Trolling often proves to be the fastest way to get on target

Ask many Lake Michigan salmon anglers, and they will tell you trolling is their favorite way to catch lots of suspended fish.

Query a walleye tournament participant, and you'll probably hear the same thing.

Head into the saltwater regions, and you'll often see fleets of in-shore and blue-water boats trolling as well.

But as popular as trolling has been over the years, I still prefer the more pro-active methods of fishing, like casting lures and using jigs.

But who am I to argue with success?

The walleye pros have helped revolutionize trolling and subsequently worked with various accessory companies to develop specific gear to make trolling easier for the non-tournament folks.

My trolling tutoring came when I met Ed Best in St. Paul, Minn. Best was a Spoonplug fanatic, and because I was guiding parties on Lake Minnetonka in the far Western suburbs of the Twin Cities, Best thought trolling should be added to my repertoire.

I had a tackle box loaded with Spoonplugs and the old-style Bomber crankbaits. And my sonar or fish-finder unit in those days was the green, Lowrance Lo-K-Tor, the forefather of today's state-of-the-art electronics.

I caught lots of bass, walleye, northern pike and even jumbo catfish, but despite my successes, I still favored casting and jigging.

Spence Petros admits that he has nailed quite a few huge muskies on eagle Lake and Lake of the Woods Ontario by using semi-fast, short-line trolling techniques. And I will openly admit that I too have caught quite a number of muskies as well using his methods.

Great Lakes anglers going after salmon and trout like to use planer boards to take their lures way back and off to the side of the boat, thereby expanding their trolling spread. Some Lake Erie walleye charter-boat captains prefer the boards, too, when they're trying to locate schools of fish.

Trolling even works on river systems.

When walleye pro Ted Takasaki was still fishing the original MWC walleye tournaments, Mike Seeling and I met him for some pre-fishing on the Mississippi River. He explained that he often worked his boat and lures against the river's current and then proceeded to show us his three-way trolling setup.

It consisted of a 1-ounce jig tied on a dropper line coming from a three-way swivel. Then he rigged a crankbait on a mono leader a good 6 feet behind the swivel. Sometimes he tipped the jig with a minnow, and other times he tipped it with a plastic grub. He explained how he covered both bases, behind the boat and directly beneath it as well.

When we fished the Fox River one time, we used that same setup to find a school of walleyes.

Quite a few of today's walleye trollers have discovered the new Lindy Shake-E Blade Bait Rig and Harness which vibrates like a Mixmaster. Rigged with a nightcrawler or leech, this can be a deadly combo for big fish.

I'll use the Shake-E Blade to find the schools, catch a few fish, throw a couple marker-buoys out to show the approximate target area, and then come back and drop a jig into the bouillabaisse.