Help with spoons

[Fish Hunter]

We have had times when the Suttons(Bill Clintons) are just plain out-producing the sticks.

[jobsite]

I will second the Savant Jakes! Have caught many a fish on those. Im horrible at lure names, but the reddish orange ones with black dots are steelie killers, the goby imitation and the yellow/green (maybe called the Oswego?) are great on browns.

For spoons, Ive run 12 pound test with great success. The water is so clear that the fish do get line-shy in my opinion. When the fleas are around you gotta go up in line size or deal with constantly pulling and cleaning the lines. But when the fleas arent around, the light line often times is the difference between catching and not catching.

Another thing I do is put a ball bearing swivel at my leader/main line connection and then just a light wire snap from the leader to lure. This makes lure changes easy while also keeping the size and weight of the connection small. No loss of lure movement and less terminal tackle for a finicky fish to see.

[reeleyz]

I have always run sticks for browns on flatlines. Last year I brought the riggers one day and ran spoons (NKs) on them back 50' down 3' and sticks on the planers back 60' and 90'. The water was crystal clear, fairly calm, and it was sunny. I was in the 6' - 15' depth range. I was thinking the riggers would be dead because of the clear water and the board/sticks would take all the fish. WRONG! I could not get a fish to touch the sticks but they were pounding the spoons on the riggers. So after a while I put a loco out in place of a stick and started getting fish on that too. I never caught a fish on a stick that day.

 

The bottom line is it might not be the type of spoons/leader/depth/line/snap swivel/speed. Some days the fish hit sticks over spoons and some days it's the other way around. Don't over think it!

[Storm Warning II]

Stingers should be working at the slower speeds, but I would change out the DW Stds to DW Super Slims...profile slimmer and more speed tolerant. Ought to better simulate thin profile of skinny water Emeralds & Smelt too.