Starlo’s: Trolling tips and tricks

NSW STH COAST Steve Starling

www.fishotopia.com

Trailing a couple of lures behind a moving boat can be a great way to find and catch fish, especially colours, actions and running depths to help work out what’s producing best on the day. Obviously, you’ll be limited by factors like the number of people on board. Plus, you don’t want to be constantly crossing and tangling turns. Using outriggers or downriggers also greatly helps to separate troll lines. Regardless of how many lines you troll, consider keeping one lure quite short in the wake — not far behind the main prop wash. It’s amazing

Trolling for trout in a cold, overcast weather at Lake Eucumbene. Fishing early and late in the day can often be extra productive.

A big trout taken on the troll comes to the net on Lake Jindabyne, in the Snowy Mountains of NSW.

The skipper monitors the sounder and GPS while another crew member scans the horizon for any signs of life. A third crew member should be watching those troll lines like a hawk!

if you apply a little bit of extra effort and thought to the process.

First up, a confession: Trolling of any sort is just about my least favourite form of fishing. That said, I also accept that towing lures behind a moving boat can be a very effective way to catch all sorts of fish: from trout to tuna. However, as with any style of fishing, there are many tips and tricks that can dramatically swing the odds of success in your favour and pump up your strike rate.

For starters, it makes sense to troll more than one or two lines and lures, if you possibly can. Within reason, the more lures you have in the water, the greater your odds of success. Trolling multiple lines also allows you to mix up lure shapes, sizes, how often this ultra-short line will be the first one to get hit. That’s because your boat is effectively acting as a giant ‘teaser’ to arouse the curiosity and interest of predatory fish.

Equally as important as that short line in the spread can be a much longer one, set well behind all the others, back in what offshore fishers call the ‘shotgun’ position — usually straight down the centre of the wake. Some days, this longer line will account for a lot of your hits, especially if the fish are extra shy or spooky. Experiment with your boat speed, too. Not enough trollers vary their revs Outriggers can really help to separate lines and lures in the spread.

your lines. But you can minimise that hassle by staggering the distances of the lures behind the boat, and making more gentle Trolling for bluefin tuna and albacore off the bottom of Tasmania. Note how the brightly coloured line makes it easy to see exactly where the lure is, and helps to avoid crossovers.

throughout the day to see if a change of pace might trigger a strike. Making gentle turns or occasionally pulling the motor in and out of gear can also act as a ‘strike trigger’. Mix it up. Most important of all, have some sort of game plan for your trolling session. Don’t simply troll aimlessly about and hope that you might eventually cross paths with a hungry fish! Have a pre-determined course or track in mind. This might involve zig-zagging back and forth over a particular piece of sea bed, or circling around a feature such as a pinnacle or a FAD (fish aggregation device), or it could be following a chosen depth contour or a certain water temperature gradient. In an estuary or freshwater scenario, it might mean thoroughly working back and forward several times through one particular river bend, or past and over one set of submerged snags, before moving on to the next likely spot.

The moment you score a strike, punch a waypoint into your GPS plotter, or take a quick landmark, if you don’t have GPS. Later, troll back through that same waypoint several times from different directions. It’s amazing how often this trick will produce repeated hook-ups.

My take-away message here is that trolling should never be a lazy, ‘set-andforget’ form of fishing. Good skippers and crews are constantly tweaking things — watching their spread of lures, lengthening and shortening lines, swapping out lures, adjusting boat speed and course… all while carefully scanning the horizon for birds, splashes, rippling bait schools or other potential signs of life. Stay active and be a hunter rather than sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Trolling is not only a lot less boring when it’s done this way, but you’ll also catch a lot more fish!