Thread: trolling for gills

Me and my dad used to fish a lake with a very large flat in the upper end and would often troll 1/32 ounce beetle spins to locate the schools. We were fishing out of rental John boats and trolled behind an old Minn Kota electric motor. We never spent the day trolling as neither of us liked to do that and we didn't want to run the battery down, but it was a great technique for locating the fish when you know they're at some limited depth. In our case the water was only 3 - 6 feet deep over most of that flat and we knew that we'd find fish somewhere on that flat most of the year. Once we found them we'd stop and cast with a 1/64th ounce beetle under a float, or fish with crickets. I assume you could add a split shot to the line to help get the beetle spin down on a shorter line if needed, but I've never tried that.