Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Rooster Tails for Trout?

Anyone use rooster tails, for trout? What colors, sizes? Taking a trip up to Pagosa Springs in July and looking for some advice.

I’ve used them quite a bit. I use the 1/16 quite a bit for fish average under 12 inches. I’ll bump up to the 1/8 if fish get much bigger than that. My most productive color blade is silver. White, black, chartreuse and blue have all been productive.

My #1 Trout spinner is Panther Martin.
Yellow body with red spots & silver blade for sunny/bright conditions
Black body, yellow spots and gold blade for shady or overcast.

#2 is Blue Fox, silver

Rooster tail is a good spinner but I never cared for the blade design. Seems you have to retrieve them much faster to get it to spin. 90% of my trout are caught on Joe Flies or different small jigs / Berkeley trout worms

In the hands of a master fisherman, I'd bet Panther Martin will outfish (fish landed) similar colored Rooster Tails almost 1.5 to 1.

I've used a size 1 (white with black markings) on smaller (14-17 inch) rainbows, and they just can't seem to resist attacking it. Really nice inline spinner in my experience.

I used to do ok with Rooster Tails in lakes and Mepps spinners in streams and rivers but now use black or yellow Panther Martins every where if I'm using a spinner. They seem to get deeper faster and IME catch more trout.

One lure I don't seem to hear much about any more is the Super Duper. Some days when fishing lakes from shore the trout would hit it consistently on the fall or as soon as I started reeling it back. Course it helps if you can locate the trout first.

Silver and red or black and red Super Duper still do work great on small lakes here in VA and Wva

I have used the rooster tails with the inline spinner. I think they are called vibronic rooster tails. They are superior to the traditional rooster tails. I have caught trout on both the 1/8 oz and 1/16 oz. I use white, green, and brown for the most part. Green and brown both work really well. Most colors work depending on the conditions.

Alpine lake fishing: black or red rooster tail with either blade color, 1/8 or 1/16 size. That's the first offering. But those fish aren't picky.

They work in Georgia too.

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THIS..I have 12 of the black/gold ones in my pocket tackle box and 1 silver one.

Rooster tails have fast " start up speed" and are almost impossible to fish upstream. Panther Martins start spinning easily on a retrieve with the current.

As has been mentioned, rooster tails work their best in lakes.

My experience is that willow-shaped blades run deeper and don’t give off the vibration that Colorado-style (more round) blades do.

Panther Martins & Mepps have the more rounded blades. In my experience the former has a heavier body and tighter spin radius so it runs deeper than the Mepps.

They all have their purpose and I like to keep each of em in my box.

If you’re fishing the San Juan I’d consider trout magnet jigs & Berkley power worms under a small float. My son & I did well on cuts with those rigs when we were there. Keep a close eye on regs as different areas of the river have different regs.

Good luck it’s a gorgeous area!

Rooster tails are great , until i found out about panther martins. They spin better. Deadly on trout. The gold with the orange tail is my go to

I have caught some nice Maine brownies (16")+ on white body/tail+ silver blade 1/16 and 1/8 oz Roostertails ( Sebasticook River)., and 1/8 oz black body w/ copper glitter, black dressed hook, silver blade.

For Maine river smallies, all black or all white Roostertails (each with glitter bodies, silver blades, 1/8-1/6 oz ) work very well.

Have caught Maine Kennebec River rainbows (Shawmut area) on all silver Fox Tails, and Mepps (#1) silver blade, brass body, undressed treble with red tube on shaft.

Some Maine pond brookies on size 0 Mepps dressed with single barb hook and dark fly, silver blade, Panther martin yellow body/silver blade 1/16 -1/8 oz. Small size for ponds.

Starting to make my own in-line spinners now. Those Mepps spinners are getting up there ($).

1/8th ounce roostertail coachdog in color has been the best trout medicine I have found.

What size do you use?

I use all three.

1/16 oz in small creeks and shallow water/small fish.

1/8 oz all around "go to" spinner

1/4 oz for big water/big fish.

The last bunch of Rooster tails I bought were junk and would not spin, no more of them in my box.

Sounds good, I see they also make a tiny 1/32 oz I guess for tiny fish.