To catch more lake trout this spring, adopt a comprehensive game plan. Here’s how

#3  COMBINE PRESENTATIONS

In order to get my lure in front of as many fish as possible, I combine vertical and horizontal presentations. One of my regular vertical approaches is to simply drop my bait under the boat when I mark fish directly below me. To cover shallow water, meanwhile, I’ll make long casts and let the lure fall until it’s near bottom. I then retrieve it with an exaggerated up-and-down jigging motion that often triggers bites on the drop.

The contrasting approach is to bring your bait through the water column horizontally, typically with a steady, consistent retrieve to keep it in the strike zone. That allows fish to look at your bait for a long time. An obvious example is trolling, which outshines all other techniques when the trout are in the mood to follow a bait before striking. When casting, swimbaits are my favourite lure to fish horizontally. And as I learned from Darren, spoons are also effective. They run shallower than a heavy swimbait, but the flash can call in fish from farther away.

To fish horizontally, I cast, let the bait sink to the bottom, then begin a steady retrieve back to the boat. I try to choose a bait that’s heavy enough to travel horizontally throughout the retrieve. If you feel like the fish are tight to the bottom, don’t be afraid to drop your lure back down to the bottom a few times to keep it in front of them. To fish higher in the column, on the other hand, shorten the sink time before beginning your horizontal retrieve. Just remember that lakers love to chase, so adjust your choices based on how they respond to your lure’s depth and motion.