IDA’s Best Trout Fishing Lures

Favourite fishing lures are a very personal choice for everyone, and generally most peoples favourite lures have caught them lots of fish in the past. That is not to say that another style or brand of lure would not have caught fish in the same circumstances, but having confidence in your lures goes a long way in all types of fishing including for trout.

It used to be that majority of our trout fishing was done with a fly rod, but we do love casting lures with light tackle, and most of our fishing for all our target species is generally done with lures these days.

Having a variety of lures with you while fishing is quite important, as different types and colours of lures will work better for different situations, e.g. water flow, depth, clarity etc. But with a bit of trial and error you will be able work these things out.

A good technique to use if fishing with a buddy is for both of you to use different lures for the first hour and see who gets the most hits, follows and hook-ups, and this should give a good idea of which style or colour is working better for those fishing conditions.

Here is a bit of a list of our favourite trout stream lures. By no means is this an exhaustive list, as there are thousands of different lures on the market today, but these are our go to lures that we have confidence in, and confidence can go a long way!

Hardbody lures

Great for all situations, as you can change the type of lure to suit the situation, whether it be a shallow runner, deep runner, float or sink etc.

Floating lures will float when stationary, and this can help if you are fishing snaggy water as the lure can float up off and over the snag. Sinking lures can help get down into depths that a normal lure may not be able to do, and suspending lures can be left to hang mid water in the fish’s strike zone.

Some of our favourite trout stream lures are:

Ecogear sx40
Ecogear mw62
Daiwa Double clutch
Daiwa Gekkabijin yogiri
Goldy tiny
Nories laydown minnow

Spinners

Good shallow running lures and are great for runs and riffles, but can struggle a bit in deeper water if the fish are holding deep. Our favourite colour is definitely red and gold, but we have caught fish on all available colours. We like the Celta and Vibrax spinners that are available from most tackle stores.

Soft plastics

We don’t have a particular brand that we exclusively use, and most brands will work fine. We tend to use the more natural colours especially in clear water, and we like to use plastics with a curl or paddle tail and or creature baits (little critters), so that they have lots of action when retrieved in the stream flow. Jig head weight and size is dependent on conditions, but allows you to customise the plastic to swim at different depths and for different flows etc.

Some of our favourite soft plastics for stream trout:

Strike tiger 1″ nymph
Strike tiger 2″ grub
Berkely powerbait t-tail minnows
Ecogear 2″ bug ants
Atomic 2″ fatgrubs

We have tried plenty of other lures, but this lot seem to always make there way back into our lure kits for when we go hiking and fishing, and they have always been successful for us. And like I said earlier having confidence in your lures is a huge part of fishing, so go out and see what works for you.

We would love to hear from you guys to see what your favourite and most effective trout lures are, so drop us a comment and share your experiences.