44 I GREAT LAKES ANGLER I APRIL-MAY 2015

Way up north, waters harbor-ing giant lake trout dot the landscape from the Yukon,

through the Northwest Territories, past Nunavut, and across the map to the Atlantic. Yet very few lodges have downriggers. The need to take lures to specified depths becomes something of a chess game. The end game—the decades-awaited checkmate—serves me pretty well on the Great Lakes.

For one thing, it involves big, fat, deep-diving bass crankbaits. Years ago, Captain Chip Porter (Wound Up Sportfishing Charters) told me he was catching huge lakers on humps in southern Lake Michi-gan by casting the same kinds of cranks. “Get the wind behind you, make long casts, and big lakers suck these things up on structure during fall,” he said. About the same time, another guide told me the same thing about lakers on Fort Peck in Montana.

So I decided to start packing fat deep divers on trips to Canada. I put some 30-pound Berkley FireLine on a couple Daiwa LC-27. Prior to that, trolling reels I

packed consisted of two bullet-proof Shakespeare Tidewater 10LCLs spooled with wire line. The boats at the lodge where I was heading had sonar, which is fairly common now. But, as feared, we spotted big hooks isolated and suspended anywhere from 40 to 75 feet down, with no way of knowing if our lures were anywhere in the vicinity.

Wire line sinks, of course. Tie it to a 3-way swivel with a simple hay-wire twist and it makes the perfect structure-scraping tool because it stays more vertical than any other setup without a downrigger. Drop a 2- to 3-foot piece of 15-pound mono off the bottom of the swivel to a round 8- to 12-ounce lead “monkey ball,” tie a 6-foot, 20- to 30-pound fluorocarbon leader to the only remaining eye on the swivel, and voila: Perfect lake-trout presenta-tion—if they’re on bottom.

That basic 3-way rig presents spoons, stickbaits, swimbaits, dodg-ers, and flashers to trout-hugging structure. But when lakers suspend, the classic three-way approach is just a guessing game. So my chess moves for this trip involved those deep-diving cranks—anything designed to get 20 feet down on the cast. I told the guide to find a 60-foot flat and I watched the line counter as we trolled at about 2 mph. My rig was the same as described above, but with a new-fangled trolling weights shaped like a boot (now discontin-ued) that offered lowered resistance. Water had far less surface area to affect. Plus the weights were flatter and easier to pack, but the one on my line was only 3 ounces. I let the diving bill on the crank do the rest.

The crank began tapping bot-tom with 180 feet of line out. We turned around and went the other way and the rig found bottom on the same amount of line. I reeled-up and tried a different crank. The ra-tio worked again. In fact, it worked with every lure I had designed to dive 20 feet or so—including Mann’s 20+, Norman’s DD22, the Rapala

DT20, and the magnum Bomber Fat Free Shad. For every three feet of line out the lure was one foot down.

We tried it on a 70-foot flat and hit bottom with 210 feet of line out. At 80 feet it cracked rocks with 240 feet of line out. The ratio began to expand a little after that as the lure reached three atmospheres of pres-sure, but it continued to find bot-tom. So we started hunting lakers with sonar, line-counters, 3-ounce weights, 30-pound braid, deep cranks, and a little math. The guide would call out, “Mark at 45 feet.” I’d reel-up until the LC read 135 feet. Wham. Laker. The mark would read at 65 feet and I let out line until the LC displayed 195 feet. Pow. Laker. I tried keeping it over their heads by 3 to 5 feet. Zap. Lakers.

That was in Labrador. The big-gest inland body of water to be seen on any map of that region, dominat-ing the eastern bulge surrounded by Quebec, is Smallwood Reservoir. That’s where I developed the 3:1 ra-tio system. And it has never worked as well since. But that’s okay, because catching as many scattered, isolated lakers spread vertically through the water column the way we did that day just doesn’t happen. Anywhere. I’ve been to Athabasca, Great Slave, Great Bear, Kasba,

Twenty Plus Club (Top to bottom): Norman’s DD22, Rapala DT 20, Mann’s 20+.

by Matt Straw

Lake Superior is one of the world’s finest lake-trout fisheries. Hard to find a good-looking piece of

structure that doesn’t have lake trout all over it.

Small Craft, 3-Way Trout A Superior System

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APRIL-MAY 2015 I GLANGLER.COM I 45

The biggest lakers often respond to bigger presentations. When they key on whitefish, put a big 8/0 Gamakatsu Siwash Hook right on the back of a dodger, or pull the old reliable Eppinger Husky Devle.

