Rod For Lake Trout (Trolling Without Downrigger)

[Kabar]

Hi!

I'm new here in the forum and to trout fishing as well ....need help have some questions

 

Which rod for trolling without downrigger for  lake trout ....end of may....I'm going to do some fishing.Need to buy one.

Which do you use...brand, length, action  please.....btw reel and line

I will fishing in small....medium size lakes, I'm not expecting anything bigger then  24- 30 inches .

I will use  3 way swivel + 1-2 oz ...+some spoon etc.......maybe will use dipsy diver as well.

Thank you.

[Great Lakes Lure Maker]

Where do you plan to fish?

[Kabar]

Kapuskasing, Ontario Area... some medium size lakes.

[Sk8man]

As long as you aren't dealing with chinooks in Lake O and you want to do a variety of things without breaking the bank (e.g. around $200 total). I'd get a 7 ft Ugly Stick medium action rod (roughly $40-$50) and THREE reels (either Diawa 47H's frequently sold second hand on here often in bunches or some new Okuma Magda Pro 45's (higher capacity) at about $50 each. Load one up with 10 or12 lb mono and an 8 lb fluoro leader, one with 27 lb leadcore (your choice of number of colors according to how deep you wish to go and how much backing you wish to put on) within the top 50 ft or so and as much mono backing as will fit) and a fluoro leader, and one with a 250 ft 30 lb copper with 30 lb Power Pro Mono backing. Maybe get a set of snap on weights for deeper presentations or get either a large Chinook Diver or a Deeper Diver in the largest 124 mm size (another $15 or $20). This way you can do just about everything from top lining to deeper presentations by just switching reels on the same rod because the Ugly Stik is pretty stiff and will handle the diver OK...the Chinook diver has less drag by the way. Normally if using a long copper you'd be looking at a high retrieve rate reel but for the 200-250 or so these reels will be fine.

Edited March 11, 2015 by Sk8man

[Xxx]

I take it your going to Canada fishing right? So a two piece rod would be used, easily packed away, I always used my downrigger rods and the last time I was to Canada was before the Power Pro times so I used Fire Line, but now I would use 30lbs Power Pro. The reason I use power pro is because Mark Romanack who made the trolling bibles used power pro in his books and I can easily duplicate that buy following the charts. We fished Lake Osullivan in Quebec, and dipsy divers with Blue and silver spoons at the business end always did the trick for us. I would Google the lake and see what colors produced results for that lake, most of the lakes I fished were a brown tinted water so maybe different lake different color? In May they should be shallow so mimicking the forage would be a good start, anything in perch colors worked for us j9 j13 Rapalas worked for us again we used our rigger rods and snap weights according to the depth and used the 50/50 rule of thumb, 50ft of line snap weight and another 50ft of line to the lure, and of course just using a crank bait in perch colors to achieve the depth you want. We caught some nice lakers out of that lake and only 1 got kept for mounting, 22lbs. Hope this helps and good luck on your trip. OOh reels use your line counters as you will be using weights or dipsy divers.

Edited March 11, 2015 by pap

[Sk8man]

Pap pointed up something I overlooked the 7 ft Ugly Stik is a one piece rod. I either transport my rods in the boat or in the back of my Expedition so I didn't think about that (if it is a factor for you).

[Xxx]

Les I was just assuming it might be a fly in trip or space is always a factor when going back in the bush, I don't even know where that lake is.

[Sk8man]

Good thinking bud.....I guess I was too focused on the equipment side of it to think it through

[Guppy35]

Two heads are better than one...not always true, but in this case it is   Between the two of you, the guesswork is taken out of most equations! 

[Xxx]

Two heads are better than one...not always true, but in this case it is   Between the two of you, the guesswork is taken out of most equations!

Thanks for the kind words Guppy35, I always wondered what the correlation was on the "35" I hope the amount of fish you catch a day. LOL

[Guppy35]

There was one time that i caught 35 lakers on Keuka in one outing, but like i said, that only happened ONCE   35 was actually my basketball # in high school, and seems to make it's way onto a lot of my Usernames - especially the ones that require a number