TROLLING in the estuaries, dams and rivers is becoming a bit of a lost art. I’m open minded when it comes to fishing, I like to try new methods, new lures and I experiment a lot. Trolling is considered by many to be a boring way to fish and a lot of younger anglers tend to be quite dismissive of it as a method. But if you want to learn about your local waters, there are few methods more effective than trolling. In the open ocean chasing marlin and big pelagic fish trolling is the main method used. It allows you to cover a lot of ground, present multiple lures or baits at the same time, and use heavy tackle outfits too big to cast. The same principles apply to estuaries, dams and rivers. In many situations trolling will catch you a lot more fish than casting a single lure to a single spot.
There is a lot of subtlety and finesse required to master trolling. There is a lot more to it than simply dragging a lure behind a boat. It is all about delivering the right lure to the right depth in the right way to deceive a feeding fish. Having a good imaging sounder makes a big difference in your effectiveness. Side imaging and forward view gives a lot of useful information to improve your troll lines and position your lures directly on the fish.
The main species I troll for in rivers, dams and estuaries are barramundi and flathead. I’ve done a lot of trolling over many years and I never stop learning. We first started trolling for flathead in the 1980s and using quite crude simple methods caught a lot of big fish. The original flathead trolling lure was a Bill Norman Reb 2 model DR3. This 15cm lure had a big heart shaped bib and dived to around 6 metres when trolled down current. Since that time, we’ve experimented with hundreds of lures and improved our catch rate. Similarly, when chasing barramundi, I tend to mix trolling with casting, depending on the circumstances of the day. Most of my biggest barra, fish over 120cm long, have been caught trolling. The following is a guide
to how to approach trolling as a method, and what the important factors are to improve your productivity.
HOW DEEP SHOULD THE LURE SWIM TO?
Some fish will use a rapidly moving water column to travel up a river in tidal areas. This particularly applies to barramundi. On big spring tides this fast current becomes a fish highway as mullet and other baitfish use it to move rapidly up a river. This attracts a lot of predators and the biggest barramundi like to target 30cm long mullet. In this situation a lure that dives from half to 1.5 metres is generally effective regardless of the river depth, as this is the depth the mullet are travelling at. Using a large mullet sized lure such as a big bomber long A is an effective method. However, it is very important to understand the huge difference in the troll depth of a lure depending on whether it is being trolled with or
against the current. Many lures will dive to surprising depths when trolled down current. I’ve snagged shallow running bombers on the bottom in over three metres of water!
When the current is slow or non-existent most fish tend to be close to the bottom, adjacent to
snags, weed beds and other structure. In these situations, ‘snag trolling’ is a very effective method. This requires skilled skippering to deliver a lure right to the fish and work very close
to structure. Snags can be a perpetual problem, but a lot of lures will ‘back up” when they hit a snag. That is, they will float backwards when trolled into the current so the lure frees itself. The Halco Poltergeist is a good example of a lure with the ability to back up on snags. You must always hold your rod when snag trolling, being ever ready to drop your lure back when it hits an obstruction. A lot of the bites come just as the lure hits the structure.
This method works well on a wide range of species. The boat speed is critical, needing just enough to get the lure down to depth but not too fast so it drives hard into the timber. We won a few Barra Classics years ago by using snag trolling and I learnt a lot from Peter Washington, the master of the slow troll. When chasing species such as flathead it is important that the lure stays on or near the bottom. Lures work better when they kick up a bit of mud as well. Weed can be a problem. Weed is folded over in the current flow. It is surprising how many flathead hide themselves deep in the weed.
HOW FAR BEHIND THE BOAT SHOULD THE LURE BE?
This varies according to the fish you are chasing. In some places, such as impoundments, trolling a long way behind the boat gets a lot more hits than trolling close to the boat. I found this out many years ago when I spent a lot of time fishing for barramundi in Lake Awoonga. We soon worked out that the “shotgun” lure, positioned about 80 metres behind the boat, was out fishing the other lures by a wide margin. This led to everyone on board letting out more and more line, to the point some of the smaller reels were nearly empty! I’ve seen the exact same scenario repeat itself in Callide Dam and Kinchant Dam.
In clean clear still dams, put your barra lures well back. In some places trolling from the electric motor also seems to help. This applies to trolling using both hard bodies and soft plastic lures such as the Zerek Live Mullet range.
