What do you Want? TD!

If you never target trout with a Rebel Tracdown Ghost Minnow, you are missing outstanding opportunities to catch rainbow and brown trout from creeks and small rivers. Here is what you need to know!

If I could only fish for rainbow trout with one lure, the choice would be quick and easy: The Rebel Tracdown Ghost Minnow. At Rebel Lures, we call it by its model number: the TD47.

The Ghost Minnow’s history began in 1996 as part of the “Mystic Series” of lures. It was created by senior lure designer Jim Gowing (now deceased), a great friend and one of my mentors at Rebel Lures. While most of the Mystic Series featured iridescent color patterns created by a metallizing process, the Ghost Minnow’s finishes were more like the Excalibur Series. These lures featured what we used to call “flash tape.” This tape made lures come to life with holographic patterns that featured scale patterns. When combined with the wizardry of an air brush, it took lure design to a new level.

The Ghost Minnows were a part of Mystic’s “Zone Series.” There were floating minnows, suspending minnows and sinking minnows. While most of the lures introduced by Rebel are typically aimed at bass fishermen, the Ghost Minnows featured trout patterns (Rainbow and Brown) and were intended to be fished by freshwater trout anglers.

Jeff Samsel, who is a Lurenet staff writer and a long-time friend of mine, turned me on to the Ghost Minnows almost 28 years ago. Like me, Jeff spent most of his time fishing small water in the Appalachians and pursued rainbow trout extensively. He described how he used the Tracdown or sinking Ghost Minnow for rainbows, and the fishing light bulb turned on in my head. If he could do that in the Appalachians, I surely could do that in Arkansas and Oklahoma.

About the TD47

Since it is technically an ultralight lure (2 1/2 inches, 1/8 ounce), the Tracdown Ghost shines in small-water situations. It features two No. 10 barbless hooks, so it can be utilized in regular trout waters as well as special regulations areas where only barbless hooks are permitted.

I like fishing with barbless hooks when trout fishing for several reasons:

1. Barbless hooks don’t get stuck in trout nets like barbed hooks, which eliminates a lot of frustration.
2. Barbless hooks won’t get stuck in your hands when handling slippery trout. You might get a little pain, but you won’t get stuck with a handful of trebles that won’t come out.
3. Using barbless hooks creates a little more of a challenge for anglers. You have to think about keeping your line tight and fighting the fish more than if you used barbed hooks.
4. Barbless hooks will pull out of snags more readily than barbed hooks. This means you will probably lose fewer lures because it is easier to unsnag a barbless hook from wood or other hangups.

As far as tackle, I like using 6-pound test monofilament line on a 6 1/2- or 7-foot spinning rod. Small lures work best with light line. I would not recommend more than 8-pound line. Four-pound is a good option as well, especially in heavily pressured, clear water situations.

Ghost Minnow Presentation Options

There are several ways to fish the TD47 for rainbow and brown trout. Here are a few retrieve options:

• Fish it like a jerkbait. This is my favorite way to use the Ghost Minnow. Make a long cast and then make twitches with your rod tip while reeling. This makes the lure dart back and forth, creating the illusion of an injured fish. You can vary the speeds of the retrieve and the aggressiveness of your rod tip twitches to make the bait move slower or faster and make the darting action more or less erratic. The trout will typically let you know what they prefer if you try different retrieve speeds and actions.
• Cast and retrieve. Sometimes, trout prefer a bait with less action. When this is the case, I’ll cast the TD47 and simply retrieve it without twitching. It has a square lip that creates a tight action when steadily retrieved. Sometimes, this is the ticket in cold water.
• Stop and go. When the first two methods don’t work, it can be good to pause for the cause. Whether you are using as a jerkbait or casting and retrieving, utilizing a stop and go retrieve can create strikes. Stopping the lure and then starting it again repeatedly can sometimes trigger a trout to commit to hitting the lure.

In most cold-water situations, trout could be anywhere. There are few bad casts. I like looking for big rocks or boulders or fishing the tops and bottoms of current runs. Rainbows like fast water, and since the TD47 is a sinking lure, it can be worked well in just about any speed of water.

Color-wise, all the options are great, but I typically stick to Rainbow Trout and Brown Trout. Rainbow seems to work best when it’s sunny. The Brown seems to work better when it’s cloudy. But both look great and always seem to catch trout.