Trout Lock Jaw and How To Spot The Symptoms
I’m sure that Saturday morning was a beautiful day for most Mainers. It was bright, windy, and extremely cold. I have no doubt that most folks enjoyed the indoors, lighting fires and annoyingly sipping their coffee while I was freezing my ass off chasing trout that didn’t love me back. It had been warm the previous few days, with highs in the 40s and good amounts of cloud cover (Does anyone remember winters? We used to get them here). The cold front was an inbound double edge sword; it gave some hope that the lakes would be able to rebuild some ice and extend the fishing season, but it also spelled “bad fishing” across my forehead with permanent marker. We had made a plan to fish for brown trout, hoping that the fish would be in deeper water and less effected by the fishing conditions.
The barometric pressure was high and rising, which in my experience means that trout get lockjaw. I think most fishermen have heard the old sayings about falling pressure igniting a bite, but I cant remember any of those platitudes explaining why high pressure shuts the fishing down so quickly. The pressure seems to be less of a factor during open water fishing, but for ice fishing, pressure over 30 inches is the kiss of death. Unfortunately for me, our ice fishing season has been short, and my need for food and shelter dictates that I work a full time job, so every weekend is a must-convert situation for catching fish. We got out on the ice before sunup, hoping to capitalize on a first light bite. When the conditions are bad you have to counter with extra effort and attention to detail. We sacrificed Friday night whiskey sours for gear prep, and took extra care with knots and hook selection.
Though the brown trout we target do get big, we can usually get away with 4lb flouro for leader. I go long with browns in particular, using at least 8-10ft of flouro in front of the braid mainline on the traps. My biggest problem with brown trout is that they seem to love to hit bait but avoid getting hooked. A lot of the time, a flag will go up and you run over only to find a mangled smelt and maybe a foot or two of line pulled out. My theory is that the fish are super sensitive to any sort of resistance, and if they feel the line or the trap doesn’t spring fluidly, they spit the bait. I’m definitely not elitist when it comes to fishing gear, but if you are going to save money, dont do it on your traps. I use jack traps not only because they are made in Maine, but after twenty years of owning some of them they still spring perfectly without creating resistance when a fish hits.
All that said, it was still a brutally slow morning with very little action. We compensated for the slow fishing and the bitter cold by working super hard for a bite. We moved gear around, changed the depths, and replaced our lethargic bait whenever we noticed it needed an attitude adjustment. On the topic of bait, we were using live smelts. You can use them too, for the low low price of $12/dozen. Many of the lakes in Maine have really impressive landlocked smelt populations, and the trout use them as a primary forage. Shiners work well, but on a bluebird day I’m more inclined to spend the extra dough on the real deal. At the end of the day, it did pay off. We got a nice fat brown trout to do it dirty in 40ft of water. The fish took a smelt halfway down the water column, and once that fish hit the ice we were packed up and heading home before the pressure exploded my head.
-Grady
