Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Open Water Lake Trout?

Fishing for lake trout without down riggers? Anyone do that?

Lake trout are pretty boat shy and most lake trout water is crystal clear. Flashy spoons with lots of line out or a planer board to get the lures away from the boat.
North Shore of Lake Superior look for gravel and rocky bottom—10 to 15 ft deep —troll slow around 1 1/2 to 2 mph. Look for water temps on surface of 47 to 51 degrees. 2/5 oz Little Cleo’s blu and silver or brass and red.
I catch a lot of Specks casting but only a few lakers gotta troll for them.

3 Way bottom bouncing. 28 pounder in 14’ of water,
21 pounder in 35 feet. Lake Ontario...

White 4” plastics or 4 to 5” shiners for bait.

I have taken lakers in bays casting fairly often, but the water temp needs to be close to 51 degrees, and having just risen there. I have also taken them in bug slicks and 51 degree water a couple hundred feet deep by trolling Rapalas or KKahmann's little cleos both off planers and in the prop wash. Smaller lakers though, none of them over 10 lbs. The biggest casting in shallow bays were 15 lbs or so, most were 3-6 lbs. If you have them in shallow bays in the spring my experience it they they are in there feeding and eagerly hit spoons and Raps. Most of my experience with them has been in situations where there really weren't any big ones available.

I do an annual fly fishing trip for them and Rick Bin has been coming for a while now on them. I have about 50 years of fishing the same place. No really big ones where we fly fish it, but when they are practically on the surface, who cares? Used to fish cut bait along the edge of the ice in the spring and have caught some serious fish that way. Usually get to watch them cruising by and picking up the bait.

Lake outlets when the salmon smolt are trying to leave the lake headed to salt is good shallow water fishing in the spring.

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Planer board 15ft deep

Planer board again

Yes, just off the bottom. Lake Superior, a bay and then out into the lake a bit. Chunk of sucker on whatever you are dragging seems to be the ticket.

We bob a bit--but the same thing, fishing on the bottom

Older friends used lead lines to get down w/o riggers and my neighbor at our camp still does. A workout...:)

Fish late and into the night as the trout are far less wary in the shallows then and bait fish are in shallow
to escape birds in the darkness.

In Art & Rick Bin's fishing hole you can catch trout, after dark, in 2 feet of water and around your feet.

Fishermen Friends.....please don't kill those big trout.....let those old girls spawn.

A study in a local Alaska Lake indicates that it takes 8 years for a LT to reach 24 inches and another 8 years to reach 25 inches.
That's where sexual maturity kicked in and affected growth rate. So eat those little ones and get measurements and pics for
a fiberglass mount.

Here in Alaska, F&G figures on average, a lake trout grows 1/2" a year......hell I've caught trout older than Art.

I don’t kill big lakers unless they are headed to the taxidermist—both fish above represent once in a lifetime event for the clients involved.
The 40lber above was gutted by the local biologist and the otolith bone was removed—fish aged out at 27.5 years old.

Saw a video a while back about fishing for lakers after ice out with large surface plugs in red/orange/yellow (?). Apparently they were doing well doing this.

A large number of my bigger lake trout have fallen to a bright red Flatfish dragged slowly along a shoreline in spring.

Yeah, but have you caught them older than you?



Saw a bumper sticker the other day I just have to get:

"Fingers are for Girls, Not Gills!"

We used to fish Paxson and Summit using this very method. If they are there it can be a fish on every cast, but I am sure you already knew that We used to float down a creek that we put sockeye fry into, all the way down to the ice. Anchored the canoe off to the ice and pitched jigs. Caught a lot of lakers doing that, most of them were puking up clouds of sockeye fry. They just laid there and waited for us to put the fry into the creek.

Fishing for lakers on Crosswinds in the spring is a blast. They sit right off the edge of deep water waiting for the smolts to migrate into the shallow water. Fly fishing for them was usually the go to, and I have hooked them in water that wasn't deep enough to cover their backs.

Art....I need one of those bumper stickers!

If I find them I will get you one...

Ive hooked up on 2 lakers. Both from shore, using a 6' ugly stick spooled with 15lb braid.
One got away and i landed the second.

The one that got away hit on a 1/2 or 5/8 oz rainbow trout colored kastmaster in about 4 feet of water

The one that didnt get away hit a green/silver 3/4 oz kastmaster, again, not in a whole hell of a lot of water

My old Ambassadeur 6500 loaded with 15 pound monel wire will get a trolled biggest Williams Whitefish or Len Tompson Five of Diamonds down to 30 feet. The biggest green or silver Flatfish will go down to fifty.

Replace all the treble hooks with one single, connect to a five foot mono leader, and go fishing. You can feel everything the lure is doing, every time it scratches the bottom, and strikes feel vicious. Try it. You will have a ball.

Vern, Tagish is eight feet low right now..

Ted