I cannot believe how many massive Browns I have caught over the years on this particular color combination. This lure looks like a sucker minnow which are an abundant food source in the Bow River and big Browns seem to annihilate these large minnow imitations. This lure is a body of a minnow with a spinner blade attached to the front of the face of the minnow, which is sonic. The action of the bait combined with the sonic spinner blade makes this my absolute favorite fishing lure on the market today. And these lures also work very well on aggressive Rainbow trout and Bull Trout. Wherever trout live this lure will catch you the fish you’ve been dreaming of. Another good color that works well is called shiner, which is black on top with a really shiny silver bottom and works awesome for Rainbow Trout and most all other types of trout. If I ever get a chance to go Steelhead fishing this lure would be the first to go on my line just to see how effective they are on this sea run Rainbow trout. Maybe one day.

Have you ever been into your local tackle shop and started looking around for the next best fishing lure on the market, I know I have and sometimes you leave frustrated and dejected. This is the main reason why I am writing this article, to try and eliminate some of these frustrations while shopping at your local tackle shop. Tom Brodie and I have spent countless hours fishing all over Alberta and have pretty much narrowed down what works for Rainbow and Brown trout on the World renowned Bow River. We are by no means fly fisherman, so all information in this article pertains to spin cast fishing.

 What I have come to believe over the many years of fishing the Bow River system is that generally,” the bigger the bait, the bigger the fish”. When I fish for large trout I usually like to use either a large bait fish minnow imitation, or a large spinner bait imitation. These lures I’m about to list are also very effective on other species of trout such as, Brook trout, Cutthroat trout and probably the most aggressive of all the trout species, the Bull trout. The spinner bait that I most commonly use on the Bow River are as follows.  The Panther Martin. There are two sizes and various different color patterns of Panthers I use when I fish The Bow River or any other River system for that matter.

My all-time favorite Panther for either Rainbow’s or Brown’s has to be the solid silver with blue slashes and red dots on the spinner blade PMR-S. When I’m floating the Bow and bottom bouncing, I prefer to use a # 9 spinner as these lures have the proper weight to make them spin properly. I’ve used the # 6 sized spinner, and I find these spinners to be too small or rather, they do not have enough weight to make them spin properly. Another awesome color scheme is the yellow and red dotted body, with the silver spinner blade the PMR- SYR. These lures are what Panther Martin calls, the Classic Trout Series. When I describe these lures I will list the ordering information as well to make it a lot easier for you when you go to your local tackle shop. The next on my list is what’s referred to as the silver and orange with fly, or PMF- SO. This lure is all silver with an orange skirt or what Panther calls a fly.