There I was at the Cave Rock boat ramp at o'dark-thirty on the morning of Thursday, March 10, 2005, unloading my cartop boat, when who should back down the other side of the ramp but Mike Nielsen of Tahoe Topliners. His clients had not yet arrived, and as he launched and set up his twenty-two footer, we chatted. I noticed he had rods rigged with seven-inch Bomber Long A Magnum and Rapala Countdown plugs. "Just going for the small fish, eh?" I joked.

"You want to see the really hot big-fish bait?" he asked, then he showed me a twelve-inch Castaic lure, a highly realistic rainbow-trout imitation swim bait. "This one catches the monsters." I showed him the handmade AC Skinny plug I had tied on to try for brown trout and he admired the detailed paint job. We talked about how browns seem to prefer lures with a slimmer profile, while for large mackinaw, the bigger and fatter the better. This guy should know, too. He catches lots of trophy-size trout of both species, and as the name of his charter service indicates, he spends as much time as possible fishing minnow plugs on a 'topline', which is a local term for trolling lures without using lead weights, lead core line or downriggers to achieve additional depth.

This is my favorite method as well, and I've been having a great time fishing in 'skinny' water this winter. My last article for this website told the story of my largest mackinaw ever, a twenty-five pound fish caught trolling an eight-inch AC Minnow plug near shore. So yes, I already know that big baits catch big mackinaw, and as a Pro Staffer for AC Plugs, I have my pick of oversized offerings. The letters 'AC' are the initials of Allan Cole, who makes each lure by hand, and he's always telling me to go big for lake trout. To encourage this, he sent me a selection of his lures up to twelve inches in length last year. I must say I was a bit intimidated by these huge plugs, which look like the average rainbow trout my clients catch when fly fishing the West Carson River in summer.

So why do manufacturers even produce such giant lures for freshwater fish? The Castaic lure Nielsen prefers was developed to target trophy largemouth bass that eat hatchery rainbow trout at lakes in southern California. AC Plugs were first made for landlocked striped bass, then found to be highly effective on largemouth as well, and I should point out that these lures started the swimbait craze currently sweeping the bass-fishing world, spawning imitators including the Castaic. The AC is also made in smaller sizes though, and these have turned out to be hot baits for rainbow and brown trout, catching some of the biggest browns on the west coast, including the current Oregon state record. I don't know when the first lake trout was caught on these lures but they turned out to be productive for this species as well. Tahoe kicks out its share of big mackinaw for sure, and although I'd planned to use smaller lures to test the early spring brown trout bite, after talking to Mike I confess I caught a case of mackinaw fever. He mentioned that his clients were late and first light was already peeking over the eastern mountains, so I thanked him for the fishing talk and headed out at full-throttle, twelve miles-per-hour with my five-horsepower motor. I had planned to fish a major lake point at sunrise for the brown trout, but as I noticed I was also late and might miss the magical low-light period, I decided to slow down and fish a smaller area of shallow underwater rock piles on the way.

For boaters who have not fished Tahoe, the task of finding shallow fish can be daunting, but the key is to locate structure. Rocky shorelines with boulders extending out into the lake, steep, drops to deep water near shore, and even man-made structure such as docks and piers can hold fish, and all these are preferable to flat, sandy areas, most of the time. Every good rule has exceptions though, and I experienced a big one as I approached my fishing spot. After catching big mackinaw on the eight-inch AC Minnow over the last couple of years, I finally worked up my nerve to try the nine-inch version, trolling it many times for one bite and a lost fish on Caples Lake, and one ten-pound mackinaw caught and released last month on Donner Lake, my only big fish in a dawn-to-dusk day on the water.

That trout 'inched' up my confidence level, and after seeing Mike's ridiculous lures I decided to switch tactics, from using six-inch lures for brown trout to pulling my largest AC plugs for mackinaw instead. Several hundred yards from the underwater rocks I intended to troll, in fifty feet of water over a flat, sandy bottom, I let out my lucky nine-inch lure. When I had it swimming on one-hundred yards of line with the rod in its holder, I started feeding out line to try the twelve-inch AC Minnow for the first time on my outside rod. I had let it out only a hundred feet or so behind the boat, with my thumb on the line to control the rate at which the spool turned, when the rod kicked hard and my thumb burned while the line flew out as if I'd hooked the bumper of a race car.

"Whoah!" And there I was, one minute into trying out this giant lure, fighting a huge fish. After its initial hard run it seemed to have given up the fight, but I figured no trout under about ten pounds would even have the nerve to attack such a formidable opponent, so I reeled as fast as I thought my ten-pound line would allow, to either wake up a sluggish big fish or shake off a foolish small one. Yes, speaking of foolish, I was using ten-pound line. While this may seem quite light for running lures commonly used to entice fifty-pound striped bass, it's considered the heavy end of the spectrum for Tahoe topline trolling. I have had great catches on six and eight-pound test, including mackinaw over twenty pounds, but my perspective was changed on a recent fishing trip, where I broke off a pig on my favorite eight-inch AC Minnow plug while using eight-pound line.

And therein lies the Tahoe dilemma: big fish and ultra-clear water. When fishing deep, where the power of sunlight is diminished, anglers can get away with heavy line, twenty or even thirty pound-test, and still hook large mackinaw. In the shallows though, you not only have to contend with transparent water, but also with big rainbow and brown trout, both of which seem to have sharper eyesight than mackinaw. Sure, if you hook a leviathan on twenty pound line in the shallows you have a better chance of bringing him to the net, but will you get a bite in the first place?

