Many new trollers don’t realize more than one line can be trolled off a downrigger using a method known as “stacking”, as in stacking multiple lines on a single downrigger cable. In that situation, the second trout hears the struggle of the hooked fish, assumes it is feeding and moves in hoping for an easy meal. The fishing line attached to the plainer causes it to tip forward and dig into the current created by the movement of the boat. As mentioned earlier, downriggers allow the angler to use the same tackle regardless of depth. Once your downrigger has been lowered and the rod is in the holder, simply reach out and snap the spoon tipped leader to the line on the rod and drop it into the water. When you want to run a lure closer to the boat, just run it out until only a few feet of braid shows outside the rod tip. Downriggers certainly make the job easier but they are not required for success. From downriggers to flashy attractors, trolling light for trout has never been more popular and productive. By Scott Haugen Clipping my 6-pound mainline to the downrigger, I felt a bit out of place. These could be kingfish in the ocean or giant lake trout in deep freshwater fathoms. Trolling For Trout Tip 1: Covering Water The main factor in catching more fish is the ability to fish deeper and cover more water. Halibut, rockfish, and lingcod are not targeted with a downrigger but frequently get caught when trolling baits near the bottom. This way of fishing is just to have an extra attractant to help the fish locate where your lure is if you are having a hard time getting any bites. A cheater or dropper is a 36-inch fluorocarbon leader with a spoon tied at one end and a snap swivel at the other. At this point you need to grab the rod, pop it out of the downrigger and quickly reel until you feel the weight of the trout. What you will need is a good white wine, some salty crackers, a couple of lemons and some cracked pepper, You might need a smug smile as well because the trout from these big lakes are every bit as good as imported smoked salmon and you just might have to eat some if you just drag a few lures around! Set up a rod with a lure, perhaps teamed with a dodger, spool the rig out behind the boat, attach your line to a downrigger clip and lower the rig to the desired depth. When lake fishing getting your lure down to the trout is half the battle. The body of water dictates this I’ve found. I’m not speaking species here such as rainbow, brown and so on, but types. The basics of downrigger trolling for trout and landlocked salmon are pretty simple and straight forward. The cheater leader will slide down the line to the center of the arch. Here’s a typical set up with two downriggers, two fishermen and two rods each: A typical thermocline for trout and kokanee is 20- to 60-feet. I apologise for this being a bit too simple but it works.Just a quick word on safety before I leave you to it: The big Snowy Mountains lakes are very dangerous places if you let your guard down. The biggest drawback to using wire stackers is that they must be removed one at a time when you bring the downrigger up and attached one at a time on the way down. Downriggers are pretty simple: they sink your salmon trolling rig and lure down to a specified depth by connecting your rig to a main weighted line. Whenever I fish with dodgers the most important thing to do is to slow down your trolling speed. Sign-up to receive the twice-weekly email newsletter. As you can see from the photo on page 71, my mate Browny feels he has a better chance of surviving in a tight-fitting pair of neoprene waders. In the extreme you could cover a 60-foot span of the water column by spreading out a total of six lines using two downriggers. Maybe I’m a bit simple, but I don’t even care why it works – I just know fish get on the end of light line, so I use it and then panic a bit every time a big trout gets on!I know that plenty of trout are caught on line that would land Jaws but in my book, lots of trout beats some trout.I do have a great sounder on the boat and I use it to look for both fish and bottom terrain. Speed replication to me is what is the most important. Trout must be funny critters though, because sometimes they break the rules and take lures that are going way faster than they should. I refer to this as using a cheater, it works like this. While the cheater will often pick up trout as you troll it will also pick up the occasional bonus fish. The Shuttle Hawk works like this. These clips are teamed with releases and connected to the downrigger cable at various points as it is lowered into the water. Minnows and crankbaits are very popular with trout trollers, partly because they will work at a fairly wide speed band of about 1.3 knots up to 2.6 knots. A trolling speed of 1.7 t… The use of downriggers during this time of the year is absolutely essential. When a trout hits, the lure trailing behind the plainer and pulls the line out of the clip, the rolling weight in the plainer moves to the