Spoons are the backbone of Great Lakes trolling. On Lake Ontario, they account for a staggering share of salmon and trout catches every season — and yet most anglers are only scratching the surface of what the right color, profile, and size can do. The difference between a productive spread and a slow one often comes down to a single spoon pattern.

Rick Hajecki knows this better than most. As a FishUSA Pro Staffer and longtime Lake Ontario charter captain running Crazy Yankee Sport Fishing, Rick has spent thousands of hours dialing in what works — and what doesn’t — on one of the most productive and competitive fisheries in the country. He organizes his spoons on visual pads so nothing gets forgotten, tracks what works in each condition, and has even had a hand in developing some of the most effective patterns on the lake today.

This guide walks through the 7 trolling spoon colors Rick trusts most for Lake Ontario salmon, brown trout, steelhead, and lake trout. You’ll find the story behind each pattern, which species and sizes it targets, and when Rick reaches for it on the water.

Watch: Rick Hajecki’s Lake Ontario Trolling Spoon Breakdown

In this FishUSA video, Rick walks through the spoons from his own charter boat pads — the same ones he works from on every trip — and explains why each one earns a spot in his spread.

Rick’s 7 Picks: Quick Reference

1. Gold Alewife — FishUSA Exclusive

FishUSA Exclusive — King salmon & brown trout

Dreamweaver DW Series — Gold Alewife

Available in DW · Super Slim · Magnum

Shop Now

The Gold Alewife is a FishUSA exclusive Dreamweaver color — meaning you won’t find it anywhere else — and Rick considers it one of his most versatile patterns on the boat. The goldish, baitfish-matching finish does something that most spoons don’t: it convincingly imitates two completely different forage species depending on which fish you’re after. For king salmon in the Magnum size, the Gold Alewife matches the large alewives that Chinook key on in open water. For brown trout, particularly in spring and through summer, the same color pattern doubles as a convincing goby imitation — the primary forage base for Lake Ontario’s brown trout population.

Rick’s approach: tailor the Dreamweaver profile to the species in the spread. If you’re targeting kings, run the Magnum. If you’re dialed in on browns, drop to the DW or Super Slim. The Gold Alewife in any size earns a permanent spot on Rick’s spoon pads.

• Dreamweaver DW Series: Shop the DW — versatile all-species size for general salmon and brown trout
• Dreamweaver Super Slim: Shop the Super Slim — narrower profile for brown trout and steelhead
• Dreamweaver Magnum: Shop the Magnum — large-profile king salmon presentation

2. Green Eye Ghost

Best salmon spoon 20–100 ft

Moonshine Standard Trolling Spoon — Green Eye Ghost

Glow & UV finish · Adaptable depth range

Shop Now

If Rick had to pick one all-depth salmon spoon for Lake Ontario, the Green Eye Ghost from Moonshine Lures would be a top contender. Its combination of a glow-infused finish and subtle, ghost-like coloring makes it effective across a wider range of depths than most spoons in the box — Rick runs it anywhere from 20 feet in the shallows all the way down to 100 feet when salmon are parked on a deep thermal layer. The “green eye” detail incorporates one of Rick’s foundational Lake Ontario color principles: green, when paired with glow and silver tones, is consistently one of the most reliable visual triggers for Lake Ontario salmon.

The depth adaptability of this pattern is what makes it particularly valuable. A single spoon color that produces reliably at both shallow and deep rigger presentations simplifies the spread and stays in the water more often than patterns that only perform in narrow depth windows.

• Depth range: 20–100 ft — one of the most adaptable depth windows of any spoon in Rick’s rotation
• Target species: All Lake Ontario salmon species, particularly effective for Coho and Chinook
• Color logic: Green + glow combination hits two of Rick’s four Lake Ontario color pillars (green, black, glow, silver)

3. Double Green Bow Tie — FishUSA Exclusive

FishUSA Exclusive — Glow cup, on fire

Moonshine Standard Trolling Spoon — Double Green Bow Tie

Glow cup body · Bow-tie pattern · FishUSA.com exclusive

Shop Now

The Double Green Bow Tie is another FishUSA exclusive Moonshine color, and it’s one Rick discovered the old-fashioned way — surfing FishUSA’s website on a slow winter day. “That’s a Moonshine — they call this a bow tie, the green bow tie,” Rick explains in the video. “This has been absolutely on fire. It’s got a glow cup and it’s kind of got a cup like that carbon 14.” The fish on his boat didn’t just confirm the pick — they confirmed it hard: the bites on the Double Green Bow Tie were visible on the spoon itself.