Allan Cole advises heavy line for mackinaw on most lakes, but Mike from Tahoe Topliners told me "I like six, eight, and ten-pound line, depending on the size of the lure. You get more bites on light line, but you lose more fish. When you hook the really big ones fishing this way, you're lucky to get one out of every three to the net."

So, back to the action! I was fishing a giant lure that would scare away most fish, in an area that should not produce trout anyway, and there I was, tied to a big one. I kicked my motor in and out of gear so the boat would move forward slowly and not swing around to tangle the other line, yet not stress my ten-pound test fluorocarbon, which was already making funny scraping and plucking sounds. 'Crap!' I thought. Well, I thought worse but this is a family publication. I could tell my fish was rolling and tangling in the line, which is never a good thing, but before I had a chance to worry too much about the problem, another big boy hit my 'small' nine-inch lure that I'd left trailing, barely moving near the surface three-hundred feet back!

With a double hook-up of such monumental proportions, there wasn't much I could do but quickly reach over, turn down the drag a notch, and watch the line zip off the reel on one rod while I held the other and worked on my original problem. Luckily I had this fish close and was able to net it quickly, finding that it had in fact wrapped itself up in a tangle of line, and inhaled the foot-long AC Minnow halfway into its gullet.

Throwing this whole mess onto the floor of my boat, I was finally able to pick up my other rod and go to work on a fish that felt even larger-

Shallow Water Mackinaw Fight Scene: "Damn it, I hooked bottom... no, I feel something... I think it's kicking, it must be a fish but I don't think it's too big, or maybe it is just the bottom... OH MY GOD!" Then you either break off or start praying, and I was quickly into my Hail Marys, only I skipped the part about hooking bottom because I knew my lure had been swimming just under the surface over deep water. This fish felt even bigger than the first one that sat thrashing violently in the net on the floor of my boat, but I felt good about the way the battle was turning until my rod tip was pulled back down into the water as my line flew out on another furious run, then suddenly went dead. "I did it again!" I yelled to myself. "I snapped off another one!" But when I reeled in I found that my line had not broken at the knot attached to the lure. The entire 100 feet of ten-pound fluorocarbon leader was gone, and I found that the twenty-pound test swivel I had used to attach the leader to thirty-pound 'superbraid' main line was split wide open! Do the math! I claim equipment failure, but I still expect friendly harassment from Allan Cole for the next ten years, for losing another one of his handmade, monster-catching plugs.

When I finished fighting and losing this fish, I turned my attention to the one already in my boat. "Wow". With four or five minutes elapsed since it had been in the water, and several more before I could remove the hooks and cut away all the line wrapped around it, I knew this fish could not be released. I measured it to find that it was between thirty-four and thirty-five inches long, which would mean a weight of fourteen or fifteen pounds for an average fish, but this mackinaw was incredibly fat, and I was not surprised when my scale told me it weighed eighteen pounds. I was quite amazed though when I took it home and cleaned it to find a rainbow trout nearly eighteen inches long in its stomach! Check out the photo, in which I've included two twelve-inch AC Plugs for scale.

So, it was just a fifteen pound lake trout, yesterday! The rainbow trout was chewed up by the mackinaw's teeth, but still looked fresh, not white and soft as fish will turn after spending much time marinating in digestive juices. This glutton had choked down a huge meal just a day or two before, and still had the appetite or aggression to engulf my twelve-inch lure. I've read that mackinaw will eat fish up to half their length, and I think my guy just broke the record!

What is my point? The AC Plug company needs to step up and start making eighteen-inch lures for lake trout! Okay, maybe I'm getting carried away, but lakers can and do take huge lures, and not only because they themselves are so big; they really do seem to like larger baits than either rainbow or brown trout of the same size. If the idea of running foot-long lures where there are no tuna or marlin seems ridiculous to you, good! Leave this approach to nuts like me and Mike Nielsen. Though I'm of course partial to the AC Plug and Mike has found another productive swimbait in the Castaic lure, there are other big lures that work very well on mackinaw. One of my favorite slow-troll offerings for the largest macks is a T-55 Flatfish or K-16 Kwikfish. These wide-wobbling plugs are commonly used in west coast rivers for huge king salmon, and they catch salmon-sized mackinaw as well. Another big lure for big macks is the Rapala Magnum, the saltwater version of this classic minnow plug. My friend and pro-staff angler Brad Stout uses the size 22 Rapala Magnum Countdown, a nine-inch lure, for trophy mackinaw. Here's a photo he sent me of a recent catch, a fish close to twenty-pounds caught on this lure. Brad likes to change out the hooks to razor-sharp Owner hooks, and he also custom-paints the Rapala lure with an airbrush.

So go big or go home, but don't expect a lot of fish on these lures. I'm not worried about letting everyone in on this secret, because you may spend days, weeks or even years trolling them without a bite. Using ridiculous lures for mackinaw requires thorough knowledge of how best to present them, when and where to use them, a boatload of patience, and that most-difficult to define quality common to all successful anglers, confidence!

Remember, it takes ten-pound balls to fish Tahoe... Hey, I meant downrigger balls! Come on people!

To contact Mike Nielsen at Tahoe Topliners, call (530)544-1526.

Until Next Time!
Mark (Never Stand In A Canoe) Wiza
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