Putting together a consistent program to catch trout and salmon on the Great Lakes can be a challenge even for the best fisherman. The truth is often the difference between the person who is productive and the person who is not are just a few minor details. Some days productive may just be catching 1 fish instead of getting skunked. Other days it’s the difference between having a good day and a great day where you get your limit.

A lot comes down to paying attention to the details and listening to the what the fish are telling you. And using that information to adjust your program to catch fish.

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR ELECTRONICS!

Let’s start with your fish finder. Ask yourself, what are the fish telling you on your fish finder? What depth are they at? Do you see fish coming up to check out your bait but then not biting? Do you see fish darting down away from your boat? Are you not seeing any fish at all? Are you seeing any bait fish?

These details and others are very important and often over looked. For example, if the fish are coming up to lures that means they are at least partially interested. One trick I like to do is if I see fish coming up to my lures, I will quickly kick my motor into neutral and drift and wait for a bite. If I pick up a fish then, I know I am probably going too fast for the bite today and I slow down. If I don’t pick up a bite, I will speed up a bit and see if that helps. Constantly varying my speed until I can dial things in.

If you see fish darting away from you, the fish are feeling skittish. Go stealthy. Put all your lines out farther away from the boat. For planers and dipsy’s run them farther out and back. For your down riggers, run the lure farther away from the ball. Don’t be afraid to run your lure 50 or even 100′ off the ball behind the boat.

Not marking and not catching any fish, this is probably a good time to move. Start searching until you start marking fish.

If you have a speed/temperature probe, what is it telling you? Are you in a good temperature range for what you are trying to catch? Is your speed at the probe different from your speed over ground (SOG)? How speed at the probe changes when you change directions?

Temperature at depth is key. If your lures are at depths where the temperature is too warm or too cold, there is a fair chance you’re not going to catch fish. Remember fish like people want to be where they are comfortable. Just this weekend, I had a situation where I wasn’t catching fish and wasn’t sure what to do. The entire charter fleet was around me and I could see them picking up fish. So I knew I was in an area where fish were active.

Then I happened to look at my FishHawk display and it read 65 degrees at the ball. That was way too warm! I immediately knew that we weren’t fishing deep enough in the water column. Within 15 minutes of moving my downrigger down to where the water temp was 48 degrees, we picked up a double.

Speed is one of those discussions that can take hours if you really get into the nitty gritty of it all. I am going to keep it as basic as I can. If you have a speed/temperature probe, the speed at your probe is what you should pay the most attention to.

Remember what I said earlier about fish being comfortable? This applies to speed too. If you’re too fast, the fish won’t want to waste their energy on your lure, if you’re too slow, they won’t like how the lure looks in the water. If you’re going the wrong direction from them, they won’t make the effort to chase your lure down.

Fish typically face into the current. Think of that current as a conveyor belt that brings food to the fish. The fish will sit there and wait until it see’s something of interest. Sometimes, it will be an impulse thing and the fish will strike at it because it came close enough and sometimes, it will look at it and go nah, I am not in the mood for yellow today. If your direction and depth are correct your lure will travel on or near that conveyor belt. If your lure is going too fast on that conveyor belt the fish may decide its not worth the effort to grab what is going by. If your lure is going to slow on the conveyor belt the lure may not move correctly and the fish will ignore it. If you’re lure is not on the conveyor belt at all, you may well be plain out of luck!

How fast you should go on that conveyor belt depends on a lot of factors, have the fish been feeding a lot already. Are they tired because they have been fighting storms for the last 3 days. To determine optimal speed for the day requires trial and error, and paying attention to what the fish are telling you! If you pick up a fish at 2.2 mph but none at 2.6 mph you know that the fish want a slower presentation.

The hard part about speed and direction is what the fish want one day can be different the next day.

What did your catch tell you?

When you catch fish, again pay attention to the details here as well. Put all the pieces together, what depth, speed, direction, water temp (if you have a probe) did you catch your fish at? What setup did the fish hit? What type of fish did you catch? Was the fish barely hooked or did the fish inhale the lure? What lure or color lure did it bite? Were you making a turn and was the bite on the inside of the turn or the outside of the turn? All these details can help you refine your program to catch more fish if you pay attention.

If you have a fish finder that let’s you mark way points, enter a way point every time you hook up, even if you lose a fish. I know its hard to remember to do this in the heat of the moment. Each mark for the day helps you fill in the puzzle during the course of your trip. Are the fish in one particular area or are they spread out? Tie that together with depth, speed, direction, lure and/or lure color and paint a picture of what the fish want.

Quite often you will find that you will catch fish in a very specific depth, speed and direction. This is why you often see charters constantly going around in circles. They have figured out what depth, speed and direction the fish are biting in and they are continually circling back to that area where they have picked up fish. If you see charters spread out and going in all different directions, chances are it means they are searching for the fish.

If you have a decent fish finder/chart plotter, as soon as you hook up, mark a way point. In addition, note your speed, depth and direction. Speed, depth and direction are the 3 legged stool of trolling. If you only have 2 of the 3 legs in place you’re not going to catch fish or catch fewer fish.

If you continue trolling in a particular direction for 15-30 minutes and don’t catch any more fish, head back to where you had your last bite. Make sure you do it so that you try to match the details from before, same speed, same depth and same heading. If you catch more fish, then its time to rinse and repeat. Continue circling back and hitting the same area over and over again until you stop catching fish.

Fish are creatures of habit. Just like people, they have area’s where they are comfortable and content and they have area’s where they are not. So if you find an area where the fish are you need to keep going back to it. Chances are there is more than one fish where you picked the first one up.

Wrap up

Learning to listen to what the fish are telling you takes time and discipline. It is particularly difficult in our connected world today. You have to practice that mindfulness and adjust to what the fish want not what you think they want.

Some times you will get it wrong, but don’t give up. The more you work at it the better fisherman you will become.