ROGERS - In the game of angler versus fish, four rods are better than one when it comes to stacking the deck in a fisherman’s favor.

Ben Lipscomb ups his odds even more during fishing trips at Beaver Lake. He gets his lures in the water and keeps them there, swimming in front of the noses of fish until one bites.

Trolling puts fish in the boat for Lipscomb, who lives near Beaver Lake east of Rogers. He’s got the technique down like science, but he’ll be the first to tell you that trolling isn’t quantum physics.

Fishing isn’t much simpler than letting the boat’s engine pull lures through the water.

Knowing what baits to use and how to use them are parts of the trolling equation that Lipscomb is happy to help any fisherman solve.

An evening on Beaver Lake lake last Thursday proved how effective trolling can be when it comes to catching a mess of fish, and not just one kind. By sunset, Lipscomb’s trolling had produced about 20 crappie, some white bass, spotted bass and a 20-inch walleye.

“See how easy this is?” Lipscomb mused on the cloudy evening with winks of sunshine.

A gentle breeze rippled the 73-degree water. Lipscomb showed that trolling is simple, but there’s more to it than dragging a lure.

Dragging four lures helps.

Lipscomb trolls with crank baits and uses four rods, each pulling a different color of crank bait. Using four lures increases his odds of catching fish. The technique can also reveal which color the fi sh prefer if they consistently hit the same lure.

Bandit Series 300 crank baits are Lipscomb’s lure of choice. “I don’t know what it is about these Bandits and crappie, but they really work,” he said.

That is, if they’re trolled in the right places. Lipscomb does his trolling in creek arms that have standing timber. Most of our trolling on this pleasant evening was in the Shaddox Hollow arm of Beaver, but Lipscomb said any creek arm with timber is worth a trolling try. In fact, Lipscomb’s 20-inch walleye came from another, smaller creek arm east of Shaddox, near Point 9.

Pine Creek, Joe’s Creek, Avoca Hollow, Ford’s Creek and Rambo are all favorite waters for the fisherman.

NO CAST, JUST CATCH

Lipscomb runs the lures about 50 feet behind his boat on 10- or 12-pound test line when he trolls. That gets the lures down about 10 feet deep. Trolling keeps them there. Line color doesn’t matter, he said.

In the front of his boat are two fishing rods about 7 feet long in holders close to the bow of his boat. Lipscomb sits in the stern with two shorter rods. That keeps the lures apart when trolling.

“What we’re doing is catching fish that are suspended in this timber,” he said.

It may seem like Lipscomb would get hung up all the time, trolling through the trees. Snags occurred, but not too often.

“What happens is the lips of these crank baits bump a branch or the trunk and bounce right off ,” Lipscomb said. Trolling in a straight line helps, he added.

In Shaddox Hollow, he trolled straight as an arrow through the timber for about 150 yards. Then we’d reel in the rods. He’d turn the boat about-face and we’d make another pass. Rarely were we out of sight of Lipscomb’s dock in Shaddox Hollow. The trip was easy on fuel.

Trolling four lures indeed showed that the fi sh preferred one color on this trip. Most were caught on a Bandit crank bait in a color called the “mistake.” It’s chartreuse on one side and red-orange on the other with black stripes. Other colors that work for Lipscomb are brown crawfish or any color pattern that includes chartreuse.

Crappie are the target fi sh when Lipscomb is on a trolling safari. His first fish was a white bass that Lipscomb unhooked and flipped back in the lake. He hit the jackpot with his next fish, a 12-inch crappie.

This was what Lipscomb was after. He leaned out far over the gunwale and quickly slid a net under the foot-long fi sh.

“They don’t call them paper mouths for nothing,” Lipscomb said, admiring the crappie. A net is standard equipment in his boat.

Crappie are what he’s after, but he won’t sneeze at a walleye. His first walleye of the evening was too small to keep. Walleye must be 18 inches long to keep at Beaver Lake. The daily limit is four.

It wasn’t long until he had supper in the form of a 20-inch walleye. “Catching that non-keeper made me optimistic that we’d eventually get one to keep,” he said, putting the walleye on ice.

EVENING BITE

Trolling can be good at any time of the day. Sometimes Lipscomb makes a quick trolling trip during lunch break from his job as Rogers city attorney. Lately, the catching has been best in the evening. Fishing has been “phenomenal” he said, from about 6:30 p.m. until dark.

This relaxing fishing is a way to unwind at the end of the day and bring home supper to boot. “If you just want to catch a mess of fi sh to eat I can’t think of a better way to do it,” he said.

It’s a technique that will work long into summer and fall. Lipscomb hasn’t tried it during winter yet. His attention turns to duck hunting once that season opens. “But if you tried it in the winter I’ll bet it would even work then,” he said.

Evening shadows grew long and Lipscomb called it a day around sunset. He had a nice mess of fish to clean, all caught by trolling crank baits.

Outdoor, Pages 6 on 06/06/2013