Do bass lures — jigs, tubes, crankbaits, topwaters — work for trout?
A few cross over, and most are lake trout stories. A plain white tube jig around 10 cm (4 in) is one of the great laker baits, jigged vertically in open water and under the ice, and a rattling lipless crankbait worked the same way calls lakers in from a distance. Small minnow-shaped crankbaits and jerkbaits, cast or trolled, take lakers near shore at ice-out and rainbows in lakes. What does not cross over is the bulky, cover-oriented gear: skirted jigs with trailers, Texas-rigged worms, spinnerbaits and bladed jigs have no real trout use — the trout's blade is the in-line spinner, its jig a small marabou. Hard topwaters draw only the odd strike; surface-feeding trout are eating insects, and that is the fly's job.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
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