Oro Shore Report-July 27th, Slow Day--1 for 1

Trolling for lakers becomes increasingly more challenging as the dog days of early August are just around the corner.
Zebra mussels are a PITA on Simcoe but can be largely avoided with a few modifications. First thing to consider is to swap out any treble hooks for a good quality siwash. Ensure the hook point on the siwash is on the concave side of your spoon. I use 1/0 hooks on my larger spoons and #1's on the smaller size spoons. This comes close to eliminating the mussel problem if you are using a very light flutter type spoon.
Always attach your release directly to the rear of the fin on your cannon-ball. This allows for the stop/start characteristic of this approach to be maximized. Lakers love the abrupt change of speed, raising/lowering of the spoon and variable wobbling action of your lure. Do not stack releases - you'll experience snarls when working over any hint of rough bottom. If you feel the need to get your lure well above the ball, add to the length of your release cable and really load your rods up to pull the release above the ball. Personally, I just leave the standard length of leader between the clip and the release and allow the light spoon to work up on its own just slightly off the bottom.
Lundman makes some valid points in his response as to heavier lures. Go with the lightest you can find. While I have a favourite spoon it is no longer in production. There are lots of very light silver coated spoons that work quite well.
Speed is crucial as the forage base in Simcoe is so extensive that lakers simply have no need to expend undue energy to chase fast trolled lures. As long as you're getting some flash and wobble from your spoon, I firmly believe you can't troll too slowly for Simcoe lakers.

Some good advice here from Grandpa Jim.

I have converted a number of my lighter spoons to Siwash hooks as he suggested.

He also suggested really loading up the rod to bring the clip up from bottom as much as possible. That may have been part of my problem this week when I think back. Also, I may have been using too long of a lead back from the clip.

Something I'm going to try is introducing a small block of Styrofoam at the clip to help raise it. See pic. I made those today, pretty crude but I can refine them by using Styrofoam SM if they work.

Trial and error and a matter of working on things to find out what works and how you have to do it.

SDC