Medium and thick spoons can be trolled with little or no added weight in the spring when brown are fairly shallow. When the fish go deeper, spoons of all thicknesses are trolled with weight or with a deep-trolling device. You can dead-drift or bounce a jig along the bottom. Or work a jig, jig and minnow, or jigging spoon vertically at very specific depths in slow-moving rivers, lakes, and ponds. When trout are finicky, particularly in still water, it can often help to add a piece of a night crawler or a small minnow to a jig.
Most plugs float at rest and dive beneath the surface when retrieved.
The plug family includes stickbaits, propbaits, chuggers, crankbaits, minnow plugs, trolling plugs, jerkbaits, and others. But for brown trout fishing, only a few of these are used regularly with consistent results. Cast to likely spot and retrieve the plug with short twitches. When browns are holding deep, a sinking minnow plug can be twitched along the bottom. On larger streams and rivers, with larger brown trout, minnow plugs from 3 to 7 inches can be effective.