Trolling east grand for lakers

[fishfry12345]

Whats everyone's take on the best way to catch Lakers trolling on east grand?? I have a bunch of big smelts frozen fro. This winter, will they work sewed on for bait?? Thank for the pointers in advance!

[Mr.Harry]

Haven't trolled East Grand. But trolling for Lakers in general I think sewn smelt would work fine. I prefer "pickled" (brined) smelt over frozen just because they hold up better on the hook, but frozen work too. Find the fish on the electronics and go low and slow. I would want kind of a big bend in the smelt to give it as large a turn as possible. Put some kind of flash in front of the smelt to catch the Lakers' eye at distance. Spinners, flasher, whatever. High quality ball bearing swivels to eliminate line twist, and try not to hang your rigger ball up in the bottom! Lol. I don't know what kind of forage besides smelt is in that lake, or what is permitted for live/dead bait, but you could always look into dragging suckers or chubs if permitted too. Good luck! I want to fish that Lake too.

[fishfry12345]

so you do want the bait to roll then not just swim behind? I have been told many different things including some people even using toothpicks in the mouths of the bait to get the proper spin. I use trolling bait harnesses so it should be easy enough to get the bait to roll slowly. Thanks for the tips!

[Turnbuckle]

I am not a bait guy, but when I do I put smelts hooked straight right behind a dodger and the dodger does all the work for the action. Had really good luck doing it down here on Sebago, never tried it elsewhere.

[Mr.Harry]

On bait roll, sewn bait, imagine an injured or stunned smelt tail twitching lightly and slowly spirally off the bait ball. Kinda like a shot up WW2 airplane peeling off out of a dogfight and preparing to crash. Lol. Yes, I like a nice slow, wide spiral on my dead bait. Predators home in on this action as a crippled/easy pick. I know on the connecticutts, live suckers hooked through the eyes and pulled around very slowly is the preferred technique for bait. In this case, the bait is not rolling at all but doing its own thing on the hook.

[Mr.Harry]

PS. - I always use the single hook technique for sewn bait. Not the whole needle to treble business. Others/many may disagree with me on this, but I have done both and greatly prefer the single hook technique for speed, as well as bait roll. You get more of a side to side action out of the needle to treble sew. That can be fine too, but I find for Salmon that the roll gets me more hits and I do not miss out on more hook ups due to the single hook. The bigger and firmer the smelt, the better/easier the single hook technique will work without ripping up the bait. Use a smaller hook than you would think with as small an eye as possible for pulling through the bait and be very careful and deliberate when doing so. Again, I do this predominantly for salmon, but see no reason why it wouldn't produce just as well for Lakers.

[stguy]

I fish out of a boat that has had a 100 or so Lakers caught out of it so far this year, never used a piece of bait, sometimes you have to change it up often, sometimes you just have to p**s them off.

[fishlessman]

big black flatfish on rigger or a big sutton on lead, the sutton needs to be just hitting the bottom and i hand line jigg them

[Mr.Harry]

big black flatfish on rigger or a big sutton on lead, the sutton needs to be just hitting the bottom and i hand line jigg them

how big a sutton do you use? What # & finish works best? Heavy or flutter?

[fishlessman]

how big a sutton do you use? What # & finish works best? Heavy or flutter?

i like the heavy silver/ copper back 61, and a 71/72 hammered silver/gold flutter.  the trick is finding a good sandy area near a dropoff, letting the line out til atleast half a color touches bottom, slowest troll and handline jig (you feel the bottom and the hits better with the lead line jigging in your hand). not many do this here but go to willoughby in vt and you will see a few, if to much line touches bottom you pull it in and lay it on the floor, get a hit, strike hard, toss the line over board, pick up rod and start reeling. first time i saw the technique the guy didnt even use a rod, had the reel mounted on a box and piled the line in the box. this technique works really well on sebago with those big sandy humps and ledges

[Browntroutboy]

EG isn't the best place for "dragging bottom" hanging a down rigger ball or 15 colors of lead line sucks!

[JDK]

Drag 15 colors of leadcore at EG and you are going to ****censored word**** off a lot more than the togue.

[fishlessman]

there is only a couple places in east grand were you could even think of dragging 15 colors of lead, who fishes 15 colors and why

[JDK]

I wouldn't troll 15 colors anywhere for anything.

[Mr.Harry]

I've read about people doing it; spooling up additional colors on top of a standard full core. Great Lakes. But I always wondered why they would too. That is a ton of line to have out.