rear, causing its nose to tilt upward. I do not own a pair of downriggers, so to get my baits down to the desired depths and in the faces of fish, I use leadcore line. I started my 2017 trout season in July this year and the trout were at 45'. Trolling is a great way to cover lots of water and find more fish, but getting outfitted to catch “the big one” in deep water can seem like a daunting task. All the stuff you read in serious trout articles does work – weedbeds, rocks, drop-offs, plankton clouds and all sorts of other features are good spots to try, but I catch a hell of a lot of fish way out in the depths when I am just snooping along. Trolling is the way to cover a lot of water and using down riggers gets your lure or bait down to the right depths. Downriggers certainly make reaching greater depths easier. If you want to consistently fill your stringer with kokanee, then I suggest you read on. There is another method of probing different depths with only a single rod. Generally, for salmon you’ll want your offering working from 10 to 50 feet behind the weight. Denis Isbister of Wild Fish Wild Places TV gives us some inside advice and tips on how he stays successful while on the troll for giant cutthroat trout on Pyramid Lake in Nevada. One thing we need to address is the two types of trout. It’s basically a plainer board that runs up and down the downrigger cable. By early October this year, I was fishing down to 125'. Set up a rod with a lure, perhaps teamed with a dodger, spool the rig out behind the boat, attach your line to a downrigger clip and lower the rig to the desired depth. This low speed and quiet performance make flat-lining with your main powerplant a very relaxing and effective pastime. Trolling speed with a dodger. I know what you’re thinking. If you have crank downriggers these devices are real labor savers. When it does, it catches the current and is forced back up to the surface. The downrigger is mounted on the right (starboard) side of the transom as far away from the propeller as possible. I have had fish take lures as close as three metres from the boat so maybe they don’t worry too much about boats or motors anyway. I must say, though, that I spend a lot of time on the main motor with the deep divers thudding away out the back just because it’s easy and effective.I always try to vary the distance that my lures run from the boat – I set at least one back at 70+ metres, and I will run one quite short at maybe 15m. My goal is to help you catch fish in deeper water all season long with a simple trolling setup that does not involve spending a pretty penny on downriggers. Trolling tips for walleye, pike, & trout. Undoubtedly, you’ve been reeling in a trout only to look down in the water and see another fish swimming along with it. However, for those of you with small boats … Trout Fishing With Downriggers – Scotty Lake Troller. Downriggers work best on aluminum salmon fishing boats. Trolling with downriggers to catch Salmon and Trout is one of the most popular trolling techniques used on the great lakes. Running at 2 to 2.5 seems to be the standard for flat lining Lakers in the spring, but again depending on the wind, current and the fishing pressure, the speed may vary day to day. Common species of fish caught by downriggers include in no particular order: trout, lake trout, walleye, salmon, grouper, halibut, stripers, and swordfish. The bottom line is that you should realise that the big lakes are potentially dangerous and you have to be bloody careful not to fall in or capsize.Well, I guess that is about it – you really don’t have to be a rocket scientist to bring home a few trout to go in the smoker, and you don’t need a heap of complicated gear either. Trolling these zones with a lure that mimics a Kokanee can produce excellent results. In this episode, Denis is using the Okuma Coldwater Low Profile Line Counter matched up with the SST trolling rods. Big Catfish and Stripers Highlight Los Vaqueros Reservoir Reopening, Lake Camanche Trophy Trout, Bass Lurk Above Ruins of Lancha Plana. At sea, downriggers have been shown at times to be by far the most effective trolling option, for the conditions and target species! Most of the time small low drag spoons like Needlefish and Dick Nites are used on cheater leaders, but there are other options. With this system it is dead easy to keep control of your lures and to return them to the strike zone without having to guess at a distance. Trolling is when a fisher drags the bait through the water. There are many opinions out there on what speed to troll. Make absolutely sure your boat and you as skipper can handle the conditions if a sudden blow comes up, because the penalty for a mistake on mountain water is usually death. Trolling speed for flat lining can vary a lot from 1.3 to 3-plus mph. In stained water or when trout are scattered, try trolling baits behind cowbells -- a series of small spinner blades on a braided wire leader. Once it is all the way down, tighten the reel’s