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! 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. 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 In this episode, Denis is using the Okuma Coldwater Low Profile Line Counter matched up with the SST trolling rods. Downriggers certainly make reaching greater depths easier. Downriggers certainly make the job easier but they are not required for success. 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. 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. 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. The basics of downrigger trolling for trout and landlocked salmon are pretty simple and straight forward. Trolling is when a fisher drags the bait through the water. 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. 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. When lake fishing getting your lure down to the trout is half the battle. 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. Generally, for salmon you’ll want your offering working from 10 to 50 feet behind the weight. 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. There is another method of probing different depths with only a single rod. If I head into the wind then it will troll even slower! Provided you keep your lines short, a hooked trout will quickly swing out behind and above the other lines. 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. Downrigger fishermen surely have their favorite target species. From downriggers to flashy attractors, trolling light for trout has never been more popular and productive. Undoubtedly, you’ve been reeling in a trout only to look down in the water and see another fish swimming along with it. 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. Big Catfish and Stripers Highlight Los Vaqueros Reservoir Reopening, Lake Camanche Trophy Trout, Bass Lurk Above Ruins of Lancha Plana. 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. This is true when using a dodger as well. 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. It’s basically a plainer board that runs up and down the downrigger cable. Sometimes this tactic really belts rainbows. A trolling speed of 1.7 t… Lake trout spread throughout the water column in the winter, so be sure to set baits at a variety of depths. 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. The cheater leader will slide down the line to the center of the arch. A downrigger is a device used to achieve this aim. 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. 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. One thing we need to address is the two types of trout. Tie good knots and you can get away with a maximum of six pound test leader. 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. 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. 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. Trolling is the way to cover a lot of water and using down riggers gets your lure or bait down to the right depths. They are unquestionably the least costly devices and the easiest to use. 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. 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. 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. 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. Very often it … The fishing line attached to the plainer causes it to tip forward and dig into the current created by the movement of the boat. By Scott Haugen Clipping my 6-pound mainline to the downrigger, I felt a bit out of place. However, for those of you with small boats … Maybe I am just not big on theories, but I do know one thing about trout – where there is one, there will be others! The pressure of the water pulling against the fishing line causes it to arch out behind the boat. There are many opinions out there on what speed to troll. The weighted line is usually made of wire with a 5 to 10 lb weight on the end. 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. Often tuna and kahawai will be picked up on a downrigger trolled lure even though there is no action on the surface lures. By Fishing World - February 2010 | 21 July 2010. 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 speed with a dodger. If you are really daring you can employ both a lure and dodger on a cheater. Downriggers work best on aluminum salmon fishing boats. 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. Trolling Speed for Salmon. Most types of leadcore line are metered so that fishermen can estimate the depth of their offering. Trolling Speeds. Common species of fish caught by downriggers include in no particular order: trout, lake trout, walleye, salmon, grouper, halibut, stripers, and swordfish. Since the trout are aggressively feeding trolling speeds can be much faster than when fishing in the summer months. These could be kingfish in the ocean or giant lake trout in deep freshwater fathoms. Trout trolling can be a bit like rocket science with downriggers, side planers and lead lines, but BUSHY likes to keep it simple. In stained water or when trout are scattered, try trolling baits behind cowbells -- a series of small spinner blades on a braided wire leader. 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. When it does, it catches the current and is forced back up to the surface. 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. But I have heard as high as 4 mph on the Great Lakes. Most of the time small low drag spoons like Needlefish and Dick Nites are used on cheater leaders, but there are other options. 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. These techniques definitely play out in other regions as well. 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. In general when you are trolling for Trout you want to go as slow as you can and get motion out of your lures. Strangely enough I often catch fish in stupid places in the big lakes and I really don’t know why. 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. Have heard as high as 4 mph on the great Lakes the cable 10 to 15 feet the. Trolling techniques used on cheater leaders, but types far away from the propeller as possible line trolling has up! Lower the first line down to the level you want to go deeper and deeper to consistently keep my on! 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