Non-fly fishing, best bait and tackle for trout

In line spinners, maybe a worm under a strike indicator.

Well, I hope the kid does. The corn sounds like an interesting setup. Current is pretty good where they were, but could make it work.

Salmon eggs and be very cautious on approach.

In the NC mountains, you can toss a large night crawler alive with a Carolina rig and let the current carry it down or leave it.

However I have a great story from WV where I was below tue Bluestone dam and saw five or six women wading with buckets.

They were letting helgramites grab their pinky finger and turned pull it out of the hold and sell them for a dollar apiece.

The black helgramite is your answer. But if you get real crazy, try to find the black and yellow helgramite.


Use them for soft plastic too.

Yep. Use that rooster tail in about 1/8 or 1/16. Ultralight spinning tackle and 4 lbs test. Caught as much as I want in Broken Bow, OK and the Blue River and also the Meramac and Bennett Springs in Missouri.

You need to make sure you are using good fishing line and likely need to start out with 4lb leader. Some guys even use 2lb but if you are seeing big fish that’s probably too small. A decent quality 4lb Fluoro leader and hide the hook real well with either salmon eggs or corn usually works well. Those spinners also work well that were posted above. Throw it all well upstream and past the fish and float it down to them as naturally as possible.

Mepps Aglia spinner
Panther Martin spinners
Smaller better than bigger
Cast upstream and retrieve diagonally from like 11 o’clock to 5 oclock position.

Or a trout hook with a split shot about 13 inches a live hook with a salmon egg or live garden worm on hook. Berkeley power bait or small marshmallow works too if you are SE of say Ohio.

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Any recommendations for best tackle and/or live bait for them?

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First, know your water. Most trout rivers do not allow live bait. Some do not allow any kind of fishing except for fly fishing.

As far as best setup that is not a fly rod, a light to medium light spinning reel is all you need. Spoons or spoons with a spinner are king. Big browns are very aggressive and feed mostly on other fish. This is why streamer flies work so well. I only catch big browns on streamers, big terrestrials and green drake flies. For you spoon, baby rainbow trout, baby brown trout, chub, dace and other similiar colors will work. I would work it much like I work a streamer fly. Cast up and across the river. When it get close to perpendicular with you, retrieve. Almost nothing swims upstream to escape predators, but many swim across current.

Edit: for real big browns, wait until almost dark, have a floating lure that looks like a mouse. Toss that lure upstream and onto the tall grass. Pull it into to water so that it splashes. Huge browns will take a field mouse that fell into water quickly. This is best done if you are wade fishing. I have caught some up to 30" doing mouse flies throughout the summer months.

Yellow Breeches Creek in Boiling Springs, PA.

Need to figure out the rules here first. Like the post above cautioned, I also had a neighbor tell me that sections of a lot of creeks here are artificial bait only and the Game Commission defines artificial very specifically.

We're not fly fishing. Just spin rods.

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