Trout Fishing Tips

Tired of the mess dough baits (such as PowerBait) leave on your hands? If you answered yes, then you may like the Trout Berry Dough Bait Press. This little gadget is designed to get perfect balls of dough bait on your hook, and not on your hands.

For folks who don't like getting their hands messy, this is a handy little fishing gadget. But it does serve another important function as well.

One of the primary concerns of anglers is not to transfer unwanted odors from their hands to their baits, knowing that these human odors can turn fish off. Sunblock, lotion, and bug sprays are some of the odors that anglers may have on their hands when fishing. While these things are necessary to protect anglers, they can be inadvertently transferred to your bait while handling it - which can then turn fish off.

This is where the Trout Berry Dough Press can help. This gadget eliminates the need for you to touch the bait, thereby keeping you from transferring unwanted odors to your bait. If your bait smells "fishy", it will smell more natural to fish.

Watch the Trout Berry Demonstration video to see how it works.

The Trout Berry Dough Bait Press has also recently been reviewed by Salmon, Trout, Steelheader magazine. You can read the review by clicking here.

Labels: dough bait, doughbait, PowerBait, trout berry, troutberry

Trout fishing continues to be excellent at Goldwater Lake (Arizona). Folks are catching their limits in record time using PowerBait.

At this time of year, trout are feeding off the surface of the lake all day. So to catch them, you want to keep your bait on or near the surface of the lake (no deeper than 14-16 inches). Most of the people at the lake are using bobbers (no kidding) instead of sinkers with their PowerBait. This gives them casting distance as well as help keep their bait on the surface of the lake. In all of my years of fishing, using PowerBait with bobbers seemed dumb to most anglers since it went against common sense logic. But it works!

While others at my lake are using bobbers with PowerBait, still others are using slip shots. Once again, this is one of those things that defies logic.

Shots are most often associated with river, stream, and creek fishing - not lake fishing. But when trout are feeding on the surface of the water - you don't want those heavy sinkers taking your bait to the bottom of the lake. But if you've ever tried to cast a weightless line, you know it just doesn't work well. Using a slip shot on the line (just above the swivel) is a way to add a bit of casting weight, while ensuring your PowerBait stays on the surface of the water.

Sometimes you just have to think outside the box (or fishing net) to catch trout.

Labels: bobbers, lake fishing, PowerBait, trout fishing

After my earlier post, somebody emailed and asked why PowerBait isn't normally used with bobbers. It's a good question and I thought I should post the answer for everybody.

But first, let me say that just because most people don't use PowerBait with bobbers, doesn't mean you can't. The most successful anglers are those willing to try something different when nothing else seems to work.

The purpose of a bobber is to keep your bait near the surface the water. If you place a bobber just above the swivel and put a nightcrawler (or some other bait) on your hook, your bait will dangle below the bobber the length of your leader. Most trout fishers use a 12 - 18 inch leader, so their bait would be in the first 12 -18 inches of water below the surface. This works great if trout are feeding near the surface of water.

PowerBait floats by design. The main idea behind PowerBait is to keep your bait off the bottom of the lake. This makes it more visible for trout swimming by. If you're using an 18 inch leader, then your bait would normally float 18 inches above the bottom of the lake (assuming your sinker was sitting on the bottom of the lake).

Since both bobbers and PowerBait float, adding a bobber above your bait means that both are floating on the surface of the water. Trout must be feeding on the surface to see and take your bait.

Fall and Spring are the best times of year to fish for trout because water temperatures are cooler and trout are actively feeding near the surface of the water. As mentioned in my earlier post, we were fishing in a shallow part of the lake and trout were jumping all around us grabbing food off the surface of the lake.

If you wanted to catch trout, you had to keep your bait on the surface of the lake. And since PowerBait was the preferred bait of the day, adding a bobber to your line added casting weight and helped keep the bait on the surface of the water.

Labels: bobbers, PowerBait