Trolling Fishing
Trolling is a commonly practiced method of fishing in both freshwater and saltwater for a wide range of species. In simplest terms, it is a method of presenting a lure or bait behind a power-driven boat. In a general sense, it is especially popular in wide-open waters, where it is used for fish that are deep and/or nomadic and where there are few underwater obstructions.
Despite the fact that it is a widely used technique, trolling is underappreciated both in popular angling literature and among anglers who primarily cast for presentation rather than use a boat. There is an image problem associated with an activity in which the angler doesn’t cast and retrieve, and in which unseen fish are attracted to, and hooked by, lures pulled by a moving boat—television producers say that the action lacks drama. In many quarters, a myth has long been perpetuated that trolling is easy or too effective or less sporting than other techniques.
Trolling is an important means of searching conscientiously for fish that anglers rarely see until they are brought to the side of a boat. Trolling appeals to anglers who want to know more about the fish that live in wide open water and about the environment they inhabit. Modern trolling attracts those who want to master the challenge of catching fish—especially big fish—that are often far out of the reach of people using other methods. Trolling with proper tackle can be as sporting and enjoyable as fishing by any other method.
Many anglers troll for some or most of their fish. Trolling is the way to catch trout and salmon on lakes and reservoirs; it is the method on some muskie waters. It is a valued technique for walleye, an overlooked method for black bass, and an important means of catching striped bass. In saltwater, trolling is a critical method for catching many pelagic species, especially billfish, and important for pursuing many inshore species, including kingfish, bluefish, and various jacks. There is plenty of science and drama involved, whether the quarry is blue marlin, chinook salmon, walleye, or dolphin.
Knowledgeable anglers know that trolling does not entail dragging any old lure or bait an indeterminate distance behind a boat at an unknown depth, in an unplanned fashion. Successful trollers must know exactly where their lures are and how those lures are acting, and they must make a calculated, determined effort to entice a fish. That means being able to do many things well, including rigging lines, reading sonar, setting lures, judging when to change lures or locations, knowing the proper speed at which to fish, and understanding how to manipulate a boat to effect the kind of presentation that attracts fish.
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General methods
Trolling can be broken down into the following basic methods:
1.Fishing an object on an unweighted monofilament, braided, or fly line.
This method, known as flatlining (see), is popular for relatively shallow fishing in freshwater and saltwater because the depth achieved is entirely dependent on the weight or diving ability of the object being trolled. To know how deep you’re fishing, you must know the depth that object will attain given boat speed, line size, current, trolling-line length, etc. To avoid haphazard effort and sporadic success, you must learn to evaluate the depth that the trolled lures or baits actually attain.
High-speed surface flatlining is also practiced in some situations, primarily in saltwater for billfish. Here, lures are trolled quickly on top of the water or through the surface foam.
2.Fishing an object on a weighted line.
Fishing an object on a weighted line involves using a weight (see)—drail, split shot, keel, bell, bead chain, or other type of sinker—to get a lure or bait deeper than it could be presented unaided. The problem of knowing the actual depth being fished is the same as with unweighted lines.
3.Fishing an object behind a lead core or wire line.
Here, the weight of the line causes the object being trolled to sink. The depth of the lure or bait depends on how much line is let out. This can be a more precise method of fishing than flatlining when it is important to achieve a specific depth. To gauge distance, lead core line (see) is marked by different colors at intervals, and wire line (see) is usually marked with tape by anglers. Although stronger than nylon or braided line, lead core line is bulkier, and it dampens the fight of a fish. Wire, which has to be used on stout tackle, is subject to kinking, crimping, and spooling difficulties; although it transmits the actions of the fish well to the angler, wire line and the corresponding tackle also blunt the fight.
4.Fishing an object behind a diving planer.
A diving planer (see) is a device used on a fishing line for the purpose of getting lures deep without weight or other attachments. Because it pulls so hard when trolled, a diving planer is fished off a very stout rod and is used with fairly heavy line. Diving planers run deep on a relatively short line; the length of line trolled determines how deep the planer will dive. A planer releases when a fish strikes, so you don’t have to fight it along with the fish; nevertheless, the planer may impede the fight and activity of the fish, and its size or presence may deter some fish from striking. You have to set the lure no more than 5 feet behind the planer in order to land a fish.