The passage of the boat may disturb fish activity and it may take a while for the fish to return to normal behaviour. These situations generally mean you should troll your lure a fair
Some lures, such as the Lively Lures Micro Mullet, have a very fast vibration and a few shakes of the rod tip will often remove any hooked weed. Careful use of the sounder lets you work the areas just adjacent to weed beds rather than trolling over the top of them. If you use a shallower running lure it can be trolled over the top of weed beds. This works a lot better when you troll down current and the way back. Some species, such as flathead, are minimally disturbed by the passing of a boat, and sometimes we hook up on good flathead only a couple of metres behind the outboard motor. In general, however, you need enough line out so that your lure reaches the correct running depth and is running in clean undisturbed water. Deep diving lures tend to reach their running depth quickly and can be trolled quite close to the boat in many situations.
WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF LINE DIAMETER AND LEADER ON TROLLING DEPTH?
Heavy leader and thick main line can have a profound effect on the depth a lure travels at. This can make a big difference to your strike rate. A lot of the modern 8 ply braids are quite thin and very strong, and they have less resistance when dragged through the water allowing the lure to swim a lot deeper. Similarly heavy leader tends to drag a lure to the surface, firstly because it is generally thicker than mainline and tends to drag in a curve near a diving lure. If you are trying to achieve maximal running depth minimise your leader length. Alternatively, use thin lighter leader and attach a short ‘bite tippet’ to the end of it. A 20cm length of heavier bite tippet attached to a light leader gets your lure down deeper. As an example, when trolling for flathead using small lures such as the Zerek Tango Shad, I will use 3-pound fine braid as main line connected to a metre or so of 6-pound leader. To the end of this I tie a short length of 16-pound fluorocarbon about 20cm long. This gets the lure down to a running depth of around 2 metres but still gives me enough protection if a big flathead inhales the lure.
WHAT FEATURES DO I LOOK FOR?
One of the real problems I see with some modern anglers is that they are environmentally illiterate! It’s all very well to have a $20000 sounder and a scoping unit and spend all day looking at the screen, but you might miss a lot of clues that lead you to fish. Trolling is a form of fish hunting. I look more at the water than I do at the sounder! In the dams chasing barramundi you must be observant of the habits of the food fish, which are generally bony bream. The same applies to Murray cod trolling where you closely watch the schools of small spangled perch. When chasing flathead, I look for where pelicans are feeding. A great sounder is an adjunct to your observations, not a substitute for looking.
Unlike casting spots, trolling spots are generally large patches of water where you cover a bit of distance and find where the fish are. Because you cover a lot more ground, you will find a lot of your future casting spots when you find interesting structure or patches of fish on the troll. We often troll up a few fish and then stop and cast for them. On some days this works whereas on other days the fish prefer trolled lures and ignore our casting efforts.
HOW FAST SHOULD YOU TROLL?
Troll speed is relative to the current. The aim is to troll the lure so it works with maximal action and achieves its correct running depth. Most of the trolling I do is with hard bodied lures that dive and vibrate. After a while you can feel when a lure is working properly through the transmitted vibration through the rod tip. The ideal troll speed when snag trolling or flathead trolling is 2.3 to 3 kilometres per hour. I generally prefer trolling for flathead in the same direction as the current flow and when snag trolling for barramundi we troll into the current as this reduces snagging.
Trolling for fish in the surface layers usually needs a bit more speed. Sometimes we troll up to 8 kilometres per hour in tidal flow chasing barramundi. When chasing Murray cod on the troll I like to go as slow as possible, just enough to get the lure working. This keeps the lure in the strike zone for longer. It pays to
experiment with troll speed. Additionally, work your lure as you troll it, pulling it forward and then dropping it back. In general, a lure with a more vigorous action will get the most bites.
TROLLING RODS
A few general principles apply to trolling rods and it depends as to what species you are after as to what the ideal rod is. As the rod is not to be used for casting it is purely a fish fighting tool and needs to be sensitive enough to feel the lure vibrate. I use a lot softer rods for trolling than I do for casting for most species. A softer tip has a bit more give and allows the fish to suck the lure deeper into its mouth, providing a more secure hook-up. I like the rod to be around 200cm in length with a mid-curve action. The power is in the butt section. A rod that is too hard or stiff can lead to pulled hooks.
Trolling is a complex business, but it pays to learn how to do it. Multiple lures presented at the same time will always give you a better chance of finding fish. While often regarded as an “old school” method, trolling is effective, reliable and very interactive.