They’re on, they’re off, they’re kinda on and off today.

You’re all set to go fishing. Up early you’ve got the drinks and snacks packed, the boat and trailer on the hitch, the gear stowed and ready. Yesterday evening you checked the weather one last time and it was mint, you’ve been down this road so many times now you know full well it should lead to riches.
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The launch is quiet, parking lot empty and there’s no fresh water splashed on the ramp. The air is cool, not a breath of wind, but summer sun now rising you’re in for a scorcher later today. The window for lakers is going to be however much sweltering heat you can handle come midday.
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Off plane landing on the first waypoint you see the odd fish laying lower to bottom. You’ve started a little shallower than you’ll be fishing later, lake trout are often in less depth come morning, usually more scattered too. For the days best jig bite it’s still early, with that sun reaching higher and higher, eventually the marks on your graph will pile up deeper, you like that. Fish on fish means more competition for any chances at food. Fish on fish on a good day, the right day, means they should bite with reckless abandon.
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The first deep drops of your jigging lure you’re given the chance to analyze early fish activity. An initial fish mark below, on the fall the lure sinks, sinks down towards the depths and as it approaches, within the last twenty feet of meeting your mark you watch on sonar as a laker rises to greet it. The gap between you and the fish shrinking you have two choices to make now and the right one likely depends on just how that fish is rising to the lure.
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Option #1. Keep dropping! Just keep dropping if that laker only rose slowly to the lure or rose to it within just the last few feet when you were almost on top of it. Keep dropping if it didn’t rise at all and especially if you’re using a tube or other soft plastic lure which falls slowly. Why? Well, this fish if it did respond in the least likely knows the lure is there, it’s obviously curious and might just eat, but it showed you this in a more cautious, somewhat neutral manner. If the lure was actually on a slow fall that’s maybe even better than if it was fast, because the fish had plenty of time to inspect and yet it still remained interested. Keep dropping, because your attractive offering shouldn’t change much mid water column but rather continue on as is until, there becomes no option but to change the presentation. “No option” happens when the lure reaches bottom, and hopefully the fish followed you down there or is slowly on its way. If the fish stays around awhile with your lure near bottom, there’s a chance it may bite. Keep that lure moving, jigging it so that it falls to bottom and stirs a little muck or taps some rock. Short, moderately fast jigging may be better than a high fast or snap jig because this is a quick action, and you should know already that this fish is a bit cautious and only half interested because of it’s slower play from the start. Make it easier to eat but don’t leave a lure still unless it’s a very lively soft plastic or baited hook. Better in my opinion to stay finesse, subtle, moving but not too fast, odd tweaks to entice, some tight ground-and-pound maybe to stir the muck and to make it harder for the fish to get a real close inspection then turn off. Try this! If it doesn’t work on this fish and others acting similarly afterwards, the fish may just be even more negative or this tactic or lure not be the right choice. If you think it’s the lure, downsize! Make it even harder for the fish to inspect and easier for it to consider taking just a smaller snack, rather than a meal.
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Option #2. RUN! This is your freebie! This is your gauge and the play which you really could do any time on any drop. If I’m fishing with new anglers to vertical jigging this is the tactic I prefer come each attempt with every drop unless we’ve together ruled out many times over that the fish are not responding to this way. When your lure is falling you should choose to run on a number of those first drops on the first fish seen in the day. Also, on fish which race up faster through the column to the lure or, do so from father distances, they’re hot and your presentation feels that fireball coming, so make it RUN! When there are several arcs on sonar together and you’re meeting the first fish on the drop which is higher in the water column, run away to pluck it from the others if you can, leaving the rest less disturbed. Why run? Well, for these reasons and others but first and foremost, because you can. You can drop to the fish or first of a number of stacked fish, get near to one then race away. At this point you have identified to the laker(s) there is something around and they may want to eat it. Any quick rising to your lure especially from a far, that fish wants it, they’re hot for it, and maybe hoping to get it before another fish does. You can reel up and race the lure sometimes all the way back to the boat and a fish lay chase to the point where you have to open the bale at surface and drop down again at full steam. Hungry lakers will follow fast and may even do so up-down-up-down several times. Ice fishermen see this often. Don’t be afraid to really race upward as you run away from a fish too, and do not suddenly stop! No fleeing baitfish just naturally stops and commits suicide once in high gear speeding from a pursuing predator, so don’t stop! Not unless the sonar shows the laker has long turned away and maybe then, still don’t stop. You don’t know if there was a second chaser you weren’t seeing outside the cone. Choosing to run, reeling up fast and away is often effective for feeding fish and even when it doesn’t work, you haven’t yet given anything away. There’s your freebie! The fish is now on the look out, proven ready for something but yet hasn’t fully identified your lure as some bogus alien they shouldn’t get abducted by. You can still drop to the fish again and again, and if you keep your presentation always moving they won’t easily conclude that “your jig is up.” Moving, moving, running! An active lure with an active fish in pursuit is the activity you’re looking for. Catch that hungry fish then another and another and so on, that’s an actively hot bite and the cat-and-mouse vertical running game should play out some high scores. When you’re reeling up the lure the rod will just load to the point of half bent over and you lift for the hookset. I’d guess that for the first half dozen to dozen fish on any given day of laker fishing, I drop onto early found arcs, get the lure close and any fish rising to it I choose to run away from first! Taking the freebie. If that fish and more are hot you’ll know quick this is the game you’re going to be playing, if not you’ll either be waiting for that bite to turn on or playing a more finesse game with any slower moving neutral to negative fish. Again, see option #1 and consider live bait, baiting the hook, scents, downsizing or just changing up the lure if the fish aren’t making it easy.