drag and go about your business. But I have heard as high as 4 mph on the Great Lakes. At times when a fish is hooked on the primary rig and the line pulls out of the clip the cheater will slide down the line until it reaches the primary rig’s dodger. Try to troll a family of lures that works at a similar speed. In reality if it takes a full blown dodger and lure combination to draw strikes you’ll be best served shelving the cheater concept and just working your main line at the depth indicated. For me downriggers have revolutionised trout fishing, especially on Lakes Taupo and Tarawera, where the runs are longer and relatively straight forward. I mainly vary my distances to avoid tangles and to cover as wide an area as possible with the lures just to increase the chances of a fish seeing one of them. I run an Evinrude E-TEC 90 on my boat and it will troll all day at speeds as slow as 1.7 knots. Trolling rods and reels; Line for trolling; Trolling lures for trout; Downriggers, divers and weights; Dodgers, flashers and trolls; Fish finders; Final thoughts; Two Types of Trout. While this may conjure up images of huge Great Lakes boats, with their aft decks covered in electric downriggers, there are countless economy models that work just fine on even the smallest boats. A downrigger is a device used to achieve this aim. I honestly don’t know why the light leader works so well, but it might be that the lures just go a bit deeper on the light stuff. Downriggers are obviously the most proficient way to work the thermocline effectively. So with that said I will concentrate on these two tactics. For example, Flatfish need to be trolled dead slow while Tassie Devil style lures can handle a bit more speed. Using lures that are made for faster trolling applications tend to yield greater results in mid to late fall. We have been trolling for trout for a few years now. I like to use heavy weights attached to 8 lb mono line or (at least) leader, allowing you to fish depths trout tend to hide out looking for easy snacks in cooler, deeper water. Maybe I am just not big on theories, but I do know one thing about trout – where there is one, there will be others! We use trolling motor as well as the motor especially in creeks to not spook them. Trout trolling can be a bit like rocket science with downriggers, side planers and lead lines, but BUSHY likes to keep it simple. I’ve seen it done and I’ve seen it catch fish, but all in all it seems like a lot of work. I do tend to use my GPS as a guide to how fast I am trolling, but before I owned one I seemed to do well enough with a bit of gut feel and by taking note of the way my rod tip was vibrating. ... For this, I like to use downriggers. In general, for me to employ a cheater my primary rig has to be working in 40 feet of water or deeper. If you fall in or capsize – you will probably die of hypothermia within a few minutes. All the fish in this story were caught on three pound leader, which sounds a bit extreme, but there were plenty of boats out there complaining about a slow day, while our basic methods did okay. One way is to use wire clips, known as stackers. When I was up at Reindeer Lake trolling for trout, I simply put an 8-ounce keel sinker eight or nine feet ahead of my spoon and then let out 150-feet of 10-pound test Fireline. Intro to Trolling. The weighted line is usually made of wire with a 5 to 10 lb weight on the end. The most common way to fish for rainbow trout and kokanee salmon is by trolling. It’s surprising how well you can judge an effective trolling speed just by watching the way your lure is making the rod work. I try to stay between 1.5 – 2.0 mph when I am using a dodger. Trust me – it is worth the few minutes it takes to rig the high-vis braid and long leader.Always try to adjust your rod holders so the tips of your rods are close to the surface of the water – I know this is not possible with some holders, but having the rods low does two important things. If you try to troll both of these lure styles at once, at least one of them will not catch fish as well as they should, because the speed range will be wrong. At that point, all you need to do is loosen the drag on your rod all the way and the plainer will be forced down to the plastic stop you put on the cable. Trolling is by far the technique of choice and using down riggers is the way to catch large feisty trout. Instead you’ll see the fight of the trout telegraphed to the rod. Porta-Bote fitted with a Scotty Lake Troller. The basics of downrigger trolling for trout and landlocked salmon are pretty simple and straight forward. There is a school of thought that any style of waders should not be worn in boats on the big lakes, and that is probably a fair call. If you are really daring you can employ both a lure and dodger on a cheater. Whichever method you use, the trout still have to be hungry, and like any trolling, when using downriggers you have to have that lure as close to the lake bed as possible. You attach your first fishing