VOL.39 • ISS. 19
HOW TO...
Sept 11, 2020
13
Fall Trout Notes
3902
>
Plugs are
a great bait for
aggressive trolling.
Big fall trout love to
chomp on baitfish and
that’s exactly what
Rapalas and other
plugs represent.
>Streamer
flies are
often overlooked
by trollers and
that’s a major
mistake. Trolling
flies are one of
the deadliest
trophy trout
offerings you can
pull during the
fall.
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spoons in the half
ounce size are a great
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fail to draw strikes while
power trolling.
<
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Trolling For Fall Trout!
W
hy
do we love fall trout
fishing? The answer is simple…
The fishing is often outstanding. Fall trout
don’t have the luxury of subtlety. On an
instinctive level the trout know that “Old
Man Winter” is on the way
and if they are going to
survive the lean cold months
to come, they’ve got to
pack on as many calories as
possible during the fall. This
makes for aggressive trout
that will strike a broad range
of offerings.
When you get down to
brass tacks, I don’t think
FISH SNIFFER
HOW – TO
by Cal Kellogg
there is a traditional trout
offering that fall trout won’t
grab at times, but there are
definitely some lures and
presentations that are especially
attractive to fall trout.
For starters, fall trout are generally
looking for a substantial meal, typically
of the baitfish variety. In terms of location
fall trout are often scattered. When the
surface temperature drops into the lower
60’s and upper 50’s trout that had been
locked up in deep water all summer to
stay cool, break out of their temperature
dictated period of “house arrest” and roam
looking for food. You might find one
trout cruising open water 20 feet below
the surface and you might find another
hanging around a point just beneath the
surface in water that is little more than hip
deep.
Refine this information down and you
are left with two corner stones of fall trout
trolling: 1.) Show the trout bulky substantial
looking baitfish imitations. 2.) Stay
on the move and cover lots of water. The
trout are aggressive, but not concentrated.
The more water you cover, the more fish
you’ll show your lures to… What we
are looking for are lures that represent
a substantial meal that can be trolled
quickly. Here are my favorites:
Plugs
Yes, grab a small crankbait or a 2 to
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3-inch minnow plug and long line it way
back behind the boat. Plugs put off a
bunch of vibration and look like substantial
meal.
This is a tactic I use most often when
the water is cool, the trout are
near the surface and I can topline
the plug. I always figure that
the plug will be the last lure in
my spread that the trout have a
chance to see. Fish that moved
in on my closer running gear, got
excited but failed to strike have
one last chance to take a swing
at something.
On the fast side, I’ve done
this work with minnow plugs
from Yo-Zuri and Rapala and a
plethora of tiny bass style crankbaits.
When moving slow makes
sense I might run a Flatfish or
even an Apex, but mainly when
I’m pulling plugs I like to keep the speed
up.
As a result, I’m very excited about the
Mag Lip 2.0 and 2.5 from Yakima Bait.
They will run up to 4 miles per hour.
Buzz Ramsey tells me that the key to
the Mag Lip’s success is the plug’s erratic
action that he describes as “skip beat”.
The Mag Lip 2.0 will dive to 5 feet,
while the 2.5 can hit 8 feet deep. Mag Lips
come in a wide range of different colors
from Frog on the dark end to baitfish
metallic on the light end and there is every
color in between including orange and
pink.
Hum Dingers And Other Large Spoons
Most trouter’s have a good selection of
small spoons that they use when trolling
slowly, say from 1 to 2 miles per hour.
Spoons like these include, Needlefish,
Sep’s Pro Secrets, Cripplures, Sockeye
Slammers to name only a handful.
These are great lures, but during the fall
you want to upsize to spoons that look
like a good size meal that can be trolled
at higher speeds. Large Hum Dingers,
Sparklefish, Speedy Shiners, Silver Horde
Kingfisher Lites and Vance’s Tackle Slim
CONTINUED ON PG 18
3819
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