How Effective Are Spinners For Trout?

I headed out to my favorite trout river this morning (the swan river) to do a little early season trout fishing before the river becomes too high and muddy to fish and I quickly discovered that live bait (usually my trout bait of choice) was not going to be effective.  So, after an hour or so of fishing without as much as a nibble, I surmised that between the air and water temperature, I needed to try something with a bit more of attracting power if I wanted to fool a lethargic trout or two.

 In situations such as this many times spinners are an effective trout bait choice, so I tied on one of the new Panther Martin marabou spinners . These spinners are said to be particularly effective on cloudy days, and this was a cool, cloudy day.  It didn't take long (about 30 minutes I would guess) until I had a nice eralt season rainbow trout on the line. 

I kept fishing spinners for the next couple of hours and caught a total of 8 rainbows.  None of them were huge, most were between 10 and 12 inches, but on what ended up being my next to last cast I hooked and landed a beautiful 17 inch rainbow trout.  All in all it ended up being a productive day on the river.  It's always good to get a productive day on the river in before the run off begins and the rivers become Un-fishable for a number of months. 

I'm often asked the question, " how effective are spinners for trout" and I often say, "it depends".  What I know for sure is that on this day spinners were not only effective, but were very effective for trout.