Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 3906 Feb 28- Mar 13 | Page 7

HOW TO...
VOL.39 • ISS. 6
Feb 28-Mar 13, 2020
5
Bass Tactic Trout Notes
presents
Use These Black Bass Techniques
To Catch More Trout!
Y
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When it’s time to toss crankbaits for trout, steep rocky stump
dotted shorelines like this bank at French Meadows Reservoir are
prime locations.
>

A variety of different
crankbaits will work for trout
cranking, but the Yakima Bait
Mag Lip is one of the best. The
skip beat action draws reaction
strikes and the bait does double
duty as a trolling lure.
by Cal Kellogg
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Whenever your
fishing for trout a
fluorocarbon leader is an
absolute must. Author
Cal Kellogg prefers 8 to
10-pound test fluorocarbon
when working crankbaits
for trout. You can go
heavier when jigging.
crawfish that bass prey on. Bass anglers
will tell you that for maximum effective-
ness crankbaits are best bounced off of
solid structure rather than swam through
open water.
This makes sense for a couple
reasons. First, a bait that slams
into structure looks like it is
either panicked, injured or both,
making it an easy target for any
nearby bass. Second, one of the
reasons bass hold near structure
is because they use it as a barrier
against which they can trap agile
baitfish.
Now there are a bunch of trout
anglers reading this that are
thinking, “Hey, I plug for trout”.
Plugging with a spoon or spinner
is not the same as cranking.
Plugging with hardware is a
method, like trolling that utilizes
lures to draw strikes from trout feeding in
open water. In contrast, cranking for trout
requires that you use a downsized version
of the same chunky bodied crankbaits that
bass anglers use.
When you think about the food chain in
most of our reservoirs, using crankbaits for
both trout and bass makes sense because
they feed on the same baitfish, namely
threadfin shad. And both species will
pounce all over a crawfish too.
Crankbaits fished in open water are more
effective at catching trout than bass, but as
with the bass fisherman, for the trout angler
to achieve maximum results while cranking
they’ve got to use their lures to explore
shallow water structure.
Early and late in the day and during
periods of overcast, both rainbows and
brown trout are drawn to steep rocky
shorelines and rocky points that abruptly
drop into deep water provided the surface
temperature is no higher than about 72
degrees. They cruise just offshore of these
areas, trying to isolate baitfish between
themselves and the bank. When this
FISH SNIFFER
HOW – TO
Jigging spoons are a
deadly effective, but
seldom used approach for
both trout and landlocked
kings. Standard light weight
trolling spoons don’t work well
for jigging instead you need
a dense fast sinking lure like
the half ounce Hum Dingers
shown here.
>
ou’ve seen them out there on the
water. They hot rod around in those
overpowered boats that look like rocket
propelled surfboards, wearing colorful patch
covered jerseys.
They never seem to relax,
one minute you see them
out on the front of the boat
casting, reeling and casting
again. The next minute they
scurry back to the cockpit of
the boat and blast off toward
some other location where
they make a half dozen casts
before rocketing off once
again.
A lot of these guys have
interesting names like Bub,
Skeet, Roland or Orlando and
they all talk funny. They say
things like, “I got 11 pounds
ripping” or “I spoon’em on
a breakline”, leaving the trout enthusiast
looking for a translation.
Now us trout guys know how to enjoy
a day on the water. First of all, most of us
have canvas covers and windshields on
our boats. We don’t want to run around at
70 mph in an open boat with our eyelids
flapping in the windblast. When we get to
our fishing area we put our trolling gear out
and relax. We don’t run from spot to spot.
Heck, we might stay in one area all day
long.
Now there is probably not much those
bass guys can learn from the trouters; after
all bass boats don’t have any place to mount
downriggers and it’s pretty tough to troll at
1.5 mph with a 250 horse Mercury.
How about the trouters, is there anything
they could learn from the bass guys that
would help them catch more and larger
trout? Well, actually there are a couple
different tactics used by bass anglers that
can be effectively adapted to trout fishing
with a few simple modifications.
Bassers do a good deal of cranking. That
is, they work structure with diving plugs
that closely resemble the baitfish and
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