Author: Romanack

Chances are that there are more lake trout swimming around the five Great Lakes today than when Columbus landed in the New World! That’s a bold statement, but not an exaggeration. 

Unfortunately, the early parts of the 20th Century found the Great Lakes riddled with problems including unchecked pollution, habitat degradation, predation from sea lamprey, and unregulated harvest by commercial fishing interests.

Thankfully, in the second half of the 20th Century, the Dingle-Johnson Act (1950) and the Clean Water Act (October 1972) were passed by Congress that provided funding and resources to help clean up the Great Lakes and many other bodies of water across America. Gradually, as water quality improved, natural reproduction among key species began to improve.

While no one knows for sure how many lake trout are currently swimming the waters of the Great Lakes, it’s well documented that there are healthy populations in all five Great Lakes. The good ol’ days of lake trout fishing are here and now.

Hunting spots for lakers

Thanks to modern GPS lake mapping units, it has never been easier to identify and navigate to potential fish-holding structure. In fact, identifying the best lake trout structure is a skill set best practiced while the boat is still on the trailer! 

Powering up your GPS mapping unit in the driveway is a good starting point. Scroll while studying the contour lines, looking for submerged islands that top out in 50 to 120 feet of water. The most productive areas are typically located near deep water. Lake trout love bottom structure, but they rarely venture far from the sanctuary of deep water. 

Bottom structure not only provides lake trout a sense of security but is also where they find a host of common forage species including round goby, ciscoes, smelt, alewives, young whitefish, sculpins, suckers and young burbot. All these creatures—and more—commonly end up down the hatch of adult lake trout. 

Drop waypoints on promising-looking humps with the idea of pinpointing several potential fish-holding structures. Once on the water, setting up a milk run makes it easy to check spots using sonar to confirm the presence of fish.

Pinpointing fish

The beauty of hunting for lake trout with quality sonar is that they typically can’t hide in the deep-water environments they prefer. The hunt begins by slowly gridding over bottom structure previously identified with a GPS mapping unit. Most modern sonar units that produce 500 watts of power or more are capable of marking lake trout in water as deep as 100 to 120 feet. This is especially true among fish that are suspended a few feet off bottom.

Traditional broad-beam sonar with a 83/200 kHz frequency transducer (or something equivalent) will do the heavy lifting for marking fish. Typically, it’s necessary to adjust the gain to near maximum to mark these deep-water fish. Deep-water fish won’t mark as distinctive arches, but rather as thin or faint lines on the graph.

When fish are marked using broad-beam sonar, drop a waypoint on the mapping plotter for each fish or cluster of fish for reference, but keep searching looking for the best concentrations of fish. Once the structure has been graphed thoroughly, take a quick study of the waypoints saved and return to the better-looking areas to start fishing.

Auto-pilot electric motors

Once it’s time to fish, an auto-pilot-style electric motor is the best tool for keeping the boat under control and on fish. These products feature a couple of invaluable features, most notably “anchor mode” that keeps the boat stationary in the face of wind and wave currents.  The “jog” feature also allows the boat to be moved a short distance in any direction without giving up the anchor mode. 

The best chance of catching lake trout on any bottom structure occurs in the first few drops of your lures. After catching a few fish, the remaining fish in the vicinity tend to scatter. Using the “jog” feature on the electric motor is a convenient means of relocating the boat on structure to find fish for subsequent drops. 

After catching a few fish directly below the boat, try making a few long casts. Let the lure sink all the way to bottom with the reel bail open, then slowly work the lure back to the boat. This horizontal presentation gives the fish something different to look at and helps target fish that are doing a good job of avoiding the boat. 

Using forward-facing sonar (FFS)

When it comes to finding lake trout, traditional broad-beam sonar will get the job done. But for a more detailed picture of what’s going on below the surface, forward-facing sonar is a better tool. Compared to broad-beam sonar which uses a single-frequency transducer ping, forward-facing sonar is a higher-frequency, multi-signal sonar that uses a wider cone angle than traditional broad-beam sonar. In addition, FFS functions in real time, allowing you to not only mark fish, but also to mark smaller targets such as lures, and to monitor exactly how fish are reacting to those lures in real time.

This technology enables anglers to fish a presentation and immediately determine if fish are reacting positively or negatively to that presentation—something that’s impossible to achieve with traditional sonar. 

As the name implies, FFS also can be used to look out away from the boat as compared to only looking directly below it. While manufacturers claim all kinds of performance standards regarding their FFS units, the best products on the market are capable of marking fish-sized targets out to about 80 feet away from the boat. 

Most FFS units provide three views (or modes) including down imaging, forward imaging and something called panoramic imaging. Down imaging provides views directly below the boat, but in more detail than broad-beam sonar. Forward imaging looks out away from the boat, providing a much greater field of view and more detail than traditional sonar. Panoramic imaging, sometimes called landscape mode, provides a much wider field of view, but with less detail than when using forward mode.

For lake trout jigging, down imaging and forward imaging are the two modes anglers will find the most useful. As good as FFS is, there are limits to what it can achieve. Most FFS units will mark fish clearly in water up to 80 to 100 feet deep. 

