A mealworm is not the first choice of food for a brown trout over 4 pounds. Like most humans, when a brown trout comes out of its shadow-infested den, it wants a bite of meat. Most of the time, a big bully will have to settle for a stream chunk or a smaller trout, even though they would rather chase a clumsy frog or mouse that tripped over the shore and found its way to the drink.
Large browns are like large snakes, they eat something huge and then relax for extended periods of time. Large browns will eat smaller flies, but only when they are abundant enough to justify the energy expended on them. Most of the time, they hunt stream chunks and other small trout that they catch off guard and inhale. Despite this fact, most fishermen continue to use small, fat-headed minnows when chasing their trophies. In addition to being incredibly annoying to handle and hook, fat heads don’t have enough weight for a trout over 6 pounds to be really interested in an attack.
To really irritate a large brown, you have to use lures that most reserve for chasing bass. The most productive of these lures are medium-sized hard baits, such as husky jerks, shad raps and, in shallow streams, articulated floating rapalas. The key to these lures is their action, a large fish ignoring a slowly moving spinning wheel next to its face will aggressively pound an articulated rapala passing by, it simply cannot deprogram its instincts fast enough to avoid the treble hooks from a recovered well. pull bait.
