My wife was itching for a vacation up north to get away from the heat and humidity, and I was ready for a (short) break from the speckled trout and redfish. So, we hitched the skiff to the trailer and towed clear up to the Finger Lakes. The targets: lake trout, yellow perch, and smallmouth bass. The first three days I spun my wheels probing unfamiliar waters, but midweek I began to get the hang of things. And by the end of the week, I’d amassed a stack of fillets in the refrigerator that would make any angler happy. During the process, I learned three critical things about fishing in unfamiliar waters.
- Since you don’t know where the hotspots are (and anything a stranger is telling you is likely second-rate at best), keep on the move. After travelling up and down the lake I eventually nailed down three areas that were productive, but it took days of catching a fish here and a fish there before figuring out where to focus my energy.
- Rig up with an effective search bait. I tried plenty of different offerings, but a small silver jigging spoon turned out to catch 90-percent of the fish because one minute I could fish it deep, and the next minute fish it shallow. I could vertically jig, or cast and retrieve. I could fish it slow, and I could fish it fast. You’re going to have to search, so choose a lure you can search with.
- Question what you see on the electronics. I learned the hard way that the tall strands of weeds in the lake looked nothing like the weeds I see at home. I learned the hard way that marks which looked like awesome fish were actually carp that swam deep to cooler waters. And I learned the hard way that what looked like good panfish were actually undesirable gobies. In all of these cases I learned by eventually snagging these things, but in each case it took hours of effort before that happened. Eventually, I learned that stuff just looks different – because there’s different stuff – in such foreign waterways.
All of that said, don’t stop trying. Because if you can catch specks and reds, eventually, you’ll get those darn lake trout figured out.