4 MPH is salmon territory. I don't know what to say here.

Go deep in summer months for the colder water, after ice out, fish are closer to surface, you will figure it
out, use your common sense, not all the expensive electronic gadgets, they don't catch fish for you, but you spend a lot of money.

HOW deep? On WHAT structure? Over WHAT bottom composition? Are there any BAITFISH around? Even a paper depth chart won't tell you much about those things. Common sense tells me that I can't "use the force, Luke" to find any of those things but my sonar works great for it. And GPS tells me when I am moving at 1.3 mph or 2.2, 2.8, etc. This lets me figure it out. The gadgets work, not common sense.

Don't mean to beat you up Rick T but your input seemed off to me.

BTW- meant to tell NMShooter this: a sutton spoon- if you can find them these days- will flutter and have great action at 1 mph. Water has a lot of resistance. Sometimes the stop-and-go action you get at slow speeds with a little chop can trigger strikes as the sutton stops and flutters a little before jumping back into motion again. This is why a lot of old-timers around here use 16# wire,and a short leader of mono in front of a streamer fly or sutton. They yank it constantly and catch a lot of fish hardly moving.

 

[johnspells]

Re: How do you slow down for lake trout?

It is really worth reading all the post I think it will be very useful. I want to say that the photo was really awesome I like it very much. It is a good advices by you all. Keep doing this job.

 

[NMShooter]

Re: How do you slow down for lake trout?

Did a test troll with my Happy Troller plate at a local lake... only brought it down to about 2.5mph. Still considering dragging a bucket off the bow as well, but may not get a bucket reinforced in time. If not, I'll just troll in an S pattern as much as possible.

Heading out to try for lake trout this Saturday with my daughter. Still scrambling to get my downriggers mounted in a secure fashion. A 10# ball on the end of a 4' downrigger can really put the twist on.

I'm hoping for a calm day. This lake only has one ramp and the wind has been known to shut it down. You have to go wait on the lee side of the shore and just hang out till the wind dies down. I'll take a look at the wind projection on Friday before making a call.

Our lake is producing well. Reports are that quite a few between 10 and 20lb are being caught.

 

[recce43]

Re: How do you slow down for lake trout?

back trolling works good drive the boat in reverse it go very slow and real good control of boat

 

[bugman1964]

Re: How do you slow down for lake trout?

Trolling bait can easily be done for lakers using a slip style bait rig. These normally have 2 hooks, the end one is tied fixed to the rig and is used to hook the bait near the tail. The upper hook is inserted in or near the bait head. The upper hook slides on the leader so you can bend the bait a little to get it to roll or spin. I also use the mosselook wobblers but have had better success with speedy shiners in wierd colors/patterns for lakers. Attached is information on how to make a quick strike (slip) rig.


http://www.musky.com/Features/Strike.htm