Nueltin, Misaw, Mosquito, Selwyn, Inconnu, the Caniapiscau, and many other places both drive-to and fly-to. This system works everywhere, but often selects for smaller fish.

Except on Lake Superior and elsewhere in the Great Lakes region. As on Smallwood and select few other places, deep cranks can produce fish in the 20-pound range on the Great Lakes. Which is great news for small-boat fishermen like me, because it allows you to put four lines down that cover every sus-pended fish while scuffing bottom without downriggers or diving plan-ers. What’s wrong with diving plan-ers? Nothing at all on larger boats. On small boats it’s nice to have all the room possible for netting big fish. And deep-diving cranks tend to throw off their published depth and side-planing ratios. Besides, I like knowing my spread is going right past the fish I mark, and the less tackle I put between myself and a 20-pound laker, the better I like it.

New WrinklesI developed the 3:1 ratio rig with iron-age technology, relatively speaking. Although the sinker was new, things evolved. First came Tim Barefoot’s heavy, fish-shaped, in-line sinkers. I can’t find them anymore, and they might have been prototypes given to me by Barefoot, but they point in the direction of the boat and never waver. With the reduced resistance, a 10-ouncer was reaching the depth of 12- to 14-ounce monkey balls. That meant less weight on board and the sinkers were easier to stow away.

Then came the Torpedo Fishing Products Torpedo Diver, which is longer and even more aqua-dynam-ic. The Torpedo Diver offers very little surface area to be affected in the direction its trolling. It comes in 2-, 4-, 8- and 12-ounce sizes, with a tail-fin section designed after a throwing dart. Using my 3:1 ratio

with 20-foot cranks works great with the 2-ounce version—saving an ounce of weight. But the 12-ouncer gets down about the same as a 1-pound monkey ball. Put it on a 3-way rig with wire line and it takes a big Flatfish or dodger-fly combi-nation down to bottom with about the same vertical profile as a much heavier weight.

Though he typically uses Tor-pedo Divers in conjunction with his Deep Sea Diver (a revolutionary div-ing planer), Matt Sawrie of Torpedo Fishing Products showed me how to use a Church Tackle Release to clip a Torpedo Diver anywhere on the main line. That way you can run a spoon or minnowbait out 50, 100, or 150 feet before clipping the weight on, for spooky browns or steelhead closer to the top of the water col-umn. Or when lakers invade shallow water at ice-out and just before ice-up (where fishing is allowed).

Another great tool for get-ting vertical on small boats is the Off-Shore OR36 Tadpole Resettable Diving Weight. The OR36 comes in 4 sizes, and Size 2 works fine with my 3:1, deep-diving crank program. The magnum weighs around 6 ounc-es, but the planed surface on the sinker drives it down steeper and faster than a standard 10-ouncer.

Another great feature is the release mechanism. The Tadpole comes with a pair of clips attached—one in an eye at the tail of the sinker and the other riding on a solid arm arching over the top of. In trolling position, the clip rests up in the el-bow of that arm, creating the angle of highest resistance for diving. It acts like the bill of a crankbait until a fish is hooked. Then the clip simply slides down to the front of the arm and the diving angle is gone—you’re straight to the fish with a 6-ounce weight on the line.

The boys at Off Shore showed me how they sometimes replace the clips with Off Shore Releases so the Tadpole can be clipped onto the line after running the lure way out behind the boat, providing another stealthy option for walleyes, steel-head, browns, or lakers riding high in the water column.

Working Out RatiosMost of these options have ra-tios I haven’t worked out entirely with lures like spoons, dodgers, or other diving baits like Kwikfish and Flatfish (big laker favorites on lake Superior). With wire line, the Torpedo and Tadpole obviously dive deeper faster. Once I get on the wa-ter, I try to watch speed and the line

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46 I GREAT LAKES ANGLER I APRIL-MAY 2015

counter when I make bottom contact. Constantly manipulating the line factor (letting it out and brining it in by increments) will begin to provide a picture of where the lure is in the water column when not on structure.

Staying on structure is easy. Captain Mark Chmura of Pier Pressure Charters recently told me if he wants to stay on bottom with a 3-way rig he drops it until it hits, engages the reel, trolls 50 feet and drops it again. He repeats that process until the weight has hit bot-tom for a third time, then he puts the rod in a holder. That’s exactly how I’ve been fishing structure with 3-way rigs for decades, so it was nice to receive validation from a pro like Chmura. After that third touch-down, the rig will ride along just above bottom—if depth remains constant, of course.

