In this video tip, Guide Mac Mulligan of Bakers Narrow Lodge in Northern Manitoba shares how chumming can either make or break a Lake Trout Trip trip.
To start, Chumming can be done with either suckers or ciscoes. To prep it, start by taking off the scales. To do this, use a proper descaler or just your hands to flip the scales off. Then put the scales down the hole. They will glitter and shine as they fall, adding another type of attractant.
Then, with a knife or scissors, remove a chunk from the tail section and cut it up extremely fine. This is important because it’s about the scent (and not about feeding them). When chumming too heavily with too big of pieces, the fish will fill up on the chum, making it even harder to get them to bite. Instead, Mac will also throw sucker/cisco paste (made from running baits through a meat grinder) down the hole to help increase the scent.
Chumming isn’t always necessary. When on structure that fish actively feed on, there’s no need to chum because those fish are likely to come through anyways. Instead, chumming becomes beneficial when on a huge flat where fish have a lot of area to roam. Just a bit of scent will go a long ways to draw fish in, helping you to hook into more lake trout on your next trip.
