Trolling-Contour

After all this talk about open water trolling I figured I better spend a little time talking about contour trolling, as that is what most people in the Midwest can associate with when you talk about trolling.  Contour trolling is much different than open water trolling yet a lot of the same principals hold true.  No matter whether you are trolling open water or contours, my set-ups remain pretty much the same with a few slight changes between the two.  I still use long trolling rods with either Fireline or Fluorocarbon depending on the clarity of the water.  The only real difference is in my planer board placement which I will cover in detail below.

As we discussed earlier, open water trolling focuses on large open water areas that contain very little, if any structure.  We are targeting fish that suspend in the water column and feed at various levels in the water column depending on the conditions.  That could mean trolling the bottom in 35 feet of water or trolling 8 feet down over 35 feet of water.  Open water trolling is about covering a lot of water and spreading your lines out looking for fish that are feeding off the bottom.

Contour trolling on the other hand is about being precise.  Generally when contour trolling you are trolling along a precise depth of water on a steep drop or are following a pronounced weed edge or transition area.  Where open water trolling is about spreading your lines out, contour trolling is about keeping your lines in tight focusing in on that specific depth the fish are holding.

Often times while contour trolling you can run your lines directly out the back of the boat with the rods in the rod holders or in hand.  This is probably the most common form of trolling in the Midwest on both lakes and rivers.  By running all your lines off the back of the boat, you know your lures are all running at the same depth you are reading on your graph.  While this works well and is common practice, you are missing many of the most active fish.  There is no doubt that contour trolling works well, but I would argue that the most active fish holding on the contours are not on the bottom, but are up off the bottom feeding.  Walleye are notorious for feeding up so by pulling the bottom of the contour you are sure to be missing a few of these active feeding fish.  Because of this I prefer to pull one planer board, roughly 20-30 feet off the deep side of the boat, with a crankbait that is set at the same depth as the ones running behind the boat.  If you can imagine trolling along a break in 12 feet of water, you have most of your baits running just off the bottom in 12 feet, then add in that last line on a planer board, running 12 feet down off the side of the boat over 20 feet of water.  Trust me on this one, it works and will increase your catch.

OK, now back to contour trolling.  I mentioned contour trolling is about being precise.  LakeMaster has done a wonderful thing by surveying many of our favorite lakes and given us the data that we can put in our GPS that gives us 1 foot contours on many popular lakes across the Midwest.  By doing so, LakeMaster has taken contour trolling to the next level.  You can now set your lines for a certain depth and follow that contour on your GPS using your LakeMaster chip versus having to find where the contour goes by trial and error.  Not that trial and error does not work but if you want to put more fish in the boat, you have to have your lines in the water.  LakeMasters contour chips allow you to keep at the target depth and keep your lures running clean.  There is nothing worse than getting all your trolling lines set and then find out you just drove into a shallow weed bed and have to reset them all.  Thank You LakeMaster!

Hopefully this little piece helped spell out a few differences between contour trolling and open water trolling.  Also, I hope everyone that only contour trolls experiments with putting that planer board out the side and looking for other fish besides those bottom huggers.  There will be a lot more to come on trolling.   In fact, I will be doing a lot of contour trolling at my next tournament at Red Wing Minnesota in two weeks so check back for those live updates and pictures.