Lake Superior is one of the world’s finest lake-trout fisheries. Hard to find a good-looking piece of structure that doesn’t have lake trout all over it. Superior also tends to have more vertical structure than most of the Great Lakes. Find a hump, plateau, deep reef, or spire of rock that tops out anywhere be-tween 40 and 80 feet and it’s typical to see some marks suspended above it and some marks pinned to the sides. I like to go straight down after both groups from a small boat.

First I let out my deep divers on 30-pound braid tied to a 3-way rig armed with a 2-ounce Torpedo or Size #2 Tadpole. The baits I typically run first are Rapala DT 20s, Nor-man’s DD22s, or Mann’s 20+. Favor-ites tend to have pearl bellies and green, blue, or chartreuse backs—but glow, black-gold, orange-gold, or black-silver lures can sometimes steal the show. Lakers vacuum most of these big, round bass baits but especially the ones with rattles. Rattles seem to enrage them.

Typically we have two people in the boat. We start with the highest suspended marks. If those are down 50 feet, we let one lure out 145 feet and the other 150 feet. Those rods go in holders two to three feet up the gunnel from the transom. Then we drop our 3-way, 12-ounce Torpedo rigs on wire or copper lines down, hit bottom three times on top of the structure, and put those rods in holders on the back corners of the

Top Weights (top to bottom): Barefoot In-Line Trolling Weight, Off Shore Tadpole with Off Shore Releases,

Torpedo Weight with Church Tackle release.

Great Lakes lakers love big, fat, largemouth bass cranks, spring through fall. These lures can easily be taken down over 100 feet with only 3 ounces of weight, but casting works fine when lakers move shallow spring and fall.

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APRIL-MAY 2015 I GLANGLER.COM I 47

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Tools On Structure (top to bottom): Eppinger Evil Eye, Williams Whitefish, Luhr Jensen K16 Kwikfish.

transom. That’s the spread. We like it relatively sparse on Superior or things get too busy.

The first lures on the bottom-hugging 3-ways will be magnum, copper Eppinger Evil Eye Spoons. I’ve caught lakers with those spoons in every lake mentioned above, all across North America, and throughout the Great Lakes. I like to fish them with a big single Siwash hook because lakers can be released quicker with less damage to their jaws and face. If we’re just catching smaller specimens (one of which is going in the livewell for dinner), the next thing to go down might be a big Flatfish or Luhr Jensen Dodger or Coyote Flasher with a trailing Howie Fly. Flatfish and the biggest Kwikfish start clip-ping bottom with less line out and are just as universally effective for me as a the Evil Eye.

I use medium-heavy, moderate-action Shakespeare Ugly Stik rods. They’re bulletproof. No need to get fancy. You need a rod that’s durable with some backbone yet some forgiveness in the tip because wire has no mercy. It has zero stretch and the braided line on those 3:1 rigs has very little stretch. Setting hooks is not an exaggerated thing. In that minimal-stretch world, I like 20- to 30-pound Stren and Seaguar fluorocarbon leader materials. They tend not to explode like some other fluorocarbons when giant lakers hit the rig at about 30 mph.

When lakers creep up onto shallow flats in spring, try using the 3:1 program with minnowbaits and suspending baits like Rapalas and Rapala X-Raps. Works well for browns when they drop back off the beaches, too. Lures only get down a foot with about 5 feet of line out—great for those 15- to 20-foot structures when the lure is about 75 feet behind an in-line Off Shore trolling board.

The great thing about the 3:1 program is you’re direct to the trout with only about 2 ounces of weight on the line. Fewer fish shake free. Another awesome ben-efit is the fact that the rig is back there just far enough to provide time to raise or lower the rig to a depth that will intercept those marks on the depth finder. Raising or lowering it is far easier than doing the same with a downrigger line, because somebody has to hit the switch while another person gains or releases line on the reel, as need be. With the 3:1 rig, you’re always tight to the bait.

Kings, steelhead, and browns sometimes hit these fat baits. Often they don’t. I’m working on it. But it never ceases to amaze me how many lakers we catch suspended or just off structure with deep-diving, bass-style cranks. If you like trolling in small boats for lakers, try the 3:1 rig this summer and see if you can’t pinpoint those isolated, suspended, gray ghosts of the Great Lakes.

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