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Lake Trout fishing?

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Some lakes I fish in contain Lake trout, but I have never had much luck catching them. I tried an in line sinker to get the line down without much luck, more bass than anything else, plus the weight was just annoying to me.
Is there a way a canoeist can fish without alot of gear for Lake Trout after early spring?

On another note, line twist. How do you deal with line twist. Are some swivels better than others? I troll alot and have a problem with Mephs Lures twisting my line.

To remove the line twist, I remove the lure and play out the line behind the canoe, sort of like trolling without a lure, and I let all the line out while I paddle around the lake. Depending on how bad the twist is, after a while I reel in and most of the line twist is gone, maybe I'll lose the last 10-15 feet of badly twisted line.
 
Robin, Looking up your question of line twist in my copy of "The Complete Book of Tackle Making" the author C. Boyd Pfeiffer shows several "Keeled spinners" the nub idea is that they're asymmetrical and weighted on the bottom. As they're pulled through the water they don't twist the line simply because they don't spin. If you didn't make your tackle why couldn't at least make a loop from the forward eyelet of fine wire and close it off with a sinker? That might be enough to off balance the spinner and make it behave. It's his opinion that the s/s ball bearing swivels are the best but expensive.



This drawing is the basic idea if you were to make your own. There were several more along the same basic line. The way the people in the book make the lures is you start off with this small wire, make a closed eye in one end and then start putting lure parts on it, ending on the other end with the hook. What they did with the keeled spinner was to leave the extra wire that was by the hook and extended it up, make a place for the spoon and then run the wire forward to join up ahead of the lower portion.
That's all I know and a little bit more,
Rob
 
Hi Robin,

The line twist issue happens with many lures, but especially with spinners. They are by far the worst offenders. For laker lures, I noticed in your other post with the pic of our tackle, you didn't have many spoons. Spoons like williams wablers and mooseloooks are deadly for lakers. For the lighter spoons like the mooselooks, get them down deep with snap weights. They are small clothespin like devices which attach to your line using soft padded jaws - just like a downrgger release only smaller. You can use any size weight with them. Lots of guys use them to get down deeper for lakers. The nice thing about them is that they are so versatile. You can cast out 30-40', then attach the snap weight, then let out more line till you hit the depth you want. That way, there is no weight to distract or scare the fish. Alternatively if you prefer, you can attach them closer to the lure, as with a regular weight. When you get a fish on, reel up to the snap weight, squeeze it to release from your line, and reel the fish in. Really simple and effective.

The snap weights themselves hang down like an inline sinker and will reduce line twist, but if you are trolling with spinners, the best thing would be to use two high quality snap swivels back to back, about six feet up from the lure.

Hope that helps.

Moonman.
 
We had a cottage on a lake in New Brunswick. There were lots of lakers, but the only time they could be caught was for the first week after the ice went out. We used to surface troll, mostly with fly rods and big streamers we tied particularly for that lake. After that week was up we never saw a fin of a trout. We tried down rigging and scanned the whole lake with fish finders, but no luck. There were also small mouth bass and landlocked salmon in that lake too.

The other lure we used to great success with a regular fishing rod was the rapala, jut the regular three hook one, about 3 inches long.

We did the same thing Danthman did. We used high quality double ended swivels and but a three foot leader on. We also had one rod dedicated to trolling and one for casting. No matter how much care you take, the trolling line will become a bird's nest. With the reels today, you can just carry two spools and switch them.
 
Moonman said;

"Spoons like williams wablers and mooseloooks are deadly for lakers." "get them down deep with snap weights"

I have some mooseloooks and some Johnson Sprites but leave them home nowadays, trying to downsize the tackle box. The weights sound good, I have tried some in line sinkers, drails, but I use lighter line (4-6 lb test) and light weight pole and didn't really like the weight feel while trolling.


I like the idea of those red and white Heddon sonars, I'm going to pick up a few of those.

