Kastmaster

Kastmaster (spoon)

Pros:

-Very castable due to shape. Easily cuts through high wind.
-Maintains it's intended side-to-side motion at low-to-high speed retrieves.
-Relatively inexpensive and very easy to find
-Line twist is almost non-existent
-Bulletproof. Impossible to bend, continues to swim true no matter what kind of punishment it takes.
-Made in the USA

Cons:

-Not very effective in moving water, but works ok in slower sections of creeks and deeper pools. Best suited in a lake.
-Hook can swing forward and wrap catch the line, but it doesn't happen often enough to be a problem.


Applications: Kastmasters have been around forever, and there is no reason to not have them with you while targeting trout in a lake environment. They allow you to cover a lot of water because they can be cast very far, and they are effective at any depth. The best sizes for Sierra trout are the 1/12 or 1/8 ounce size, and the top colors to use are gold, silver, copper (little harder to find than the others but they are out there), and the silver ones with a colored stripe on half. There are some painted ones (rainbow or brown trout, frog, etc) but I haven't had much luck with them.

Kastmasters --especially the smaller 1/12 ounce ones-- have proven especially invaluable in the backcountry for me over the last few years. It seems that in these small lakes, there is always a mid-afternoon lull when the breeze dies down for an hour or so and fishing grinds to a halt, but I have found that making very long casts, letting the Kastmaster sink in the deeper section of these lakes can result in good numbers of trout caught while anglers who can't reach this far struggle to get bit. Pair a Kastmaster with at least a six-foot (I use a six-and-a-half) ultra-light and 2-pound test line and no one will be able to cast as far as you.