Lake Superior lake trout

Me and some friends are planning our first trip to Lake Superior to fish for lake trout. We are going at the end of June and launching from the Duluth area. None of us have any experience or equipment for it. During this time of year, should we plan to troll, vertical jig, or both? For rods and reels, what power rods do you use? We don’t have downriggers so the plan now is to use dipsy divers. Any insight on depth, lures, rods, etc would be really helpful!

The first thing you need to do is contact the DNR and find out what on-board equipment you are required to have. Inland water regs and Great Lakes regs can be different. Then you next need to get a map to find out where the MN/Wi boundary lies on the lake and either stay in Mn waters or have a non-res WI license for everyone fishing. Take a hand held GPS to use to keep you where you’re licensed to be.

I am going to suggest that when you get to Duluth you head to Marine General and pose your questions on what to use to those guys. They’ll know firsthand what’s currently working and can help tailer your gear to the fishing that’s happening.

Marine radio and flares are the two added things you need vs inland waters.

As was stated check the regs for your boat requirements, and you will need to buy a trout stamp too. Marine General is a great spot to check in and get a head start. My buddy runs a charter out of Duluth (Team Crush Outdoors) that is almost always trolling, and they have been doing well, including a 40″er last week. There’s some FB pages as well, that are a good resource. Watch the weather closely! I’m sure you can get fish trolling or casting/jigging, just depends on if you’d rather drive around a little faster looking for them or just troll around until you find them. Spoons and meat rigs are usually the standard, with some stick baits mixed in. Good luck and report back on how it goes!

Use this as a reference as some of the info given above is not accurate…
https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2015/other/151253.pdf

For that timeline you should be able to launch somewhere between Mcquade and two harbors, fishing the top 20′ with stick baits and spoons.
Exactly where will be dependent on water surface temp which is moved by the wind. General rule is to fish in 44 to 54 degree water, that temp range could be on the surface or down deeper in the water column depending on time of year and your location.

Assuming fishing MN waters as you said Duluth.