Conditions were calm and headed for a scorcher. A memorable morning fishing lakers with Leah the bite was so hot that we doubled up over and over again. Our lures couldn’t make it to bottom for as they fell fish would race up from 20, 30 even 60 feet below to smash ’em. On the sonar I could watch it all unfold, each drop I would tell Leah “now RUN!” She’d engage and begin quickly reeling up, the rod would load and she’d have another hooked up. We played a game of it, starting at 8am and ending by noon on the very minute. That’s all we needed under the hot summer sun, finishing with an incredible 50 lake trout in four hours time.

After an intense heat wave and five days of light breezes from the south, the temps dropped during a mid summer cold front to what were actually normal temps. Weather a bit from the north now, Leah joined me for a morning after I’d recently been fishing quite well. We quickly learned that there was just no bite happening. Fish that had been around before were either gone or tight bellied to bottom. A few hovering arcs found seemed totally disinterested in our offerings… During a slight break in the breeze the lake flattened some and I chose to downsize on a drop. Basically a 2 1/2 inch, 1/4 ounce crappie tube jig I slowly lowered it to a hovering fish and watched as it moved up slow to meet it on the drop. No run at this point I just kept it falling and the fish picked it up before bottom, just as I had turned and twitched. Small, subtle and effective when all else wasn’t working.

Lakers are something I have had the good fortune to enjoy for a couple decades now, doing so all over Canada. Great Bear and Slave Lakes, Athabasca to Nipigon, Lake Ontario and all the way to the species’ most northern ranges in Arctic Nunavut. Through all seasons with all tactics, sampling many different fishing scenarios, I feel confident pursuing lake trout anywhere. The reason I wanted to write this short piece was not in fact to go over those above short details with vertical jigging but rather to offer one interesting finding anglers may not often consider. I call it “lure confusion.”

When up on the big three lakes in Northern Canada and smaller waterbodies of Nunavut, it was especially so on Great Slave I learned the most about reading laker moods and behaviours from studying the sonar while vertical jigging. Wild lakers are often reckless, especially on waterbodies they dominate. The more fish, the hungrier they are. On gin clear, Great Slave lake, huge trout to 50 pounds can be found just 10 to 30 feet below the boat. Easily able to see you and sometimes you them, single arcs marked on sonar will inhale offerings one after another into dozens of fish caught throughout a day. It’s incredibly easy fishing by comparison to southern, pressured, cottage waterbodies next door to urban cities. Arctic lake trout are hardly pressured at all, some never having seen a lure or maybe even boat in their up to 100 year long lives. Wild fish are the perfect case study for mood and behaviour because there are so many of them never imprinted by anglers. Your sonar and how those fish react to lures dropped directly to their faces over time will teach you when and what a bite is going to be like for the day. Details may be too long to list here but many laker anglers might already understand what I’m talking about..? The sonar, how fish move on sonar and react to lures and also where they sit in the water column can oftentimes tell us if the day is even worth fishing. Again, abundant wild fish provide the prefect classroom for learning this. On Bear and Slave, I don’t recall actually ever witnessing a “lure confusion” scenario while fishing. (only just slower bite periods during different fronts) The lake trout there are just so wild, less pressured and often competitively hungry. Up on Nipigon as another big wild fishery example, in some places fish can be pressured, they do see lures and, there have been some times when they’re weary enough in a sense that two anglers in a boat are better to take turns dropping lures, rather than both drop together.

