"One key," said McClellan, "is not to fish these kinds of lures as you would for bass. A lot of people do it that way, and it's just not as effective on big trout. You want to rip this lure in a series of two or three hard, long jerks and make it flash and turn on the side, not wobble back to you in little twitches."

This approach, he says, will attract attention from fish that are deep down, or some distance away in cover. After jerking the lure a few times, he lets it just rest in the current and waits for the trout to come get it.

"These lures suspend underwater rather than coming back to the top," he said. "I highly recommend that you make sure you feel the fish solidly on the line before you set the hook. If you jerk too quickly, it will just pull out of his mouth, and you'll miss more than you'll hook.

"And it's hard not to, since often you can see the fish coming in that clear water, and you tend to anticipate the moment to set the hook.

"Wait until it tightens that line up pretty good before you pull back on it. Most of the time, the fish will sort of set the hook for you, if you let it."

McClellan says to fish along rocky areas for rainbows and woody places for browns, and that fish may be near cover or out in the middle of the river. Try both areas.

As a back-up when fish aren't after surface offerings, he will use a brown/black/olive 1/16-ounce marabou hair jig with a red head. Crappie jigs sometimes work, especially when tipped with a mealworm.

Live-bait angling is permitted in the Cumberland River, and some anglers prefer catching alewives from the lake. They'll use them to catch big trout by drifting an alewife along in deeper pools on a Carolina rig.

You can also use small shiners or minnows, since alewives are sometimes hard to come by.

Finally, McClellan says good fishing can be found along the series of gravel bars at the mouth of Crocus Creek and Bakerton and near the Burkesville Ramp, to name a couple of places.

For trophy browns and rainbows, no other place in Kentucky can match what you'll find along the Cumberland River. Remember that if fishing in the Cumberland below the dam down to the Tennessee state line, or any tributaries in between, you need a trout permit, whether or not you plan on keeping any fish.

This is a special requirement on this waterway. Elsewhere in the Bluegrass State, the permit is needed only if you want to take fish home. Remember, too, that culling trout is not permitted, which is in place to protect this fishery and to help keep it as Blue Ribbon as it can be.