Lakers on bucktails

[TroutFishingBear]

The last time I went laker fishing, I did pretty well on bucktails, got a lot of takers. The problem was, I had trouble hooking them. Should I put a stinger hook on the bucktail like you do with a tube, or will it ruin the bucktail's action? thanks for the help.

[TroutFishingBear]

That's interesting... I was missing 5 out of 6 hits on the bucktails. They weren't perch because there aren't perch in that lake(there is only lakers and rainbows, a few cutts and browns as well), and they weren't small trout because I was fishing in too deep of water for anything but lake trout. I was using both a 3/8 oz and a 1/8 oz, are they too big?

[iceintheveins]

I have the same thing happen.The hooks on these are smaller, I think 1 or 1/0. I noticed the action wasn't affected with a stinger. But they were just barely tapping it. The tapping lakers are hard to hook. The ones that usually hit just are a little added weight or the line will go slack, sometimes the jig feeling weightless. Those ones are easy to hook, as I believe they are the ones that suck it in. A guy fishing the same lake with an aquaview say they will come in when the jig is sitting on the bottom to investigate it. He says when they strike, they ease up to it very slowly and almost suck it in like a bass sucks in a soft jerkbait. The smaller lakers, around 16" or so, generally will tap it. The 18 - 25" lakers just suck it in lightly. The big ones either just grab it and slowly move off, or hit even lighter. Seems the bigger the mack, the lighter the strike. However the very large one I hooked on a tip up last year, which was 20 pounds plus, tripped the flag on my windlass and ran off line pretty steadily. Once it was hooked, it screamed off dozens of yards of line in seconds.
Pardon the tangent, but I just think it was because it was sunny, high pressure conditions. Lake trout in these conditions in Colorado are very, very fickle.

Tyler

[kingfshr16]

 Last year i had the same problem one day, i would go to hook the lakers on a bucktail and would miss them, so i switched to a rod i had with me that was a little lighter and began hooking them, was your rod too heavy to get a good hook set?

[TroutFishingBear]

I might try a different brand that has a better, bigger and sharper hook?

[chriswy]

I would say let the fish take the bait a little more it has been my observation that when using jigs the Lake Trout take it from the front and you need to let them get the whole thing in their mouth. The larger lake trout tend to just suck it in but the smaller lake trout will kind of just nibble on it. This is just my observations from looking at tube jigs. With the tube jig you can see the teeth marks very clear. Also try using spoons sometimes they work very well.





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