5.Fishing an object behind a releasable cannonball sinker.
This is a deep-trolling system traditionally used for Pacific salmon fishing. A large, cannonball-shaped sinker (see: weight) gets the line down deep; the sinker is released and drops to the bottom when a fish strikes. You lose a lot of lead weight in this system, and you need stout, heavy tackle. Also, you don’t often know the depth at which you’re fishing when you’re off the bottom. Present and future restrictions on lead usage and disposal may preclude this approach.
6.Fishing an object behind a downrigger.
A downrigger (see) takes the burden of getting a line to a specific depth away from the fishing line. A lure attached to your fishing line is placed in the water and set at the desired distance to run behind your boat. The fishing line is placed in the release attached to the downrigger cable; the release frees the line when a fish strikes, and the angler plays the fish unencumbered. This affords the most controlled-depth presentation possible, plus the use of lighter and more sporting tackle. It has relegated wire and lead core line to near-antique status among regular and accomplished trollers, except in places where the lake or ocean floor is full of rocks and radical changes in depth. Downrigger trolling originated on the Great Lakes for trout and salmon fishing; it spread inland for muskies, stripers, and walleye, then to saltwater for inshore and offshore fishing.
Trolling speed
Most anglers are unaware of the vital role that speed plays in trolling, which perhaps explains why trolling is such a hit-and-miss proposition for so many. Routinely successful trollers have a special understanding of the behavior of the fish they seek; of the size, color, and style of lure that appeals to those fish under various conditions; and of boat maneuvering techniques for proper presentation. They also have a keen awareness of how speed relates to these other elements. The better guides and charter boat captains have a sixth sense about speed; they intuitively know if they are at the right speed, or they rely on an instrument to gauge it. Many anglers, however, fail to recognize that boat and lure speed (there can be a difference) is an integral aspect of trolling and that they must be attentive to it. No matter what kind of fish you troll for, or what tackle and type of boat you use, you’ll get more out of your lures by paying close attention to the speed at which they are working.
The key point about trolling speed is not speed for speed’s sake: You don’t necessarily go fast because your quarry is accustomed to out-hustling its prey, or slow because the target species won’t run down an object moving quickly. The correct speed is the one that gets the right action out of your lures and is correct for the fish you seek.
The swimming action of a lure, perhaps more than shape or color, causes fish to strike. If it didn’t, anglers might as well troll treble-hooked pencils. Action is the key. It is determined by lure design and the speed with which the lure is pulled. Complexity arises when you consider all the variables that affect trolling speed and lure action, including current, waves, wind velocity and direction, type and weight of boat, power of the engine, type of lure, and so forth.
One of the greatest mistakes made by trollers is to fish at the same boat speed when heading into the wind as when moving with the wind. On an otherwise still body of water, you will obviously go faster with the wind than against it, assuming you never reposition the throttle. The same is true of current. As an example, suppose you maintain a boat speed of 2 miles per hour (mph) downstream and then turn upstream at the same throttle setting; depending on the strength of the current, you may head upstream at only 1 mph, make no headway at all, or lose ground. Add varying wave heights, and think about the effect they would have. These factors affect the way your lure works and may explain why, on a particular day, you catch fish trolling in one direction but not in the other.
Boat speed, however, must be compatible with the lures fished. Trolling lures are designed to be fished within a certain range of speeds; there is a particular speed at which each lure exhibits its maximum action. Some lures work tolerably at slow or fast speeds, some can sustain action in a wide range of speeds, and others have a narrow range of workability.
Plugs that don’t wobble, don’t have a natural swimming action, or don’t track true, or that run on their sides, roll, or skip out of the water, either need to be tuned to work properly or are being run too slow or too fast. Spoons that lie flat as they’re trolled, have a lazy wobble, hang more vertically than horizontally, or spin furiously, aren’t working right. You may find that a spoon will swim perfectly at a certain boat speed, whereas a plug will hardly wobble at the same speed. The two should not be fished together.
