The Food Chain

Salvelinus Namayacush is a predator. Their world is dominated by light and water temperature. When the perfect conditions exist, like an overcast day in mid May, when the spring turn over has made the water temperature throughout the lake the same, from the top to the bottom, they will hunt and prowl every square foot of lake, bottom to top, to feed.

All items of prey that will fit in their mouth are fair game. They only require it to be alive and twitching. So a predator fish that spends a large part of its long life cycle in great depths due to temperature and oxygen constraints, will,  in the spring and fall, find temperature windows of opportunity, to hunt anywhere, anytime, to fill its gullet and grow, before the lakes stratify and force them deep and away from the rich and varied shallow food source.

At that time they are susceptible but tough to find. That time is now.

I have been jigging lake trout for 25 years. And have brought hundreds to net. In the summer when they are confined to deep and cold water, they are relatively easy to find in the large basins of the Finger Lakes. Therefore they are easy to catch. And a few guides have developed their business that way.

But to catch them now, when they are scattered across vast flats and shallow weed beds, when they are in their element and the water temperature and oxygen levels allow them to invade and hunt all the lake, they can prove difficult. Making the sonar useless.

So you must hunt them, not knowing entirely, through a blip on a screen, where they are. And that is exciting, but not always as productive. So I developed a method, over the seasons, that is consistently effective at catching the roaming lakers. And it does not include trolling.

And it makes the kids smile. And making kids smile is what a big trout is all about.

Peace.

Mike Crawford

Professional Fishing Guide

315.283.8871

upstateguideservice@gmail.com