Hoping to fish Ima lake during our trip in August.
I'm guessing they will be deep that time of year. Looking for tackle advice. Just asking as I have never fished for them in a canoe before. Thanks in advance.

So I just fished these for the first time last week in Woodland Caribou in Canada. I will just share what I figured out. Newbie advise... They liked silver flashing spoons some with blue or purple on them-but so did the northern. They also like big-like 4 inch or better white jig bodies on heavy jigs, like 3/8oz or bigger.

I found a three way set up with a one oz rig the best for getting down with a spoon or rapala. My rig was set up with 8lb mono.

I also found out that one needs to use black three ways and black snaps because the stinken northerns will hit them and cut you off. They also troll the deep. Who knew! I caught my most (prior to a northern getting it) on a authentic daredevil 3/4 oz on a three way with a one oz sinker. We also caught a fair number on purple rapala's-tail dancer I think and one purple Rapala I found on a log and then lost this year to again another northern attack.

We trolled until we found them and then jigged. 20-25 ft of water in the mornings next to deep drops. They were in 30ft next to 50 in the afternoons. It seemed like they orientated mostly to inside corners.

Hopefully others will chime in here. It seemed almost anything a northern would hit so would they-just get it 20-30 ft down.

I have a old Eagle portable fish finder. It would show a bait fish cloud and then we would find the trout.

Good luck! We had a blast catching those things!

J

We did our first laker trip in June. We used Rapala Tail Dancers and Deep Down Husky Jerks in various colors. We were using 10# Suffix braid. I had a bobber stop tied on at the 140' mark. We would just cast as far as we could and then let line out until the bobber stop came off the spool.

Most of the time we had a 10# flouro leader tied on the braid with a uni to uni knot. Later on we tried tying directly to our snaps with the braid. I also tried a 12" titanium leader. We could not see that the leader or tying directly to the lure hurt our catch rate at all.

Most of the time it was calm enough for the stern man alone to paddle for trolling. Three light strokes, switch sides, then 3 strokes, etc. It was very easy to maintain 1.8 to 2.1 mph all day.

Most of the fish we saw on the depth finder (PiranhaMax 175 shooting thru the hull) were at roughly 30' down. Some shallower, some deeper.

Sometimes they'd just be on like a clump of weeds. Sometimes they'd drill it... often missing and hitting it again and again. The fight was not too exciting until they got closer to the boat. Then they would go crazy and spin like a bullhead.

We also saw baitfish, but often the trout were above the bait.