Most trollers have experienced occasions when one rod out of several consistently caught fish while the others had no action. Maybe the lure on that rod was at the magic depth or had the hot color, so you put other lures of that color out and/or more lures at the same depth. But the one rod still out-produced the others. Often the reason is that the lure on the productive rod was perfectly matched to the speed of the boat and exhibited the action the fish wanted or that it most accurately mimicked the movement of prey. The other lures may not have been swimming correctly because the boat was going too slow or too fast.
Trollers should check the swimming action of every lure before it is put into the water, even a lure that they have recently fished successfully. Put the lure in the water, point the rod tip at the water or lower it into the water with the lure several feet behind the tip, and watch the lure swim at the boat’s current speed. You can alter boat speed to get the lure to run well, but this might adversely affect the action of other lures that you already have out.
Focus on the speeds that work well for the lures in your boat. If you do a lot of trolling, it is an excellent idea to make up a lure speed chart. Use a tachometer, an electronic speedometer, an incremental indicator, or whatever reference device you have. Spend the time to run all of your different lures in the water beside the boat to determine their ideal speed, and observe the range of speed they will tolerate. It may not be fun, but that information will be valuable, especially when you want to mix lures or change boat speed.
Knowing the range of speed your lures will tolerate is very helpful when you want to find out which lure speed is preferred by fish on a given day. It is no accident that many fish are caught when boaters speed up or slow down and when they make turns. On a turn, the lure on the outside of the turn speeds up and the lure on the inside slows down, unless the turn is very long and gradual. These changes in lure behavior often trigger strikes and may indicate that your speed was previously incorrect for the lure to be successful or that you needed a change in speed to trigger a strike from a curious fish. Making frequent alterations in speed, either by decreasing or advancing the throttle or by turning, is a valuable tactic—but you’ll need to know whether your lures will work properly at the different speeds.
Even though you may achieve the proper speed and action for a particular lure, that speed may be inappropriate for the fish you seek. Thus, you have to experiment with different lures and different trolling speeds. Effective trolling speed varies according to species and season. Few anglers have the problem of not being able to troll fast enough (except rowers and electric-motor trollers headed into a wind), but some encounter situations when they cannot troll slowly enough. Some boats simply cannot troll slowly enough even at the lowest throttle setting, particularly if they’re headed downwind. A light boat with a moderate-size engine will troll faster than many larger, heavier boats with powerful stern-drives or inboards. Some large outboard motors will not run below 600 rpm and, on a moderate-size craft, will push that vessel along at a speed greater than is practical. Consider using an auxiliary motor (9.9 or 15 horsepower) if you have a big boat, or use a trolling plate (see), which baffles the prop thrust and stymies forward propulsion, or a sea anchor (see), a bag that is dragged alongside or behind the boat, to slow it down.
Boat speed
To determine boat speed, you need some reference point. A tachometer shows engine revolutions per minute (rpm). Although rmp is not a perfect gauge of boat speed, lacking other references, you can use it to estimate speed when conditions are relatively calm. Stick with a certain setting if you’re catching fish. You have to alter the rpm, however, when wind, waves, or current impedes your forward movement. If you’re using a lure that has caught fish at a certain rpm setting, and if you encounter current or wind that is affecting your headway at that setting, run the lure alongside the boat and watch how it behaves. Increase the throttle until you get the lure to run perfectly; then note the new rpm and try to maintain it.
Small-boat trollers, including those with tiller steering, may not have a tachometer, so they have to guess at relative speeds or use some type of measuring device. Some boaters fashion a speed indicator by attaching one end of a 3-foot wire or heavy monofilament leader to a l-pound lead weight and the other end to an arrowlike indicator, which pivots along a plate that has incremental measuring units marked on it. The weight is dropped in the water, and the arrow points to a spot on the plate; the arrow’s position changes as boat speed is altered. Commercially made speed indicators work similarly.
The units of measurement on these devices do not correlate to actual speed in miles per hour or knots, but simply to relative speed. When you put a lure in the water and get it to work properly, note the position of the arrow and run the boat at a speed that keeps it there.