Stevie Z and I had a number of lakers being spotted on sonar one afternoon, but they were a touch fussy. After fishing together simultaneously dropping lures awhile, it became evident that best boat control, keeping as vertical as possible and, offering just one lure at a time was key to turning neutral fish into positives. Once we set out taking turns it was Stevie Z who boated this giant PB laker and then another to follow, while both of us upped our numbers. Two lures together, few to no fish, but drop just one and it’s done!

I was the rookie guide in camp. We had been experiencing five or six days of bluebird skies and high pressure that over an extended time was pushing lakers off of the feeding flats and into deeper depths. Many of the guides back at camp had their heads low end of days, the bite had been growing tougher and tougher. One of the best spots freed up, many other guides looking to deeper troughs in narrows where a bit of current and wave action might help, but I’m actually not sure? What I was sure of, is my guest from Norway and I were staying on top of belly to bottom negative fish but just having to look harder to find them, work much slower once over and keep lures to bottom right down in their faces. When we found a new vertical drift tactic over stacked pods in 72fow, it turned lights out! My guest reeled in this one, likely the best big fish of the season, while we piled on the numbers during those hard conditions too.
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It can be a tougher story at home on busy southern stocked and any natural laker lakes. Aside from huge waterbodies like the Great Lakes, cottage country lake trout see lures, are often hounded by anglers and they are often not wild and reckless fish within the systems. Simcoe, Rideau, Temagami just to name a few, soft and hardwater folks fish combo stocked and natural trout fisheries in droves, and many lakers grow wise to it. A myriad of experienced and finesse techniques from the boat may often be required to fool fish which have seen much. One time this can be true is on that initial drop of the lure, when the importance of first presentation is vital to receiving a positive reaction for catching any lakers used to seeing lures.

When lakers are hot and snappy, great! A lure in their face and they’ll take. When those greys have the blues and they’re belly to bottom, rare to be seen and not moving, prepare to work or call it an early day. But when the fish are neutral, weird or cautious, that arc (arcs) you’re about to drop to on sonar may need one special consideration to bite… and that is, dropping only one lure. Many times over on such days, two or even three anglers in the boat, we all tend to drop together once spotting one or more arcs below us. Often, because I’m sitting best view with the sonar to watch our presentations falling to depths, I see how the fish respond. On neutral days, usually after a half dozen or so drops I can diagnose lakers with “lure confusion” if and when I see this happen repeatedly…
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One arc moves up on the first lure it sees, it’s rising for the lure but because it’s neutral and cautious not coming too quick (or maybe it is) but, the other angler’s lure(s) then falls into the fishes view and the laker quits on the first one it had seen in order to inspect any others. Essentially, the first lure had the best chance, the lakers attention was focused and it was rising to inspect, moving towards its prey but was then distracted. The new target(s) have a chance now but if their lures aren’t as appealing as the first or, the other angler doesn’t have a sonar of their own in which to make some slick moves to further entice the interested fish, there’s a higher chance this laker in a neutral position will choose not to bite at all and just abort from anymore effort. Another time you can ruin your shot is when you actually have a following laker on your lure but your boat partner’s lure passes by any following fish going in the opposite direction. Done! Your laker stops chase because it took it’s eye off the prize, looked the other way but ended up quitting on both. Trust me, this happens quite a lot… It’s tricky to explain each and every finding here, every detail to which this type of scenario has played out for me over the years. All I can honestly add is, this happens over-and-over, time and again on many laker jigging days when the fish are only half interested in feeding and offering them too many options at once turns them negative.

