Trout Trolling Tips

A beautiful Lake Tahoe rainbow trout just prior to release.

I gotta say there’s something that just feels right about being on a mountain lake at the crack of dawn, trolling for trout. Glass calm water, fresh morning air, the sun peeking over the horizon and the hum of the trolling motor…so awesome!

Anyway, let’s talk about a couple of my favorite ways to catch fish in this scenario. You really don’t have to get too crazy with gear. Back in the day, I used to keep a box of trout trolling gear that was about the size of a Toyota Prius with me…and I think having all those lures actually hampered my success. Let me explain: with so many lures at my disposal, I spent more time changing stuff out every 5 minutes than actually just leaving the gear in the water and fishing.

Too many choices can, at times, lead to indecision and a lack of confidence. Instead of cycling through a tackle shop’s worth of baits, sometimes, you just have to pick a lure or two, get ‘em wet and stick to the program.

To that end, I ditched the 50-pound box of tackle and now employ just a couple of basic rigs for summer trout that work everywhere I go. Here’s a look at them:

The Meat Rig

This is the one that works just about anytime and any place and is my go-to to put some “meat” in the boat: The dodger/crawler rig.

Trout of all persuasions have a difficult time resisting a juicy worm dragged behind an attractor device. Ninety percent of the time I’ll use a small 4/0 (or 3.5” to 4”) kokanee sized dodger in silver, half/half or copper. I’ll run the leader pretty close to the dodger — typically 10” to 12” — so that its side-to-side motion imparts some action to the worm.

A standard koke-sized dodger by Luhr Jensen, Sep’s, etc, will swim roughly 10 feet below the surface (depending, of course on boat speed, line diameter and how far back you fish it). That’s just a ball park figure but the point being, if the fish are in the top 10 or 15 feet of the water column, you can run this rig without any additional weight. Of course, when the trout are holding down deep, you will have to use leadcore line or downriggers to get your baits in front of them, but the basic rig remains the same.

At the end of the leader, I’ll use a No. 2 or 4 bait holder style hook and then, with the help of a threader, thread the worm up the line so that the hook is hanging out the very tail end.

Now, you can also mess around with variations on this theme. If live minnows are allowed on the lake you fish, try running one behind the dodger instead of a worm. Another killer but not well known trout smasher is a white Berkley Power Grub fished on the same rig.

Trophy Tamer

So the dodger/worm rig is my choice when I want to shoot for the most possible action, but when bigger fish are on the menu, I’ll often opt for the “Trophy Tamer,” which is simply trolling a suspending jerk bait.

Designed for bass, these minnow-shaped baits have incredible action and, when at rest, will suspend. That ability to neither sink nor float when paused, is really the key to these things.

Jerkbaits come in a wide array of sizes and color patterns, so you should be able to easily match the natural forage in your favorite lake. When in doubt, the good ol’ dark back, silver sides paint scheme is a good place to start.

In water that’s no deeper than 10’ to 12’, the shallow diver models are fine. Go with the long billed deep divers when fishing water that’s 15’ to 20’.

LuckyCraft Pointer

Trolling jerk baits is not lazy man’s trolling. You’re going to keep the rod in your hand at all times and give it pops, jerks and long pulls. The idea here is to make your bait behave erratically. To best get that jerk bait pause effect, I like to drag the rod tip along the water towards the bow of the boat and then immediately throw the tip back towards the lure, which gives it some slack line — and thus, a chance to rest suspended for an instant before the tension of the line gets it moving again.

Trolling speed depends on water temp, but generally somewhere in the 2- to 3.5-mph range is good. You can keep the rods in the holders, but you certainly get more bites when you impart that extra action.

Make sure you have a rod with a forgiving tip because big trout tend to smash jerk baits with fury. Of course, you’ll also need some backbone to be able to wrestle a bruiser to the boat.