Sea Run Cutthroat

What would you suggest being a good bait/lure to offer these fellows? 

In salt or sweet water?  Makes a difference - sometimes.

I don't even know what sweet water is?

pppsstttt, rev, he means freshwater....

WR - Ahhhh, many thanks... I am thinking specifically of saltwater... although I would be interested everyones thoughts on freshwater too.

For fresh water my favorite style of fishing for trout of any kind is dry fly fishing.  Get out there during a hatch, match the hatch and watch them swallow the fly.  A 5wt is a really nice rod.  About a 9' tapered leader from a floating line.

Otherwise they can be fished much like any other trout in a river.  It's just a matter of figureing out which patterns will work that day. 

In the salt, I've never had any success catching them, but what everone tells me is that flies in colors like pink with maybe a little green tend to work best.  But then again, my track record in the salt sucks, so you might want to take that with a grain of, err, salt.

I have never targeted cutts , but I accidentally plowed through a school last season trolling for salmon in the salt. They bit everything I had including king fisher spoons, coho killers, dick nites, and brad's wiggle warts. I never got my salmon, but c&r'd a bunch of cutthroats.

SRCs are extremely aggressive.  They'll bite just about anything in a river.  I have no salt experience with them though.

I really like a 5-6wt fly rod with sparsly tied baitfish imitators or shrimp patterns. Topwatter popping flies can be really productive when the sandlance are wriggling on the surface. I'm sure small spinners or spoons would be productive too. Target really skinny water with some tidal flow and a rocky bottom. if this coincides a creek mouth or something of the sort your almost guaranteed to find'em!

if you are not flyfishing i would go with a small spoon.  since all sea run cutthroat are catch and release in the saltwater i would strongly encourage people not to use bait.  aggressive feeding fish and bait equals a high hooking mortality.  one of the biggest sea-runs i've ever seen came from a buddy casting a small spoon on the same shallow beaches i was fishing flies.

I did well last year in tidewater with small spinners and spoons. I have heard that sculpin filets are killer if you are fishing where bait is allowed. In Oregon you can use bait in tidewater. It's something I would like to try.