Not a Big Mack but a Happy Meal

I hit Lake Cle Elum for the first time on Wednesday and Thursday morning. The lake was glass smooth for the most part on both days except for some morning mountain's breath on Thursday which subsided pretty quickly. On Wednesday I launched out of Wish-Poosh and trolled Flatfish and cut plug herring in 80-150' of water but wasn't marking anything suspended and had no takers. I also tried jigging with no success before taking a couple hour break in the heat of the day. In the evening I hit the water near the dam and jigged in about 100' of water on marks at the bottom but had no takers and called it quits around 8 PM.



The next morning I went back to the dam and worked my way out jigging from 80' out deeper. After a couple hours I got my first bite but missed on the hook set. After 1.5 days of no bites I was cursing myself to miss that one opportunity. I was running two rods and the other rod was drifting a glob of worms along the bottom. Perhaps a minute or two after my first bite that rod got bit but did not stick. I rebaited the jig with a chunk of herring and some anise scent and sent it the 185' to the bottom. It hit bottom and just as I lifted the rod upward it got bit again and stuck! After what seemed like forever I reeled in my first Lake Trout!!!



I kept at it for a few more hours but after ten hours of jigging in 100' of water my arms were whipped. This was my first attempt at Lake Trout fishing. I know Macks get way bigger but I was thrilled to simply connect with any fish especially one new to me and one of my top ten targets for the Cascadia Big Fishing Year. Harvest is encourage by WDFW to help reduce predation pressures on sockeye smolts as they attempt to restore sockeye to the Yakima River. I bonked the fish and am interested to see what it tastes like. I noticed that not many Mackinaw have been submitted for the AOTY competition over the past few years. I don't know if that is a reflection in the difficulty in catching them from a kayak or just that so few people have targeted them.

I want to thank pmmpete for all of his help in offering advice on connecting with these fish from a kayak.

Congratulations! How big was it?  I prefer "Happy Meal" sized lake trout over "Big Mack" sized lake trout, because they are long-lived fish-eating fish which tend to concentrate toxins.  But they are very tasty, regardless of whether they are big or small.  I cook them with a number of different recipes, many of which are salmon recipes.

If it's any consolation, I got skunked my first two days on Lindbergh Lake this spring.  I clearly haven't figured out where they hang out right after the ice leaves that lake.  I did better on Flathead Lake, but there are a lot more lake trout in Flathead Lake.  Participants in this Spring's Mack Days fishing derby have pulled in 24,544 lake trout in the first 9 weeks of the derby.  See http://www.mackdays.com/ .    Top participants are pulling in 50-80 fish a day.  You have to be catching more than about 5 lake trout an hour to be competitive in the derby.  Those guys have definitely figured out how to catch macks.

It was just short of 19". The fillets are very pretty. Slightly off pink and firmer than I expected. Thanks again for your advice.

A couple of weeks ago Yaktastic sent me a PM asking for suggestions about how to catch lake trout.  Here they are, for what they're worth, which probably isn't very much.  I'm not even trying to participate in Mack Days, and Yaktastic hasn't responded that with the help of my suggestions he's now catching buckets of macks. 
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First, a disclaimer.  Where lake trout or any other kind of fish is involved, every lake has its own characteristics, and lake trout hang out in a fairly wide variety of habitats at different times of the year.  For example, in Flathead Lake there is a deep population of lake trout and a shallow population of lake trout.  The deep population tends to hang out on the bottom in 250-300 feet of water gobbling up Mysis shrimp.  The shallow population tends to hang out in 30-80 feet of water gobbling up fish.  In the winter, I catch a lot of lake trout while ice fishing in East Bay, which is several miles across but only 3-8 feet deep.  In the fall, when lake trout are spawning, they can be caught in 10-20 feet of water in areas with rocky bottoms.  In some lakes and at some times of the year, lake trout seem to hang out near the mouths of streams in fairly shallow water.  So you need to learn each lake and each season.

