diff --git a/starfields_drf_generics/filters.py b/starfields_drf_generics/filters.py
index d6cb880..6405db2 100644
--- a/starfields_drf_generics/filters.py
+++ b/starfields_drf_generics/filters.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
-
+from django.utils.text import smart_split
+from django.core.exceptions import FieldError
 import operator
 from functools import reduce
 from rest_framework.settings import api_settings
@@ -414,6 +415,12 @@ class TrigramSearchFilter(BaseFilterBackend):
     search_title = _('Search')
     search_description = _('A search string to perform trigram similarity'
                            'based searching with.')
+    lookup_prefixes = {
+        '^': 'istartswith',
+        '=': 'iexact',
+        '@': 'search',
+        '$': 'iregex',
+    }
 
     def get_filters_dict(self, request, view):
         """
@@ -534,7 +541,8 @@ class TrigramSearchFilter(BaseFilterBackend):
                             'search_field', query)
                     ).filter(similarity__gt=threshold)
 
-        except ImportError:
+        # NOTE a weird FieldError is raised on sqlite
+        except (ImportError, FieldError):
             # Perform very simple sqlite compatible search
             search_terms = search_smart_split(query)