Lake Trout on Small Lakes
Its now February 5th and the start of what I think are the ice fishing doldrums. By this point in the season, safe ice permitting, a lot of the stocked fish have been picked through. In the warm water lakes, the bass are at their most sedentary point of the year, save for an august heat wave. The few pike lakes in southern Maine are inundated with pike fanatics, and most of the fish that you catch have as many lip piercings as your average Portland barista. This is the time of year when I need lake trout in my life. In this part of Maine, Sebago lake is king. Its a huge lake with a thriving lake trout population. In fact, there are way too many of them, but that’s a topic for another day. The point is that there are a ton of lakers, and they compete heavily for the forage in the lake. In a perfect world I would be out on Sebago every weekend in February bouncing jigs, but unfortunately our winters are trending in the wrong direction. The only parts of Sebago that have frozen in the last few years are the protected coves, and they get crowded really quickly.
I believe that lakers respond poorly to intense fishing pressure (not that hot of a take, most fish don’t like to be caught). But lake trout move around a lot, and they see a ton of jigs. After a few days of hard fishing pressure, they seem less inclined to smash your offering, and instead just follow your jig up and down the water column and take pitiful swipes at it. If you fish with electronics, you can watch yourself not catch fish in real time. So if the big part of the lake isn’t frozen, and the smaller coves are getting pounded, you have to either suck it up and join the hoards or figure out something different. My solution has been to find smaller lakes that still have decent lake trout populations.
The state of Maine went through a phase where they were stocking a lot of cold water lakes with lake trout, and many of those lakes now support naturally reproducing populations. The populations are generally smaller, so the fishing is usually slower, but catching a lake trout in a lake where not many people even know they exist is pretty fulfilling. These lakes are usually on the shallower side, so if you find the deepest part of the lake that’s likely where the lake trout are cruising. I’m going to spend more time targeting the “B” lakes in the future, setting traps in different depths to try and pattern the fish. Once I think I know where they want to be, I’ll have my caddie pass me my 32 inch St. Croix and start jigging.
-Grady