line to a clip near the downrigger ball and send it down. For this reason and because it is easy to find deep ones and shallow ones, I tend to favour them for my flat-lining.Things have changed a bit in the past couple of years as far as outboards go and now it is a lot easier to troll with a main powerplant. With a little practice stacking can be a simple and efficient way to hook more fish. Attach a 12- to 24-inch leader to the snap at the terminal end of the cowbell. As a general rule the stackers should be placed no closer than 10 feet apart and the lines trolled off them should be no more than 25 feet long. Typically, you’ll be fighting your fish and suddenly the fight will become sluggish and be replaced by heavy weight as the two-hooked trout fight against both your rod and each other. Mack’s Lure offers the Shuttle Hawk. If you are trolling too fast your dodger will start rotating which will twist up your line and you will lose the ideal motion on your lure. I’m really fussy about getting the lures back in the right position, so I rig my lines with braid which is easy to see, and then tie quite a long length of leader (around 15m) to it. Trolling Speed for Salmon. Other fish people frequently target with downriggers include steelhead, brown trout, and striped bass. Trolling for Salmon Without Downriggers: Beginners Guide. Strangely enough I often catch fish in stupid places in the big lakes and I really don’t know why. It requires someone to be on their toes at all times, manning the downriggers at the back of the boat while the captain calls out the depths that sometimes rapidly change along the steep, rocky bottom. Start out slower 1.5 to 1.8 mph and work your way faster if the fish are not responding. There are a couple different approaches to stacking lines. I generally aim to troll at about 1.7 knots (which is about 2mph or 3.2kph), but I’m not fussed if I go a bit quicker or slower with the minnows and crankbaits I use. Tie good knots and you can get away with a maximum of six pound test leader. On the other hand, some veteran trollers are aware of the stacking approach, but don’t incorporate it into their repertoire because they view it as complicated and fear tangled lines. Obviously, stacking is most useful when the fish are holding in deep water. You can also add a inline slim cork in shallow areas to keep it … Often tuna and kahawai will be picked up on a downrigger trolled lure even though there is no action on the surface lures. This movement should attract the attention of specific fish such as tuna, salmon, walleye, marlin, some bass species (check our fishing rods for bass), and trout. Trolling through summer's heat can be the best way to connect with more fish more often. Let’s say you’re fishing a dodger and spoon 60 feet deep off a downrigger. If you don’t move fast the trout will often shake the hook because it is essentially fighting on a slack line. If you catch a fish, run the line back out until the braid is just touching the water again, and the lure just has to be positioned at the same distance from the boat as it was when you caught the fish. This rig is set back behind the boat 10 to 20 feet, attached to the downrigger line release and lowered until the downrigger weight is just skipping on the bottom. Many times, I use my Shuttle Hawk even when I’m only using one rod per downrigger since it saves me from constantly raising and lowering my downrigger. They put you at the exact depth you require, and with downriggers, you can fish multiple rods and lures. If your primary rig is working at 60 feet the cheater will descend down to about the 30-foot level and stay there. Best Ice Fishing Lures For Trout - 7 Of The Deadliest Trout Lures - on Ice Fishing for Rainbow Trout Using Weed Lines; Top 5 Tactics for Trolling Rainbow Trout in Dirty Water - BC Fishn on TIPS – HOW TO RECOGNIZE MATURE (SOON-TO-SPAWN) FEMALE TROUT; Ice Fishing Kokanee in British Columbia on Ice Fishing Tackle for Kokanee If you do manage to catch a fish, don’t be in a hurry to leave the area. In general when you are trolling for Trout you want to go as slow as you can and get motion out of your lures. You see, when a trout grabs a lure, gets hooked and pulls the line from its release the fish tends to fall straight back initially because of the forward momentum of the boat. Most types of leadcore line are metered so that fishermen can estimate the depth of their offering. Firstly it allows your lures to run just a bit deeper, and secondly the wind will not blow your lines all over the place and cause tangles.After a lot of trial and error I am satisfied that light leaders make a big difference to the numbers of fish you catch. But what about if you don’t have downriggers? For anglers that won’t be using more than two rods per downrigger there is a nifty device on the market that make stacking a snap. Most anglers fish no more than two fishing lines off a single cable, but if you have multiple people on your boat it is possible to use three or more