But I can make the following general suggestions about lake trout:

1.  Fish the bottom.  Lake trout tend to hang out right on the bottom.  Sometimes they hang out in really deep water, say 250-300 feet, and sometimes they hang out in shallower water, say 30-90 feet.  But the bottom is the best place to fish for lake trout.  In some areas people find lake trout suspended in the middle of the water column, but I personally haven't found them in middle depths much at all. 

2. Fish cold water. Lake trout like cold water.  If the water in shallow areas is warm, you aren't going to find lake trout.  They'll seek out cold water, either in deep areas of the lake, or where springs or feeder streams bring in cooler water.

3.  Fish near features. Try fishing around features, such as the bottom of steep drop-offs or benches, mounds, saddles, or points.  If the lake drops off steeply to a flat bottom, you may well find lake trout out in the featureless middle of the flat area, but you're way more likely to find them clustered around the edges of flat areas and the bottoms of slopes, or around other features. 

4.  Fish deep.  Lake trout spend a lot of time in the deepest parts of lakes, so figure out how to fish those areas.

5.  Downrigger trolling.  Downrigger trolling is an excellent way to fish for lake trout, and an excellent way to scan a lake in search of lake trout.  Run your ball only a few feet above the bottom, and follow contour lines around the lake.  If you don't find lake trout at a particular depth, keep working the area at deeper or shallower depths until you find lake trout.  Often lake trout will rise up off the bottom in response to your downrigger weight and/or lure and then drop back to the bottom, or you may see groups of fish within a couple feet of the bottom.  Sometimes lake trout will follow your lure for quite a while.  If the sonar return from your ball gets thicker, a lake trout may be following right behind your lure.  You may not realize a lake trout has been following your lure for quite a while until you change the depth of your weight, and then you see a lake trout drop back to the bottom.  Because lake trout often hug the bottom, you may not be able to find them by chugging around the lake just watching your sonar.  If you run your lure too high above the bottom, lake trout may not respond to it, and because they hug the bottom, you may not be able to tell that they're there.

6.  Downrigger trolling lures.  You can downrigger troll for lake trout with a variety of lures.  Don't be afraid to use big lures - I routinely catch lake trout which have fish which are half their length in their stomachs, often with the eaten fish's tail still visible in the lake trout's mouth, and I often catch modest sized lake trout on pretty big lures.  But I have also caught pretty big lake trout on Rapala shad rap and scatter rap lures which are only about 3 inches long.  I use flatfish, various sizes and types of Rapala type lures, large flexible artificial baits with a small piece of cut bait on a quickstrike rig containing two big treble hooks running about two feet behind a big dodger, or big streamer flies with a piece of cut bait.  Some people troll with various large spoons or big Vibrax spinner lures, but because I tend to troll quite close to the bottom, I prefer lures which either float, or which don't sink very fast, because I don't want to catch my lure on the bottom.  I prefer lures which run pretty flat behind my downrigger ball, rather than lures which dive, because I usually troll pretty close to the bottom, and I can see my downrigger ball on my fish finder, but I usually can't see the lure.

7. Jigging. Once you locate schools of lake trout (and downrigger trolling is a good way to do that) jigging is a good way to fish for lake trout.  You may be jigging in quite deep water.  You can jig with a variety of spoons and lead headed jigs.  I prefer a fairly heavy jig so it drops quickly to the bottom.  Put a small piece of cut bait on your jig, and change the cut bait frequently.  Another effective jigging technique, if the local fishing regulations permit it, is to fish with both a leadhead lure with cut bait, and a big light-colored nymph type fly, both on leaders a foot or so long from the same snap hook.  Often you may catch half your lake trout on the little fly.  Leave the jig suspended only a couple of inches off the bottom, because that's where the lake trout hang out.  Bounce the jig off the bottom, twitch it up a couple of inches every couple of seconds, and occasionally lift the jig up 5 or ten feet.  You may see lake trout come in and follow the jig when you lift it up higher.  Lake trout often bite pretty lightly on jigs, so you need to watch the tip of your rod closely.  They also often hit a jig as it's dropping, so if you suddenly don't feel the weight of the jig, a lake trout may have grabbed it.

