I live in New England and recently went to a new lake in Vermont. Most of it is over a hundred feet deep and I’ve heard it has some nice trout. Decided to chat with the greeter at the boat launch and he told me a group of salt water guys were there recently and caught 12 huge trout in a few hours (kept 5). He said they were almost in the center of the lake and fishing about a hundred feet down but didn’t tell him what bait or tactics they were using.
I figured I’d give it a try but I’m still very much a newbie. I did some (very limited) research and tried both live worms and powerbait with weights letting them sink down as far as they would but didn’t have a way to really measure the depth. A couple worms came off the hooks and I’m not sure if they were bites or they just came off. Tried a few different deep spots and caught no fish but I wasn’t surprised as I don’t really know what I’m doing lol.
Regardless I’d love to try again and have many deep cold lakes in my area that are supposed to have lots of trout so I’d like to learn how to target them. Any advice is appreciated!
Posted by I_know_I_know_not
2 Comments
You sure they weren’t running down riggers?
Trout are most active feeding in water temps between 50-65 degrees generally. They also like oxygen rich water.
They are ambush predators and like to hang around structure (drop offs, boulders, trees etc.)
Lake trout will hang out in really deep water during summer and fall when the temps are higher, but I suspect so early in the season your water temps are still pretty low/ I would focus more on structure like drop offs and points in shallower water with spoons, rooster tails, etc. in my experience most large trout don’t fall for power bait/ worms as easily as younger ones.
I would focus on finding structure near inflows with appropriate water temperatures, if that doesn’t work I would move around to other structure and try deeper and deeper and troll some rooster tails around while you’re at it.