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Man, I feel way under qualified to discuss big trout since I have boated two 23″ trout in my life but I’ll throw my 2 cents in because I do appreciate this discussion and it’s one of big interest to me. I definitely agree with everything you said. I will add a caveat that I think a big bait has potential to be better for you. I think some smaller trout will pass on the bigger lures and that gives you an opportunity to get it in front of the bigger fish.
I see guys like Mike Herrmann building and throwing big glide baits specifically for big trout. I honestly think this is the best way to go to target them, but then you have to both:
1. be in the area that the big trout are holding.
2. be prepared to only get a few bites but the ones you catch are going to be good ones.
The problem I face is that I have doubts that I’m in the right area and that probably means that I’m not going to stay as long to wait out that good bite since more casts = higher chance of catching a good one. I caught one of my 23 inchers on a River2Sea S-waver 200 at Chandy this year. I would love to get one of Mike’s glides because I know it will likely have a better sink rate for the salinity levels here. That said, I hate throwing a $45 lure and I’m not sure I would like to throw an $80 lure lol. I mean I look at these guys in the bass world and they are catching monsters on them. I heard someone make the comparison to a fat person and McDonalds. If a fat person has to walk a block to get a French fry, they probably won’t do it but would probably do it for a Big Mac. But if they have to run for that Big Mac, they probably won’t do it, but they will walk for it. So swimming a big 8″ glide bait looks like a mullet that is just relaxed and swimming along can entice a big girl to eat.
My other 23″ trout came along some obscure structure at Lake P, but was also mixed in with other sizes. I think I caught 25 trout and half were 14-17 inches, the rest were 18-19 inches, and then there was a 21″ and 23″ fish. It was such a different experience vs the Chandy trout, it almost felt like it didn’t belong at the location I was fishing.
It seems like when I target bigger trout, I tend to get impatient and fall back to just catching trout. I feel like I’m not going to get “good” at it until I’m willing to get skunked in the pursuit a few times.