8.  Staying stationary while jigging.  When jigging, you need to stay stationary above the bottom.  Motor boaters can use a "GPS anchor" trolling motor to stay stationary.  Anchors are not a good way to stay stationary while jigging, because even a small shift in wind direction can move a boat a long distance on the anchor.  And it's hard to carry enough anchor line in a kayak to jig in deep water.  So when kayak fishing, you need to paddle or pedal into the wind to keep stationary.  Pedal kayaks can hold stationary quite effectively even in considerable wind and waves.  A small flag or streamer can help you tell what direction the wind is coming from so you can keep your nose into the wind.  I'm no good at staying stationary in a paddle kayak while jigging.  I think you need three arms to jig effectively from a paddle kayak.  Ways to hold yourself stationary over the bottom are by using the GPS features of your fish finder, triangulating off features on the shore, or by trying to keep your line going straight down into the water.  The “keeping your line going straight down in the water” technique doesn’t work if there is a current, because the current will be moving you along  the lake bottom.

9.  Dead fish or sausage. I catch a lot of lake trout when ice fishing with 6-8 inch dead bait fish such as northern pikeminnow (squaw fish) or peamouths on a quick-strike rig with two big treble hooks.  You can also fish with dead fish or sausage from a kayak.  Because lake trout always swallow fish head first, I put the lower treble hook in the bait fish's head with the tips of the hooks pointing towards the tail, and the other hook in the bait fish's back near the balance point.  I like to suspend the bait fish about a foot off the bottom when ice fishing to make it more visible, but you can also just leave it lying on the bottom.  A lot of people in this area catch lake trout with pieces of sausage.  Johnsonville maple syrup flavor sausage is a big favorite.  They pull their leader through the center of the sausage with a piece of wire with a hook in the end, cast out from the shore with a heavy lead slip anchor, and let the sausage lie on the bottom.

10.  Fishing gear.  When I’m lake trout fishing, I have one rod rigged for downrigger trolling, and a second rod rigged for jigging, so if I find a school of lake trout, I can switch from trolling to jigging if I want to with a minimum of hassle and delay.  I use 30 pound braided line on both rods.  Low stretch is really important when jigging.  I use star-drag level-wind trolling reels with line counters.

11.  A great video. You can get a great set of two DVDs titled "Catching Lake Trout in Flathead Lake" for free from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Natural Resources Department by contacting Cindy Benson at 406-675-2700.  One DVD covers jigging, and the other covers trolling and dock fishing.  The DVDs feature a series of experience and successful local fisherman, and are really excellent.

Great post! I have a Lowrance Elite4 ff. I could easily pick out fish on the bottom down to 100' but below 150' I was largely guessing using the color to detect "soft" bottom bumps which I interpreted to be fish. I had the sensitivity at its maximum but it was tough.

Holy cow that's some deep water fishing! We have a lake up here that has lake trout in it that so far I haven't been able to connect. Maybe I haven't been fishing deep enough

Here's a typical picture I took on Flathead Lake while downrigger trolling in my kayak in 143 feet of water.  It shows a couple of lake trout following my downrigger weight (the thin line).  In the spring and summer, this was relatively shallow water lake trout fishing. The guys who are jigging spend almost all their time between 250 and 350 feet. In the fall, the lake trout can be caught while trolling in much shallower water, perhaps 20-80 feet, because they are getting ready to spawn in 20-30 feet of water in areas with rocky bottoms. An advantage of shallower lakes which have lake trout is that even when the lake trout are in the deepest part of the lake, they aren't all that deep.