Trolling for Trout

All I can say is it's about time! With all the trouble finding fish this summer, it's been discouraging trying to plan trips and not finding much in terms of quality or quantity of fish. But the streak was finally broken on my last trip.

After hearing about a good trout bite up at Deerfield and seeing some pictures posted on social media, I decided it was time to make the trek up to the lake where I hadn't been since last ice back in April, but I was rewarded with an excellent morning of fishing for the effort.

At the first stop, I shore fished to see if any rainbows or lakers were around in an area where I'd heard they were being caught. There's was lots of surface activity, but no bites and I was already dreading another tough morning.

At the second stop on the west side of the lake, I launched my pontoon to try and do some trolling with a few new 2.5" Salmo Rattlin' Hornets that I'd recently obtained, as well as some spoon casting if I found some fish.

As the area I was in was reasonably shallow at 6'-9' deep on average and weedy, I relied on my SonarPhone T-pod bobber from Vexilar to stay in the right depth and keep my cranks out of the taller weed areas. As it has done for me on countless occasions over the last few summers, it helped me to guide my trolling patterns into the right areas to keep the Hornets where they needed to be.

With a max diving depth of 3.5', the smallest sized Hornets were the perfect crankbaits to use to cover the upper water column areas in the 6'-7.5' range where the rainbows were at. And the dozen I caught, didn't mess around either, slamming the baits hard!

It was a fun morning for sure and another great learning experience trying to troll better on my pontoon. I'll be back to the area soon. I only hope that the fish will stick around the area into ice season. Catching 18"-22" rainbows through the ice consistently would sure make for some great trips.