Precise indications of knots or miles per hour are obtained by using relatively sophisticated, battery-operated electronic instruments. These sport paddlewheels are mounted on the transom; the paddle spins as the boat moves, relaying speed on a digital display. These units may read differently from each other, but they can be calibrated. Once you get accustomed to a particular unit, you’ll learn to correlate what it reveals to fishing conditions. Another electronic device for calculating boat speed, and one with exceptional reliability and accuracy, is a GPS, which calculates distance moved over time and should be used in the fastest update mode.
The speed recorded on one boat may not be comparable with the speed recorded on another boat. You may be catching fish while motoring at 550 rpms, for example, yet friends in another boat are not catching anything despite the fact that their tachometer has the same reading. Or, you may be catching fish while traveling at 2.25 mph while someone else is catching fish at 2.50 mph using the same lures. Gauges do vary slightly, and boat speed is influenced by a host of factors, making exact speed comparisons between boats difficult.
How should you gauge speed if you don’t have some type of indicating device? Become a rod-tip watcher when you flatline (this is a good flatline practice at all times because you can often tell whether your lure has picked up some debris that impedes its success). Listen carefully to the sound of your engine, and watch the action of your lures. Watch other anglers; come up alongside a boat that has recently caught a fish, duplicate the speed of the other boat, and then check your tachometer.
Lure speed
Most speedometers measure boat and lure speed at or near the surface. In many trolling situations, this speed will be the same, or nearly the same, as the speed of the lure at the level you are trolling. There are times, however, when surface speed has no relation to lure speed. If you have ever anchored your boat in a river and fished a lure on a fixed length of line behind the boat, you can readily appreciate this. This is how steelhead anglers work downriver with plugs; it is also how shad anglers use jigs or darts. The boat may be stationary, but the force of the current makes the lure swim. In effect, it’s like trolling in place; the lure actually is going nowhere, but the speed of the current gives it action.
Imagine now that you are trolling upriver. The force of the current, in addition to the pressure of the forward movement of your boat, could be making your lure swim wildly instead of working naturally. How do you know? If the water is fairly shallow, you can watch your lure swim beside the boat and be fairly certain that it will swim the same when you drop it a little deeper. But in a deep river, or where there may be back currents or varying flow patterns, the lure may not swim at the same speed down deep as it does on the surface. What if you are trolling up a tidal river when the tide is coming in? Does that negate the force of the current, and if so, how does that affect your lure? If you are slow-trolling downriver when the tide is going out, it’s conceivable that your lure might be hanging listlessly below your boat instead of swimming provocatively behind it.
These problems are not restricted to rivers and obvious current or tidal environments. There are currents in the ocean; there are also currents in open-water portions of the Great Lakes and in many large inland lakes. Few big-water anglers understand current’s effect on lure presentation.
Current in lakes and reservoirs can be caused by tributaries entering the lake, by dam releases (“pulling water”) or other outlets, and by wind and wave action. The presence of current may be obvious, but it is usually so subtle that a visual inspection of the surface and measurements of speed at that level give no indication of the presence of current. In some places, there is such a strong current at 50 feet or deeper that it is detectable by watching the action of downrigger weights and cables: With the boat at a slow speed heading into the current, the weights and cables sway back; going with the current, the weights and cables hang nearly vertically.
Below-surface or deep-water currents affect the speed and action of trolling lures. It is possible for a boat to be moving at 2 mph while the lure is acting as if it were running faster. You can troll all day, change colors over the entire spectral range, have no success whatsoever, and have no idea why. If you’re flatlining under such circumstances, you may be able to detect the influence of current by watching your lines and rod tips, but most of the time this will not be an indicator. You can determine the presence of strong current by watching a down- rigger, but even then you won’t know how it is influencing your lures.
Electronic speed indicators can relay the speed of your lure or downrigger via sensors that attach to the downrigger cable above the weight and electrically transmit that speed to a readout. They also can indicate temperature at the depth of the sensor and at the water surface.
See: Backtrolling; Big-Game Fishing; Downrigger Fishing; Flatlining; Mooching.
Turning boat
Plug rises
Spoon sinks
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons,Inc.,(Fish illustrations © 1999 David Kiphuth.)
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