By Louie Stout

Most Michiana anglers are loyal to one species of fish, spending the majority of their time targeting just bass, or bluegills, or walleye, or salmonids. Quite a few are devout trout fly fishers, too.

If you’re among the group that just likes to catch fish, I came across something the other day that might arouse your interest – inland lake trout fishing.

The DNR in both states have stocked rainbows in a few select lakes for years but you don’t hear about many people fishing for them.

But then I ran into Bill Levine, an avid trout angler who spilled his guts about the phenomenal trout fishing he’s enjoyed the past couple years.

How good? Well, he says when he trolls Lake Gage (327 acres, Steuben County), he gets a hit about every three minutes. On Oliver Lake (370 acres, Lagrange County), it takes longer. Like every 6 minutes.

Levine doesn’t keep the fish; he just enjoys catching them. He’s had days when he caught 40 or more trout in a six-hour trip.

If that sounds outlandish, consider that the Indiana DNR has doubled up its stocking attempts on both lakes with hopes of creating more interest in inland lake trout fishing. The state is experimenting with two different strains of rainbows to see if one works better than the other.

“This has been an exceptional year,” said Levine, who is a retired tool and die maker and fishes several times a week.

Most anglers like to keep hotspots a secret, but Levine realizes that the more people who take advantage of the fisheries, the more likely the DNR will to continue stocking them.

“It’s an under-utilized fishery,” he said. “Three weeks ago I was fishing at Oliver and there were four other guys there fishing and I knew all of them. We rarely see new people out there fishing. I expect it to be good right into the fall season.”

Levine is an experienced troller who uses downriggers, which most inland lake anglers don’t utilize on their boats. He has them on a 16-foot Sylvan Explorer aluminum boat.

But he says you can catch trout without downriggers, providing you have good sonar electronics that will help locate the deep water, suspended fish.

“It also helps if you have a mapping chip in your electronics that shows contours and helps you avoid trolling over underwater islands or getting too shallow and damaging your equipment,” he added.

The Fort Wayne angler said he usually sees the trout on his graph anywhere between 20 and 50 feet. Most of the time, the fish are schooled in 35-40 foot depths.

Lakes are setting up with thermoclines between 25-30 feet, he added, which can be seen on a good sonar graph. Warmwater fish, like bluegills, crappies and bass, won’t go below the thermocline, but the trout love the colder water.

“If you identify the thermocline and see fish below it, there’s a good chance they are trout,” he explained. “Fish above it are probably panfish.”

He trolls small, silver flutter spoons that he makes, but says he’s seen others do well with Mepps spinners or Rapalas. The key is getting the bait to the depth where the fish are hanging.

“You can bobber fish for them, too,” Levine said. “I’ve done that before and caught them well on crickets, corn, red wigglers or a half of a nightcrawler. I just like trolling for them.”

He uses spinning tackle rigged with 10-pound monofilament line, but says you can get by with as little as 6-pound line if you’re bobber fishing.

The fish are stocked at or above legal size, which is 7 inches, and many are 10 inches. The bag limit is 5 per day.

“Those fish are growing fast,” he said. “We catch quite a few that are 14 to 15 inches, and have caught a few that were bigger. They fight better than you might think.”

Oliver has a few brown trout that were stocked by a local trout club in recent years. Levine caught one that was six pounds, but insists fish that size are rare. On Oliver, you can only keep one brown and it must be over 18 inches.

You’ll need an Indiana license and trout stamp, too.

Trout lakes in Cass County, Michigan are Harwood, Birch and Hemlock. They have an 8-inch size limit with a bag limit of 5 but no more than three can be 15 inches or longer.

Clear Lake in Steuben County is another heavily stocked trout lake, but for ease of fishing and action, Oliver and Gage are probably best bests for someone wanting to try it out.