We’d all had a busy morning fishing pike and come mid afternoon were back over some laker water. That time of day the bite can sometimes be great or slow down a little, one never knows. On this day the kiddo was with me for a bit, reeling in hand-off hook-ups while his dad had been in a bit of a slump for an hour or two. Finally the little lad falls asleep though, I put his rod down and dad goes to town on fish after fish. Now I don’t think the bite that afternoon was anything poorer than a “good” or little bit neutral bite but, it seemed to us that once one lure was all that dropped onto any arcs, that the fishing pace picked up and more magic happened.

Ice fishing on everything from great to tough waters is one such time when I feel a sonar is a must. Even if you’re catching, there’s still value in entertainment with a sonar but even better, there’s always an education. Ice fishing lakers in some respects can be easier than vertical jigging from a boat. With only the rod in hand, lure below and sonar in sight, one can concentrate all efforts on presentation and responding to fish activity. No worries for boat control, searching, etc. Sure, opportunities may be more limited in a stationary spot but, each fish then becomes a gift, a chance to hone in your video game fish play. A lot can be learned with successes and failures while vertical ice jigging these same fish you’re going to work come the boating months.

Last summer the fish were moody for a couple of weeks. I was hoping greys would stack deeper in the heat and despite lake surface temps exceeding the low 80’s, the thermocline remained rather late and shallow at 30+ feet. Bait balls would not materialize like they normally would for that time of year, the forage staying scattered about in the many more areas where comfortable temps were available. The lakers below any sparse bait were remaining scattered too, for sure feeding shallower over that same extra real estate they had to roam over. The quick explanation here would be that with the bait scattered far and wide, the lakers were more or less doing the same. When this is the case a couple things seem to happen often and they are, the lakers to jigging are not as aggressive as they’re not as concentrated and competitive to offerings of food and, alot of fish seem to key into feeding more horizontally instead (shallow or top of column over any depth). The trollers and even shallow casters will many times over do well in the earlier part of the season, during mornings, when water temps keep colder or cool down in fall months and, the further one goes north to colder climates. With trolling though, few if any anglers ever get to really see how fish react to presentations, there’s either a “fish on” moment or there’s not. So by jigging at these times when trolling is actually the better choice or, when the fish are neutral giving you plenty of insight into the presentation versus laker reactions to your techniques and lures, you gather more pieces of info for your ever evolving fishing experience… Anyways, on that summer day I had an angler with me more interested in chatting than fishing. We’d both dropped together a few times and rather than even move fish a little ways up to our lures, some would only just follow slow to bottom after lures passed them by. With two lures down to the lake floor the fish were quick to leave. So, wanting him to catch fish, for the first while I had to quite regularly ask he alone drop to bottom and keep his lure moving/jigging once at depth. Good with the instruction to drop vertical, even try a solo cat-and-mouse play on some of his first falls, once it was evident these fish be quite negative that morning to even single lure presentations, his offer was deemed best sent to bottom where if you remember “Option #1” (at the top of this post) would be the next best choice. Thing with my boat partner was, rather than keep the rod jigging in any fashion, watching him and the lure on sonar with fish curiously inspecting around it, he’d end up not paying attention and go on dead sticking. Every laker would turn off once the lure was still because it was then made easily visible, examined, and proven not edible… The screens went blank. I resigned that this morning would not be about catching but rather just having a good time visiting in the boat instead. Had I been alone though, the day would likely not have been all that much better. Maybe a few more fish caught yeah, but it was a neutral to negative bite overall. Downsizing, scent, live or baited hooks and subtle presentations at bottom may have helped, as discussed above.

Beating this dead horse to drive the point home once again, dropping two or more lures on a fish can cause lure confusion and turn a fish off when their behaviour is that of cautionary and questionable. Anglers are giving carefully inspecting fish more options to determine they’re not wanting to bite this phony offering rather than just doing so. As well, one or more angler’s presentations without sonar can often leave fish greater opportunity to find something off with any one lures action or, simply distract them from what was maybe right about the first one they saw and took interest in. And lastly, not everyone will see things the same way after reading this, their experiences may have lead to other conclusions but, if ever when jigging you find the lakers you and your boat partners are after are acting difficult in some way, consider taking turns on the drops and be sure the angler can view the sonar to see what’s happening. By doing so, you may just pick up a few more biters that day or, learn a few things.

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Final thing I didn’t consider until finishing this write up… What if the lakers don’t actually get confused at all? What if, on the tough bite days they’re actually just more dialed in than we are? Maybe we’re just the ones lure confused?