The Garmin LVS34 transducer is considered the standard in the industry for FFS performance. All the other brands of sonar are chasing Garmin in the FFS arena. When targeting fish deeper than 100 feet, the Garmin LVS62 transducer has a narrower cone angle that can mark fish clearly in deeper water and further out away from the boat. Because the cone angle on the LVS62 is narrower than the LVS34, it’s a little more difficult to find and stay on fish.

Think of the LVS34 transducer as a beam of light from a flashlight that creates a wide beam, illuminating a big area. The LVS62 is like a beam of light that is narrower, illuminating a much smaller area.

Deploying transducers 

An FFS transducer can be deployed several ways including attaching it to your electric motor, placing it on a separate, manually operated pole mount, or attaching it to a pole mount that is controlled with an electric motor. 

Different anglers prefer different setups, but the advantage of mounting the FFS transducer to the electric motor is that the foot control can be used to turn the transducer and scan while hunting for fish, keeping both hands free for fishing. This strategy works especially well on calm days when the boat is not drifting quickly. The Garmin Kraken allows the FFS transducer to be routed inside the motor shaft, making for a very clean rigging option.

Anglers who prefer to pole mount the FFS transducer are quick to point out that they can put the electric motor in “anchor” mode and then scan using the transducer on a manual pole mount. This holds the boat steady in one location, helping to make accurate casts or drops to fish.

Using a motorized pole mount allows the transducer to be scanned while keeping hands free for fishing. All these options have their advantages and disadvantages.

Shuttles

A growing number of anglers are opting to mount their FFS units as shuttles that house the head unit, the operational black box and the battery in one convenient package. The advantage of using a shuttle is the FFS unit becomes portable and can be used on different boats, in different locations within the boat, on fly-in fishing trips, or even while ice fishing.

The other advantage of using a FFS shuttle setup is that the images are clearer, brighter and easier to see because the unit is being powered with “clean power” that has no interference from other electronic devices. 

Some lithium battery producers like Norsk Lithium produce portable sonar batteries that produce not just 12 volts, but 14.8 volts of power, that delivers exceptional images when using FFS. Portable shuttles are best equipped with a lithium battery at least 50 Amp hours in size for a full day of fishing. 

Lure options

Lake trout will hit a wide variety of jigging lures including jigs dressed in soft plastics, bucktail jigs, jigging spoons, blade baits and jigs tipped with live bait. Most of the jigs and soft plastics produced for walleye and bass fishing are on the small side for lake trout jigging. Larger, saltwater-style jigs and plastics including paddle tails, split-tail minnows and twister tails in 6-to 10-inch sizes produce best on lake trout. 

Using smaller plastics only encourages bites from smaller trout. When using these large soft plastic baits, a stinger hook is critically important. The stinger should be long enough to present the hook right at the tail end of the soft plastic. Resist the temptation to stick the stinger into the soft plastic, but instead let the stinger float free. This keeps the plastic functioning as designed and helps hook fish that short strike. 

A selection of jigs and lures including 3/4-, 1-, 1 1/2-, 2- and 3-ounce models are required to fish the water depths where lake trout are commonly found. Larger, saltwater-style jigs and plastics are easiest to source through e-commerce tackle sites. Most retailers in the Great Lakes region don’t stock jigs or plastics of these sizes.

Quality bucktails are also a little tricky to find in these larger sizes. Eagle Claw’s Pro V Bucktail Jigs come in sizes from 3/4 to 3 ounces and feature premium, machine-sharpened Trokar hooks. While hard to find, these bucktail jigs are without question ultra-premium and stone-dead fish catchers.

Rods/reels/lines

The heavier jigs and lures commonly used for jigging lake trout are a bit much for typical spinning rod/reel combinations. A medium/heavy-action spinning rod in the 7-foot range will handle jigs up to about 1.5 ounces. For heavier stuff, a heavy-action baitcasting rod is a better option; or consider upgrading to saltwater-class spinning rods. 

Low-stretch superbraid line is the only practical option for deep-water trout jigging. Ten-pound-test superbraid with about three or four feet of 15-pound-test fluorocarbon leader will handle most lake trout jigging situations. When confronted with trophy-class trout, consider bumping up to 20-pound-test superbraid line and 20-pound-test fluorocarbon line as a shock leader. 

Final thoughts

In some of the Great Lakes, the lake trout fishing season closes at the end of September. In other waters, the lake trout fishing season remains open year-round. Consult fishing regulations before targeting lake trout.

Several lake trout sanctuaries are also scattered throughout the Great Lakes. These areas were set aside to conduct research on lake trout natural reproduction and are typically closed to sport fishing activities. 

In the last century, lake trout have gone from being a species many biologists feared would disappear from the Great Lakes, to one of the most numerous predatory fish. Opportunities for jigging lake trout can be found in all five Great Lakes. Even Lake Erie, the shallowest and warmest of all the Great Lakes, has excellent lake trout populations from Erie, Penn. to Buffalo, New York.

In short, anyone in the Great Lakes region who wants to catch lake trout using jigging tackle will find nearly unlimited opportunities. It only takes one fish to literally get “hooked” on the fun and excitement of jigging and casting for the Great Lake’s biggest native trout species.

Veteran outdoor writer, Mark Romanack has been communicating the outdoor lifestyle for more than 30 years. The Executive Producer of Fishing 411 TV, Romanack splits his time between filming TV episodes, writing magazine articles, conducting multi-media seminars and testing trolling gear for inclusion in the Precision Trolling Data phone app.