The glow cup body behaves similarly to the Carbon 14, making this pattern an effective low-light option as well as a productive daytime spoon. The bow-tie color arrangement gives it a distinctive profile in the water that appears to differentiate it from standard solid-color glow patterns. Rick’s verdict: one of his best recent additions to the spread.

• Glow cup body: Shares the cupped, glow-charged design of the Carbon 14 — effective at dawn, dusk, and in stained water
• FishUSA exclusive: Not available at other retailers — a color combination developed specifically for the FishUSA lineup
• Target species: Salmon and brown trout; productive across multiple rigger depths

4. Carbon 14

Lake Ontario staple — Early morning & deep water

Moonshine Standard Trolling Spoon — Carbon 14

Black · Glow eye · Glow cup · White tape eye

Shop Now

The Carbon 14 is a Lake Ontario institution. Most spoon brands make a version of this color, but the Moonshine interpretation — with its black base, glow eye, cupped glow body, and white tape that acts as a second eye on the backside — is Rick’s go-to interpretation. “We break this out early in the mornings,” Rick says. “And then once we get into August, September, our thermal climb is really really deep — this spoon really shines for us.”

The Carbon 14’s effectiveness is rooted in its glow elements. In the pre-dawn hours when the lake is still dark and fish are actively feeding near the surface, the glow cup and glow eye make the spoon visible at distances where chrome or painted finishes go dark. As summer progresses and the thermocline drops deeper, those same glow elements do their work at depth, drawing strikes from kings that have pushed down to find cold water. It’s the most reliable deep-water, low-light pattern on Rick’s pads — and one of the most widely trusted on all of Lake Ontario.

• Early morning: Glow eye and glow cup provide visibility before sunrise when salmon are near the surface and actively chasing bait
• Late-season deep setup: When the thermal layer is at its deepest in August–September, Carbon 14 maintains visibility where other patterns disappear
• White tape eye: Dual-eye design — glow eye on the front, white tape eye on the back — creates a target regardless of the spoon’s presentation angle

5. Sea Sick Waddler

Rick’s signature pattern — Year-round producer

Dreamweaver DW Series — Sea Sick Waddler

Available in DW · Super Slim · Magnum

Shop Now

The Sea Sick Waddler has a story behind it that most Lake Ontario anglers don’t know. Rick found the original version of this pattern in a stinger model years ago — it had an orange dot and no glow base. He brought it to Northern King, a spoon company that was based in Rochester, NY at the time, and asked them to swap the orange dot for a green one and add a glow base. The result was the Sea Sick Waddler as it exists today: a green-dot, glow-base pattern on the Dreamweaver body that Rick calls “an absolute beast.”

The Sea Sick Waddler earns its reputation by being effective year-round across multiple species. The Super Slim version is Rick’s preferred brown trout spoon and performs particularly well on steelhead during overcast conditions when reduced light makes the glow elements most impactful. In the standard DW and Magnum sizes, it’s a salmon workhorse that Rick runs throughout the season. “You can run this all year long,” Rick says — and that versatility is exactly why it’s one of the most-fished patterns on his pads.

• Dreamweaver DW Series: Shop the DW — year-round salmon, all-around performer
• Dreamweaver Super Slim: Shop the Super Slim — brown trout and overcast-day steelhead specialist
• Dreamweaver Magnum: Shop the Magnum — king salmon, large-profile presentation

6. Geezer

Morning high-rigger staple — Salmon & steelhead

Moonshine Half Moon Spoon — Geezer

Half glow · Half silver · Black edges · Ladder back

Shop Now

The Geezer runs on Rick’s spread every morning. It’s built on the Moonshine Half Moon body — a distinctive spoon with half glow, half silver construction, black edges, and a ladder-back finish that gives it a segmented visual appearance unlike any other spoon in the water. Rick typically runs a gold or silver Geezer on his higher rigger, where it intercepts steelhead moving through the upper water column while simultaneously producing on salmon. “The steelhead like to eat it, the salmon like to eat it,” Rick says. “So, later in the year when we get those thermal clients set up, that’s something I’m always putting down, especially on my high rigger.”

