Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/80912
LAKE TROUT // BY JIM HUDSON GO SMALL FOR THAT ...SOMETIMES! BIG BITE W who would think small? Small, what's that? Yup, 99 per- cent of the time when you hear me talk or see me write about fishing, I talk about upsizing and power fishing for those big fish you are looking for out here, be it the open water or through the ice. But, through years of power fishing my way to the "hook-up," there have been count- less days when I scratched my head after the day was done, thinking to myself, should I have gone smaller? What if we downsized from ¾ ounce spoons to 1/16 ounce hair jigs and stayed in one area, concentrating on the neutral fish instead of cutting hole after hole after hole, looking for the aggressive bite? It's that age old question, should I leave or should I stay? And the conclusion I have come to: it's a day-to-day decision when dealing with the top of the food chain predators, and it's a decision we will learn from what the fish are telling us. ell, if you know me well, the title to this article is an oxymoron. When targeting behemoth trout on huge water systems like the Great Lakes, So what exactly are the fish telling us when they say "Come on — show me something different and I will eat" or "Get out of here and find my cousin?" Well, here is what I hypothesize. When fishing a particular good piece of struc- ture, I already have it in my head that the fish will be there. I gather this information first and foremost by having previous experi- ence on the particular body of water I am fishing that day or, at times, just by having that "sixth sense" about a particular spot we drive up on. So, after drilling out a particular hole grid, I should see some sort of life from a fish or two as I put the graph down and drop a search bait to see what's cooking after a few holes. Now, what these fish do and how they react to your bait is the key to unlock- ing the puzzle. Did you see multiple 22 ICE TEAM.COM >> THE ICE ANNUAL