Since I had posted this question, I read some more about jigs, I even think Memaquay wrote something about them, so I made sure I had them with me on my last trip to LaVerendrye in Quebec (8/2013) and I made an effort to give them a try. Most of my fishing in the past has been trolling Rappla's while paddling during the day loaded with camping gear and evening paddles with an empty canoe after setting up camp. Pike and walleye where what I caught most.


I figured finding suitable walleye habitat (moving water, especially in the evening) would have been easier than a deep hole for lake trout, so this year I did very little trolling and tried jigs for walleye. I new I would be in an area where there was a current thru the lakes, so one evening I tied on a jig with a black rubber tail and drifted a shoreline that had a current. I bounced the jig under the canoe and was rewarded with two quick walleyes, one was kept for a fine after dinner and lunch the next day. I am now hooked on jigs, and planning for a campsite near suitable walleye habitat if possible.
 
Ha ha, those are more than reasonable walleye, they are prime specimens! Jigs are nice too, because you can crimp the barb for quick release when you hook into a big slime monster AKA pike.
 
Ha ha, those are more than reasonable walleye, they are prime specimens! Jigs are nice too, because you can crimp the barb for quick release when you hook into a big slime monster AKA pike.

But slime monsters taste soooo good! Not as good as those beautiful Eyes in the pic above.. but good
 
The Togue fishermen I have known in northern New England were all retired guys. They spent all day, every day, slow trolling in the deepest spots on the lakes and I believe they used smelt just off the bottom - could be wrong about the smelt. Every once in a while they would catch a really nice Togue. Its like a full time job. Or maybe its a way to get out of the house?

Right after ice out of course is a different story.
 
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Ohhh for sure jigs Robin. We use yellow ones with 3"yellow twister tails. Berkley power baits are killer but pretty much anything works. Yellow is the key. You can cast em, troll em, bounce em, jig em...you will catch pickerel. It cuts down your tackle to a minimum. Just bring lots of leaders with swivels as you will snag a lot. We have to bend the barbs down in MB but since doing that I have come to like it for ease of release.

I am similarly challenged on lake trout though. I have come to think that C.I.L. lures may be the most efficient method with them.

Christy
 
Right after ice out on the big lakes in Maine, Togue can be taken by trolling a big streamer just under the surface. Landlocked Salmon are taken in the same fashion at that time.
 
Lake trout are an introduced species in the West, but they are famous in some lakes like Tahoe. They tend to be deep, especially in the summer. I rarely target lake trout but catch them sometimes when going after rainbows, cutthroats, and especially kokanee salmon which the lake trout feed on here. Kokanee are often 40-60 feet deep or more. At Tahoe people often fish more than 100 feet deep. It is not that hard to find them with a fishfinder, which is what all successful lake trout fishermen use. Controlling the depth is the important thing. The common ways are lead core line, steel or monel line or downriggers. All of these techniques can place a lure at a known depth. The lures used vary, but many different ones are successful. The main thing is to find the fish and put the lure in front of them. Sometimes jigging with a Nordic spoon is used after a group of lakers is located.
 
Many rivers in the Canadian Arctic (Thelon for example) hold large populations of togue. I will never forget one day on a small tributary we were paddling up stream exploring a bit and we stopped to do some fishing from shore. There was a flow of crystal clear water, about one foot deep, passing over a sand/gravel bar and then into a deeper pool. We saw dozens of large togue stacked up in the pool picking off food as it flowed overhead from the gravel bar flowage. The first cast picked up a 33 inch togue and we noticed two or three similar fish following the hooked fish as we brought it to shore. That fish fed us for two days. The second and third casts picked up similar fish that we released. Amazing fishing. That was an amazing day in the wild involving eagles and wolves and incredible scenery. I will never forget it.
 
rpg,
Those are the kind of days that making going out there worthwhile. We all want to hear about them.
What do togue taste like? Are they related to char?
 
Togue = Lake Trout - so they taste like Lake Trout. If you have never had lake trout it is a good eating fairly light fish. I believe it is a char but not 100% sure of that. Arctic Char is a different creature. Here is the wikipedia piece on lake trout or togue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_trout
 
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