The half-glow/half-silver split is the Geezer’s defining visual feature. When the spoon rotates and wobbles during a troll pass, the glow half and the reflective silver half alternate visibility in a way that creates a flashing, pulsing visual effect — more dynamic than a solid glow or solid chrome spoon at the same depth. That variation in visual output is what makes it particularly effective for steelhead, which respond strongly to flashing and irregular light patterns.

• High rigger placement: Rick’s preferred deployment is on the higher rigger where it targets steelhead without sacrificing the salmon bites that come from the same position
• Gold vs. silver: Rick runs both; gold performs across all conditions, silver excels in clear water and bright-sun situations
• Ladder-back finish: Creates a segmented, banded appearance in the water that differs from smooth-back spoons — an effective pattern variation when fish have seen a lot of standard spoons

7. UV Blitz — FishUSA Exclusive

FishUSA Exclusive — UV tape, spring producer

Dreamweaver DW Series — UV Blitz

Available in DW · Super Slim · Magnum

Shop Now

The UV Blitz is the newest addition to Rick’s rotation and another FishUSA exclusive color. Rick describes it as a spiritual cousin to the Sea Sick Waddler — it shares the double green dots and glow eye, but swaps the Sea Sick Waddler’s solid base for UV tape and a silver cup back. “That thing has been absolute fire this spring,” Rick says in the video. Whether the spring success is driven by fish abundance, the UV element, or the color pattern itself, the results have been consistent enough to earn a permanent spot on his pad.

UV tape adds a dimension that glow and chrome cannot replicate. UV-reactive material absorbs and re-emits ultraviolet light — a part of the spectrum that is always present in natural light (including on overcast days) and that salmon can perceive. Unlike glow, which requires a charge and fades over time, UV is always active. The UV Blitz is available across all three Dreamweaver profiles, allowing you to run the same productive color at any depth or species target in the spread.

• Dreamweaver DW Series: Shop the DW — all-species, all-condition UV option
• Dreamweaver Super Slim: Shop the Super Slim — brown trout and steelhead in the UV Blitz color
• Dreamweaver Magnum: Shop the Magnum — king salmon UV presentation

Lake Ontario Spoon Selection Guide

Understanding why certain colors and sizes work — not just which ones Rick runs — is what lets you make good decisions when conditions change. Here’s the framework Rick applies on every trip.

The Lake Ontario color formula

At the end of the video, Rick lays it out plainly: “If you’ve got green, black, glow, silver — those are all the ingredients for a great spoon.” Every one of Rick’s seven picks incorporates at least two of those four elements. That’s not coincidence — it’s the product of years of on-water refinement on a fishery where those colors have proven consistently effective across species and seasons.

Match spoon size to target species

Spoon size is its own topic and equally important to color selection. For a full breakdown of when to run Super Slim, Regular, and Magnum profiles across species and seasons — including Rick’s two-spoon mag cheater setup — see the companion guide: Best Trolling Spoon Sizes for Lake Ontario Salmon & Trout.

Match color to conditions

Stay organized — Rick’s pad system

One of the practical insights from Rick’s video that often gets overlooked: organization matters. Rick stores his spoons on visual pads organized by brand and pattern type — Dreamweaver pads for ladder backs, dots, and stinger styles; a Moonshine pad for his glow patterns. “I like these pads because they’re visual,” Rick explains. “You can look at it and be like, ‘That spoon works really good in these type of conditions. Let me grab that and try that.’” Spoon pads eliminate the guesswork of digging through a tackle box and make sure your proven producers never get left behind on a trip.

Frequently Asked Questions