The wind blew as it often does from the north, sweeping across the central portion of Lake Erie last October, as we searched for walleyes just off Loraine. Lowrance Electronics Representative Jim McConville, who lives nearby, had already located a school of fish well off shore; so we spent an afternoon searching near-shore waters before fishing with him, looking for a secondary pattern and, perhaps, even larger fish.
We caught walleyes here and there, running Rapala Tail Dancer Deeps (the #11 bait) on 14-pound Berkley FireLine, anywhere from 100 to 150 feet directly back of the boat or off boards. About 110 back gets a Tail Dancer running about 22 feet down.
Eventually, we started making runs far enough inshore that our lures dragged over the tips and main portions of rockbars. Holy smallmouths, Batman! Fat, feisty fish that ran 3, 4, and 5 pounds. Quickly enough, we began to drop in waypoints on our LCX104C. Would that we had jig rods in the boat that day, for no doubt we were, by trolling, quickly locating schools of active fish that had moved onto these rock areas to feed. We resolved to search these waypoints a couple days later, after finishing our walleye filming.
The walleye shoot went as planned, with fish from 4 to over 10 pounds. But we still had a morning to get back on those smallmouths before heading home. How many days a year does any portion of Erie actually go flat calm? It should be possible to catch smallmouths in those conditions, but our pattern had been blown and we didn't have time to get on another. I've now spent a year thinking about those waypoints and wanting to get back and give those smallmouths the old Batman biff!-bam!-boom!
A quick point for anglers heading out during this season is that trolling remains not just a great primary way to catch fish, but also a means for defining general fish patterns that often can be exploited more efficiently, or at least more effectively, in other ways.
On another trip last fall, this time in a search for muskies on a large sterile Canadian Shield lake that I wasn't familiar with, trolling was intended as the primary way to catch fish. In two days of trolling we were able to identify a few lake areas that had some. The best fishing, though, transpired on an unusually calm, warm day in which trolling didn't produce much action. So, at about midday we started casting, concentrating on shallow structural elements in the general areas where we'd previously caught fish trolling. No doubt the trolling helped us shortcut our way to a three-fish afternoon, with one fish measuring 48 inches.
The same sort of patterning often takes place on lakes where walleyes run ciscoes in open water during the day, or more likely at evening twilight. Find a decent school of fish in open water, then move to nearby shallower structural areas after dark, to often do even better for big fish by longline trolling, shallow-running minnow-imitating lures.
Largemouth bass also tend to group in certain general lake and reservoir areas during fall. Many anglers cast crankbaits to find fish, then slow down to pick areas apart with plastics. But most overlook how many bass often spend some time on deeper flats or even roam confined open water. Trolling often is the best way to find these fish.
Trolling can be a way to quickly get a feel for where groups of fish are holding. Could be crappies, stripers, lake trout, or pike. Works for the stocked trout. Wouldn't rule it out in the right situations for flathead catfish. Once areas have been identified that have general groups of fish, a variety of other tactics may better serve to produce even better fishing. First find fish. Then further pinpoint and pattern them.
