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by J.P. Bushey Your boat works around a small, rocky knob along the shoreline, and the warm, offshore breeze immediately dries up. With no more chop music on the hull, the only sounds are songbirds flitting in the naked hardwoods and melt water's crisp daytrip down the land and back into the lake. Shade from big cedars, pines and sharp overhangs has kept snow alive in brilliant patches amongst the black, grey and pink rock. Light jackets and sweaters instantly come off. The land is sweating, and so are you. After months of ducking bad winds and fooling with frozen reels, this kind of day is reason enough to love spring trolling for trout. But it gets better. A reel's drag slips when the stretch leaves a mile of light mono. A long, soft rod bucks to life, and a heavy fish digs in. Not every spring day will give you perfect weather, and longline trolling isn't the only way to put trout in the boat. But from rainbows to browns, lake trout to brookies, you can enjoy some great, light-tackle fishing with the boat in gear and the lures a long way behind you in the days, weeks and even months following ice-out. Trout in cold, spring water fight hard, release well, and blow out a winter's worth of cobwebs like nothing else. Trolling habitat varies dramatically in Ontario. Fishermen on the Great Lakes check warm-water plumes near large, inflowing rivers or industrial outflows, while northern fishermen find their warm water in back channels, shallow bays or between islands. Piers, breakwalls and other man-made features are to the urban troller what shoals, saddles or rock walls are to their brothers up on remote water. The scenery changes, but the basic program doesn't change much. Whether you're trolling from a twenty foot hardtop rig or a twenty year old canoe, you can apply similar patterns wherever the fun takes you. Long before the thermocline has formed, water still experiences temperature differentials. Even though it's fragile, warm water zones can and will form. As quickly as they arrive, these pockets can just as easily get blown apart with the wrong winds or big drops in air temperature, especially overnight. Warm, calm weather raises the surface temperature in the upper few feet, especially as the days get longer and longer. But this is a fluid relationship, changing literally overnight, sometimes. Run off and inflowing tributaries are a much more consistent source of warmer water. Coloured water, as well. Dirty water can make trout more at ease, and it sucks up more of the sun's heat than clear water will. Just as rain and runoff triggers inshore migrations, those same conditions get fish moving in the spring.
As we've all heard over and over, these types of conditions gather and support the microscopic life that baitfish and insects feed on. (On the flip side, dropping water temperatures can trigger massive forage migrations in the fall as they seek out shelter or spawning habitat.) Nothing revolutionary here. These processes could be the subject of a hundred articles. It's my belief that in spring, lakers, rainbows, browns and other species are using warm water as feeding stations first and foremost. They're worth finding, because trout can be grouped up just like they are in fall, and you can get into them early and often. This is especially true of smaller, warm areas that are cut off from larger, colder zones. Is open water (or deep water, for that matter) unproductive? Not at all. Colder patches of water can still produce, and the right weather leading up to your trip can spread trout over big areas. Anytime you get 'superficial' warming of the lake's upper few feet, trout can really stretch their legs, and their food can be all over. By superficial, I'm just referring to temperatures that are raised solely through combining direct sunlight and calm winds, rather than through structural isolation or inflowing water. Remember, these spots will resist big drops better. Smelt, shiners, alewives, ciscoe, suckers and perch are all drawn by their food and with the exception of ciscoes, their desire to spawn at one time or another. Forage varies a lot depending on where you're fishing. In some northern lakes, stocked rainbows, splake or wild lake trout might only have minnow species like suckers or stickleback to follow. Whatever your sonar shows high over deep water or in shallow water, fish it. At this time of year, any activity is good activity. But in clear water especially, adjust your thinking when it comes to sonar interpretation. In the simplest terms, you can catch fish when there's nothing showing on the screen. Even the best units have a hard time showing clear signals in the upper four to five feet of the water. Trout will also scatter from the boat as it passes over or near them. With a longline approach, they can settle down and regroup by the time your lure gets there. Naturally, low trolling speeds and in-line planer boards are a fantastic approach here. You'll be amazed at how many fish you can catch while the screen is totally blank. Little clumps of isolated activity here and there are all I need to confidently work and rework an area. Those fish are in there. Of course on other days, you'll locate huge smudges of baitfish and predators on the screen, too.
No matter what
you're trolling for, with what lure or in what season, depth, speed and
direction changes are going to be what makes it all come together. Great
Lakes fishermen can run two rods apiece. This is a tremendous, tremendous
asset for finding the trout and figuring out what they're interested in.
Two in-line planer boards with shallow-diving baits, run off opposite
sides of the boat will cover the surface. In between, one rod with a
deeper diving flatline is offset by another with weight or a small, diving
planer like a Jet Diver or Dipsey. By all means, run your downriggers if
you have them, focusing on the top 1/3 to 1/2 of the water column. In
clear water especially, multiple depths can be hot all day, where trout
can see a long way. I've had days outside Owen Sound Harbour when rainbows
and lakers took turns hitting A.C Shiners eight feet down and Sutton West
River Spoons fished past twenty feet with 3/8oz keel weights. Fish in
dirtier water usually exhibit much tighter depth tolerances. Hot colours,
banging the bottom and baits with rattles are three ways to trigger trout
where visibility is low. This certainly isn't anything new. Slow-crawling
is effective at all times in the early season, and it can be really key in
water that's badly roiled by current/run-off or waves.
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Temperature,
Tackle and Techniques 
Anywhere
you can find patches of trapped water in warm, stable weather, you can
start checking for trout. On natural lakes, these spots can be big coves
behind points, long channels, bays or protected saddles between land
masses. Water that's stable and undisturbed is easy to spot with the naked
eye. It can have a scummy appearance, with tree pollen, runoff debris or
insect casings coating the surface. Water that's been beaten by wind will
look cleaner and of course, colder. Mid-day surface temps in these types
of spots can creep up to 42 or 43 degrees when the open areas are still in
the high thirties. Baby steps in temperature makes a huge difference at
this time of the season. Actually, early spring and late fall are the only
times all year when I put any serious stock in surface temperatures. And
in both cases, the comfort level of gamefish isn't my main focus. It's the
food chain. 
If
you take nothing else from this article, remember one thing: salmoniods
can tune into specific colours and sizes as acutely as any fish that
swims. I've seen it time and time again. I'm sure that the depth and the
speed each magic lure runs at is very important too, but when the fish get
onto a specific lure pattern, expect them to wear the paint off of it
until they stop hitting it. And they will stop hitting it. The drought
might last a few hours or right through next season, but all good things
do come to an end sooner or later. One day, it will be hot orange, J-11
Rapalas. The next, 2/5oz Cleos in gold/red. Then X4 skunk Flatfish will be
the only game in town. Fish tuned into one or two specific baits can make
the others seem like a waste of time. I guess at one time or another all
fish species do this, but it seems really pronounced with the trout. I
carry a good range of trolling baits, from tiny, dressed spinners to
large, jointed plugs in hot colours.