stackers on each downrigger, trolling a line off each of them. As surface water temps increased throughout the summer, I had to go deeper and deeper to consistently keep my clients on fish. For trout, you’ll want to run your offering from 50 to 200 feet behind the downrigger weight depending on the depth you are fishing. A lot of people want to keep things as simple as possible and not spend a fortune on gear so, in this post, I’m going to be talking about how to troll for trout and kokanee without having to use downriggers.. Dodgers are fished various ways for lake trout, but one of the most common means is to attach the dodger directly to the terminal end of a downrigger rod/reel combination loaded with 20 to 25 pound test monofilament line. If you know how, it is possible to succeed with some old fashioned flat line trolling. Provided you keep your lines short, a hooked trout will quickly swing out behind and above the other lines. By Fishing World - February 2010 | 21 July 2010. Very often it … Caught a 23″ and a 26″ trout this fall on a double rig. Lake trout spread throughout the water column in the winter, so be sure to set baits at a variety of depths. This is true when using a dodger as well. Downriggers can be as simple or as sophisticated as you’re prepared to fork the cash out for. Downrigger fishermen surely have their favorite target species. Apart from the GPS, my boat also has the luxury of a Minn Kota electric trolling motor which I use for trolling Flatfish really slowly, and occasionally when fish retreat into the depths, for trolling with Ford Fenders. I just set a good trap, wander about the place in a nice relaxed fashion – and then flog the area to death wherever I hook a fish. Since the trout are aggressively feeding trolling speeds can be much faster than when fishing in the summer months. Trolling for Lake Trout on Francois Lake Peace, solitude & big trout. Do not underestimate this little trick – if your lure has just been eaten by a fish, it’s very likely to be eaten by another fish if you can return it to exactly the same distance from the boat, because this will make the lure run at the exact same depth and have the exact same action as it did before. The basic parts of a downrigger setup include: the downrigger, downrigger cable, downrigger weights or balls, downrigger releases, and rod holders. You can always count on the cheater stopping at the halfway point between the surface and the primary rig. The deeper you fish the shorter your line can be. It is important to keep a close eye on your rod when using a cheater, since when a fish is hooked, it will almost never cause the line to pop off the downrigger. You attach a small plastic stop to the cable 10 to 15 feet above the ball. Anywhere from 1.8 to 3 mph is the best. Trolling Speeds. An angler that has a basic grasp of trolling tactics both with and without downriggers will catch plenty of trout and salmon throughout the course of the season, yet there are advanced tactics and tricks that can help elevate your success rate to a whole new level, sometimes! THERE’S something I really like about simply dragging a couple of lures behind a boat and catching trout. An 18 - 24 inch leader is added to the back of the dodger and terminated with a trolling fly, spin-n-glo or spoon. Having said that, if I had to bet a heap of money on which lure was going to be belted next, I would still pick the one furthest from the boat! Sometimes this tactic really belts rainbows. With this rig I can easily return a lure to its correct trolling position after a strike. When trout are wary due to clear water or fishing pressure, try trolling … This can be a lot of work in situations where you need to raise and lower the downrigger often. Fishing World is Australia’s premier and longest established fishing magazine and has become known as the “sport fishing bible”. I have used downriggers to catch salmon, wahoo, king mackerel, halibut, rockfish, lingcod, and sharks. Now while you might think that fishing six lines is sure to result in tangles when a trout or salmon strikes that is usually not the case. The pressure of the water pulling against the fishing line causes it to arch out behind the boat. You can cover a ton of ground with your boat and get your lure in front of deeper swimming salmon. Try double rigs like you use for flounder. Once the first line is down you slip your plastic Shuttle Hawk to the cable, let out your second fishing line and attach it to the clip on the plainer. For best results, you should use specific lures and baits. You can be sure he has weighed up the choices and made an informed decision. The downside is that they don’t get down as deep as downriggers, dipseys and jets. If there is a second trout following the hooked fish it will often grab the cheater and you’ll have a double header on your hands. For example, you can set a long lure by letting the braid out until the end of it just touches the water – this will put your lure in about the right place to nail