Tahoe Mack Grind

Fished Tahoe yesterday for a couple hours.  I have zero experience on the lake and have only started chasing trout recently.  I managed to find some fish on the bottom deep, but didn’t really know how to target them.


Returned this morning early with a little more info and a plan.  Bounced the bottom with a dodger and Silver Horde Kingfisher spoon between 130-160 feet.  Managed to get one to bite. 

Tahoe is a beast.  Boat traffic was thick, and my expectations to actually find some schools out there was pretty low.

It wasn’t huge, but I was stoked to grill up a Mack for dinner.

Sweet. Where did you launch? I'll be up there next week. Any tips you can share appreciated.

Congrats on your first mack! Always good to catch a new species!

Way to get the info and execute the plan.  Tahoe has great fisheries, but it's easy to strike out all day long if you don't have some intell and the right gear.

I'm hitting it tomorrow for kokes at sunrise. 

There is some excellent information about how to catch lake trout on the Flathead Lake Mack Days webpage at http://www.mackdays.com/Movies/ . The jigging and trolling videos feature discussions, demonstrations, and explanations by very successful lake trout anglers.  These are people who frequently catch their limit of lake trout on Flathead Lake, which is 100 lake trout per day.  Check out the Mack Days statistics if you don't believe me.  For example, the winner of the Spring 2018 Mack Days derby, which is a two month long event, caught a total of 2028 lake trout, and he caught 100 lake trout on eight different days. The brochures summarize the advice from the videos and from other anglers.  For example, the jigging brochure has pictures of effective lake trout jigging lures, and an explanation of good jigging technique. If you view these resources and buy a couple of the recommended lures, you may catch more than one lake trout next time you fish on Lake Tahoe.

Here's a picture of a 35 inch lake trout I caught on Flathead Lake this spring, jigging on the bottom in the manner recommended in the brochure in about 210 feet of water.

I launched here:   38.940755,-120.054783

Only about 30 yards from parking to easy launch.  Parking is free.

This was my setup. 



Paddled 1/3 mile out to big drop off and dialed electronics into the bottom 25’ looking for Macks hugging the walls.

The Kokanee should be 50-80’ deep in big schools,  but I never found them.

I watched the charter boats to see if I was in the general depth range.

My manual downrigger only had 175’ of line, which barely got me in the zone.

Congrats on a new species! For big Mack’s instead of the dodger and spoon you can go with a dodger only such as a 4 inch Rocky Mountain dodger with a hook on the back.

Personally I find that trolling that deep in a kayak is a pain and usually jig with a 2-4 oz spoon when I mark fish. Start fishing when it’s just grey light and call it a day when the sun peeks over the mountains.Tahoe is a neat fishery, but it takes time to figure out.

You may have heard the saying, "When you have a hammer, all problems can look like a nail."  This used to happen to me with downriggers when lake trout fishing.  I had one, it caught fish, and so I would stick with the downrigger all day long.  But now I am more flexible.  Downrigger trolling is a great way to cover a lot of ground and find lake trout, but now when I find a concentration of lake trout, I often stop trolling and jig for them.  And sometimes jigging is more effective than trolling at catching lake trout, once I have located the lake trout. So when I head out from shore, I have one rod which is set up for downrigger trolling, and a second rod which is set up for jigging, so I can quickly switch from one technique to the other.

Thanks AnglingWes. I'm excited and definitely going to give it a shot. I don't have a downrigger but still try trolling with a diver and have another rig for jigging.

Thanks AnglingWes. I'm excited and definitely going to give it a shot. I don't have a downrigger but still try trolling with a diver and have another rig for jigging.

I think jigging is the way to go. I set out in search of Kokes, so that’s what I was rigged for.  I didn’t have any jigs on me, or I definitely would have tried that too.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro