Lake trout are again pouring into Polson Bay after they’ve spawned and can be caught along with whitefish around the Armed Forces Memorial Bridge at Polson at night where they’re attracted to the street lights. I caught three medium lake trout, five whitefish the biggest one was eleven lbs. That’s a good night’s catch on November 13, 2011. They can be caught with a variety of jigs and spoons but over the years I’ve done consistently the best with two size 8 or 10 dark green or yellow flies baited with maggots above a dark green bottom weight. Using a dark line also seems to be a plus. With this setup you can expect to catch fish as small as mountain whitefish, medium size macs and Lake Whitefish, with a possibility of a monster 20 lb. laker. If you’re fishing from the bridge you can crank the fish up which is hard on reels and has a high percentage of lost fish or you can walk them to shore which is time consuming or you can incorporate a landing device on a rope which is by for the best approach. Personally I prefer anchoring and fishing from a boat. I catch many of my fish by dropping the setup as close to the boat as possible with my rod tip only being 3” to a foot beyond the gunwales. I move often and key off the street lights. The best fishing is from the west side.
You can also catch macs from the docks on Salish Point with sausage setups and later if the bay freezes with sausage or whole fish with the whole fish have a light edge over the sausage. This also seems to be the case in East Bay (Ducharme Bay) when it freezes over.
This report is from the MacMan site from Zimmer Tackle
