New to trout in lakes

Im heading up to tofty near tower next weekend with one of my buddies. He has fished it before but always just wormed them late or early in the day. Ive caught many of stream trout but never fished for them in a lake, what are some good starting methods to try? I have trolling rods and snap weights, trolling cranks deep? I saw that on a tv show one time. Other than that what else does everyone use? I dont have down riggers and have never used dipsy divers are they difficult to use or will snap weighs work? My buddy also said something about trolling flashers? This is getting long but also what do you look for on your electronics to determine what depth to fish? Ive ice fished grindstone and it seems like where ever the smelt are the trout are near. Does this hold true for other lakes?

Just north of Tofte on Snowbank Lake we have had good sucess in years past with jigs tipped with ciscos over deep water.

Our experiences were that the Lakers we were targeting were deep, and we needed a fairly heavy jig over 1 ounce to get to them. Not sure how Tofte lays out but this might be an option for ya.

With the jigs just vertical jiging? drifting or motoring? Ive heard flashy colors. I think that were going to try snowbank too. I heard theres lots of eyes in there becides trout.What kind of rods? I know trout can fight like hell I have some medium spinning rods is something like that going to have enough backbone to land a laker? Ive never tried jiging with my casting rods but with 1oz jigs i dont see why they wouldnt work.

i was just in lutsen over the 4th, and we took a charter for lake trout out of tofte. we ended with a 4 man limit of lakers, biggest around 5-6 pounds, average was 2-3. we were using downriggers, with flashers, and then either spoons, or some other floating type lure (never seen one before). anyways, we fished anywhere from 150 – 275 ft, running mainly within 5-10 ft of bottom. the majority of our fish caught came in 175-200 feet of water, running the riggers almost on bottom.

he also used dipsy divers on two rods, and had one copper-core line rod out (500ft of line out).

i did talk to the guide about fishing with raps, or jigging. he said that when he is not running a charter, he will sometimes find an active school by downrigging, and then drift over them vertically jigging. also, when they start to get bug hatches later in the summer, he said you can pull crank baits on leadcore or 3 ways and catch them much higher in the water column.

everyone we seen fishing that day was downrigging, so i don’t know how well you will do without them.

Im fishing lake tofty not superior. But spoons are something to consider. Looked on the mn lakefinder and this lake is primarly a big bowl with a max depth of 70ft.

I was up to Tofte a couple weeks ago. There using cowbells and crawlers on Tofte NE of Ely. Your walleye trolling rods will work fine. Rainbows and splake are in there. We only caught rainbows. Snowbank has lake trout. You can only fish the south half of the lake. The rest you need to have a permit and a 25hp motor or less. Its in the BWCAW. There is still alot of lake to fish. You can also check out Miners lake in Ely for streamers. I have never fished Miners. Pm for more info

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Im fishing lake tofty not superior. But spoons are something to consider. Looked on the mn lakefinder and this lake is primarly a big bowl with a max depth of 70ft.

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ok, sorry for the confusion on that. but, now you know what you need to tackle superior…

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With the jigs just vertical jiging? drifting or motoring? Ive heard flashy colors. I think that were going to try snowbank too.

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We were using a vertical presentation with 1 1/2 oz hair jigs over 80-120 FOW. If you make it up to Snowbank, stop at Smitty’s for a current report. They always seem to point their guests in the right direction