golden rule for trolling speed does not exist. during my great lakes fishing career that began back in in the late 1960s, i’ve seen a slow, barely moving, dead crawl of less than 1 mph to between 4 and 5 mph take fish. but that’s good news for the less experienced in sport fleet that struggle with boats not suited to troll down below 2 mph without the aid of trolling devices. just set the pace of your boat to the one’s that are catching. especially, if they’re on a hard bite. trolling speed i used in 2015 with my spoons was 2.5. that seemed to be the sweet spot. your boat’s trolling direction/course can have a huge impact on how your lure is presented to a fish. rather than the fish just one eye seeing your lure moving off at a slant in a distance. surface trolling tactics for steelhead has to be about the easiest part of our great lakes fishery. just with just a little less attention to the red and orange base colors of spoons.
mi out of my home port of manistee, mi is not a clear water fishery. from the onset of the bite, they put on a fantastic struggle. …it’s going to be a long ways from your boat, not up close and in your face. given enough time and patience, steelhead can be tamed by the time you get them to the net. one of the most asked questions i’ve had to deal with: …”how to find fish?” let’s say, you’re trolling at 2.5 mph, in 2 hours you just covered a 5 mile swath of water and didn’t find much. this video was shot in late october 2015. todd b and i were fortunate enough to capture the action on 5 of 6 steelhead to share with you. except for one fish that came on the 4.0 bluetail on a 2 color off a rigger set at 13′. trolling speed on the surface came of the gps showing speed over ground aka “sog” at 2.5 mph most of the time. it was a 20 knot e wind at the beginning of the trip. let alone, trying to have my hat cam shoot right point of view to capture every bit of action.
there are several reasons why trolling is so effective; the two primary ones are that you can cover a lot of water to locate the fish, and you can fish significantly deeper than with other techniques. downriggers while you can always use lead slip weights on your main fishing line to get your lure beneath the surface, a downrigger is almost essential when trolling bigger and deeper bodies of water. when a fish strikes, the downrigger clip is supposed to release the fishing line on its own, but you may have to release the line from the clip yourself with one swift upward pull on your fishing rod. when you approach a large lake for the first time and don’t know where to start fishing, break the lake into sections.
this is a great time to use your downrigger, and fish will be much easier to identify on your sonar. you can use a few trolling techniques to stack the odds in your favour. it really comes down to a few variables like the time of year, lure, species of fish, and what the fish may want. you can follow bcfishn’ on instagram and facebook.
deep water lake trout move slightly slower so trolling speeds around 1.7 mph are great in 80 feet or more of water. once cool water opens up the rest of the steelhead are said to have a burst speed from zero to 20 mph (or more) in one second. so, it’s highly unlikely you can pull a bait too fast they can’t catch. for lake trout, trolling speeds of 1.5 to 3 mph are ideal. why not limit yourself to one speed? the intended motion varies based on the type of lake trout lure, trolling speed chart, trolling speed chart, trolling for lake trout with downriggers, lake trout trolling setup, trolling cowbells for lake trout.
it is common practice to troll for lake trout at a speed of 1.5 mph. in fact, this is actually an effective trolling speed for lakers, when the fish are in deep water. a trolling speed of 1.7 to about 2.0 mph is usually best when another old-school trout trolling trick are cowbells or lake trolls. lake trout, 1.0 to 3.0 mph, 1.5-4.5kph ; salmon, 1.5 to 3.5 mph, 2.5-5.5kph ; pike, 0.8 to 1.5 mph, 1.2-2.5kph ; bass, 2.0 to 4.0mph, 3.0-6.0kph. this is a matter of great debate among anglers. many experts recommend 1.5 to 2.5 mph when trolling. others argue that while this works well for, trolling speed for salmon, trolling speed for mahi, trolling speed mph, best trolling speed for bass, best trolling speed in knots, trolling speed for spoons, trolling speed for landlocked salmon, trolling for trout without downriggers, blue marlin trolling speed, live bait trolling speed.
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