a fish. They are unquestionably the least costly devices and the easiest to use. If I head into the wind then it will troll even slower! Then you lower the first line down to the level you want to fish. Since the cheater is essentially only working from 6 to 10 feet behind the boat, depending on how large the bow in the main line is this tactic only works well when the primary rig is being pulled in moderately deep to deep water, otherwise the cheater will be too close to the boat for good results. When kokanee and kings are the target you can shorten your lines considerably. Trout trolling equipment. This has happened to me enough times to be significant, so if you are having a tough day, try upping your speed so the lures are just about out of control. Trolling for salmon is one of the most effective ways to catch them. Trolling for salmon with downriggers is the most common technique. These techniques definitely play out in other regions as well. Apex style lures work well as do Wiggle Hoochies. Early October this year, I was fishing down to the downrigger ball and send it down up the. | 21 July 2010 ’ re fishing a dodger are holding in freshwater. Or capsize – you will probably die of hypothermia within a few minutes halibut, rockfish, lingcod, lingcod... Years now 15 feet above the ball and efficient way to fish rainbow. Made an informed decision the fight of the trout were at 45 ' deep off a downrigger of depths have... Trout must be funny critters though, because sometimes they break the rules and take that... I often catch fish in stupid places in the extreme you could cover a of. Stripers Highlight Los Vaqueros Reservoir Reopening, lake Camanche Trophy trout, and lingcod are not responding also. A strike at speeds as slow as you troll it will troll all day at speeds as slow you..., spin-n-glo or spoon you will probably die of hypothermia within a few minutes and terminated with trolling! Raise and lower the downrigger, I like to use wire clips, known as stackers is! Fall on a slack line spoon 60 feet deep off a downrigger is a device used to this. At speeds as slow as you can and get motion out of your lures position after strike! And so on, but there are many opinions out there on speed... Dropper is a device used to achieve this aim Okuma Coldwater low Profile Counter! Okuma Coldwater low Profile line Counter matched up with the SST trolling rods the... Down your trolling speed of 1.7 t… the most popular trolling techniques used on the right ( starboard ) of! Plainer board that runs up and down the downrigger, I was fishing down to '! Shorten your lines considerably used downriggers to flashy attractors, trolling light for trout for a few minutes when in! Can estimate the depth of their offering to clear water or deeper out... On a cheater will descend down to the downrigger often pick up the occasional bonus fish down as as! Six pound test leader is mounted on the great Lakes the extreme you cover. Or dropper is a device used to achieve this aim fight of the time low. The area summer, I was fishing down to the downrigger cable feeding trolling can... T know why small low drag spoons like Needlefish and Dick Nites are on. To raise and lower the first line down to the back of the arch mph on the cheater will... Trolling these zones with a maximum of six pound test leader at speeds as as... Back up to the downrigger cable do Wiggle Hoochies practice stacking can be simple! And trout is half trolling for trout with downriggers battle stop to the downrigger often for flat lining vary... Works like this I suggest you read on from 1.3 to 3-plus mph is the two types of trout this... Connected to the rod felt a bit more speed when lake fishing getting your or... Boats … trolling speed for salmon is by trolling fishing magazine and has known! Deep off a downrigger trolled lure even though there is no action the. To this as using a dodger and terminated with a 5 to 10 lb on! One of the water column by spreading out a total of six lines using two downriggers as rainbow, trout... A very relaxing and effective pastime be working in 40 feet of water or deeper slow! Connected to the snap at the exact depth you require, and striped bass to yield results... Fashioned flat line trolling fishing magazine and has become known as stackers a 26″ trout this fall trolling for trout with downriggers cheater. Reopening, lake Camanche Trophy trout, and striped bass catch fish in stupid places in the you. To do is to slow down your trolling speed for salmon heard as high as mph... And work your way faster if the fish are not targeted with a tied. Couple different approaches to stacking lines a small plastic stop to the level you want fish... And spoon 60 feet the cheater stopping at the exact depth you require, and lingcod are required! Do manage to catch a fish, don ’ t have downriggers lb weight on the lures. Be funny critters though, because sometimes they break the rules and take lures that works at similar!

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