Your Favorite way to cacth Eye's

[Eye Cather]

What is yours?

[gofishmn]

I guess I will be the first,,,,,,,,A jig !!

[Hutch tackle & guide services]

Hand lining or pitching jigs. It's a toss up. Hang A Wall Hanger! HUTCH

[Doc_wi]

drifting and jigging

[Red Dobson]

Casting crankbaits at night.

[DownSouthSam]

Dynamite!!! 1/2 pounders

[solarfisher00]

Casting cranks during the day.

Solarfisher00

[Raybob]

Trollin' R-Traps

[cisco]

Control drift with Lindy rig and leech.

[Lundluvr]

Trolling Husky Jerks at night.

[EAGLE EYES]

Lighted slip-float at night w/glow hook and a leech! ;-)

[Lund_Dude]

Night Crawler on a Lindy Rig

[mwalleye]

Jig

[George Eh]

My favorite and most productive, for me, bottom bouncing with spinner and minnow.

[JIMBO2]

Trolling spinner rigs and cranks with boards.
Relaxing yet rewarding!

[AquaMan]

I'm with you Doc. Drifing with a jig and a minnow.

AquaMan~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--- "It all begins and ends at the water's edge"

[bob oh]

Using a blade in the sping; otherwise a jig.

[RANGER]

My FIRST choice is drifting/bottom bouncing my own worm harnesses, no bout-a-dout dhat! Thrills me when you get the pickup...........the drop...the pickup..............the drop...the pickup.......hold.....hold.....hold......rod bending.....bending......bent way down-set hook! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Most PRODUCTIVE, and also fun, RIGGING!


RANGER


"KEEP YOUR LINES WET, YOUR POWDER DRY and THE BEER COLD"

[RANGER]

Man! I NEEEDDD open water!


RANGER


"KEEP YOUR LINES WET, YOUR POWDER DRY and THE BEER COLD"

[ufda]

Flinging nightcrawlers on light line and a split shot with a 8.5' noodle rod. The only problem is that lately they have just been lying there and freezing. :-)
ufda

[Jersey John]

Night time trolling with # 18 Rapalas in shallow water. JJ

[CanuckCarl]

Gill net eh?

[RANGER]

LAST EDITED ON Jan-30-01 AT 02:40PM (CST)[p]GO STAND IN THE CORNER! LOL ;-)


RANGER


"KEEP YOUR LINES WET, YOUR POWDER DRY and THE BEER COLD"

[IaCraig]

Controlled drift with a light bottom bouncer (or lindy type walker sinker) and a 5'+ long bare leader tipped with a leach.

IaCraig

[Juls_WI]

Rivers: Handlining Lakes: Trolling

[Rob Ensor]

Casting Shad Raps, over the top of weed points.

[Schmitty]

Any way they will bite BABY.

[Brad/nd]

Trolling, trolling, & more trolling with spinners & cranks. Just can't sit still long enough in one place!!Besides, the mosquitoes up here grow big!

take care,

Brad

[Backwater Eddy]

If I had to pick only one methode that makes my hart THUMP each and every time, it would have to be........a big fat frog on a plain hook on the surface at night under a full bright fall moon.....SLLLLURP...Go----Go Piggy!!

As Hannibal the SUMO walleye would say, "A frog tried to test me once, so I ate him with some farfa beans and a fine Chianti......TF-TF-TF-TF-TF-TF".

:D

BE.....><ND>

[Weyes1]

I'd have to say the most productive way here is Drifting with jig and crawler or Pulling bottom bouncers with harness and crawler. I haven't had much success with other ways or rigs. Too many Cats and white bass down here.
Weyes1
Kevin Clark

[fishnrod22]

love that jig bite in the early spring

[Dave Erickson]

A toss up between vertical jigging or throwing crankbaits on the wingdams of the Mississippi River. .. ...

[WAeyes]

Ohhhh Hannibal, you nasty, nasty man!!! I love it baby!!!

[DanL]

Vertical jigging with a leech or a minnow.

["COMA"]

Well lets see, Right now its is jigging spoons and slip bober and fatheads while I stare down a dark hole. A month from now it will be jig and minnow fished vertical,Then it's on to lindy rigs with long snell and minnow and casting jig and minnow combos. A couple of weeks later, I will be trolling spinners and cranks slow and casting cranks,Then trolling spinners and cranks on boards with a some speed behind it.Then its lindy and leech on the edge of the weed lines while i stare at the stars and get a break from the unbearable day time heat. Then back to cranks and spinners on boards with some serious speed behind it. Then trolling under a full moon shallow, Then lindy and chubs or three way and chubs deep with some vertical jigging deep thrown in. Then back to that cramped ice house again to stare down a dark hole and dream about open water!.

[Frank from TBay]

Hey Ranger........I read your post and had to go out to the garage and look at the boat. :-).

[RANGER]

Heard that, Frank! I'd go SIT in mine, too, if it wasn't stored for the Winter! Man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


RANGER


"KEEP YOUR LINES WET, YOUR POWDER DRY and THE BEER COLD"

[drizz]

Jig!

[Dan(MI)]

I don't do enough of it, but the eyes I have taken through the ice have been great.
If I could get em every time out, I'd say jigging through the ice!!!!!!!
Summer time, drifting with harnesses

[Hans]

1 - Rigging crawlers or leeches.
2 - Hatchet spinners in front of fatheads - sloooooooow trolled.
3 - Casting jigs over structure.

Hans

[rich l]

SLOOOOW TROLLING NIGHT CRAWLERS.

[Jiggereye]

Flip jigging Cane beds with slowpokes and a whole crawler. It's hard to beat fliping a jig 4 feet to fish in 2 feet of water 4 feet from your boat. The whole crawler adds a little mistery cause you have to follow them arouund a couple seconds with the tip of the pole before you set the hook. Unlike Lindy rigging you can feel them the whole time. Lawrence Going one step farther my favorite way to fish any kind of technique for any kind of fish would be chucking top water propeller baits(like a Globe) for musky. You can throw them a mile and 2 or 3 different muskys may submarine or roll on them in one cast or that big domminate guy or gal may break wake behind it for 25 yards before it finally strikes, and when it does your glad your not the Bait!!!

[TW]

casting a 1/2 ounce jig and bringing it back slowly while drinking a Cold One

[BD]

BD (aka The Mad Troller)! NUF SAID!

"An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home." --- Irish saying

[Schmitty]

Now this post is more like it.
Hold tight everyone spring is just around the corner.

[Red]

I hate trolling so it has to be jigging and rigging!!!!!!! Love it!! Red

[ddt]

>Rivers: Handlining Lakes: Trolling


What is handlining? I might just have a
different name for it in SD.
ddt==ty

[ddt]

Can some one tell me what handlining is?
& how it works? thanks. ddt

[ezmarc]

The ice in Erie is almost gone, just need a ramp!

[FROGMAN]

Handlining is a method for river fishing that is popular on the Detroit, and St. Claire rivers. Basically it is used where you have a heavy current situation, but it is expanding to other areas. It is EXTREMELY effective at what it is designed to do, and thats catch Walleyes in turbid water conditions. It is banned by a major tournament circuit as a method for fishing. You start with a spring loaded reel mounted to the gunwale of your boat. The reel is spooled with wire line to which a terminal end called a shank is attached. At the bottom of the shank is a lead weight, usually 1-2 pounds. On the shank at intervals of 12"- 24" are stirrups where you attach different length leaders. The shortest leader on the bottom, and the longest on the top. Leaders vary from 6' - 40' in length, and you use slim minnow type cranks, or as more commonly found here in Michigan a "pencil plugs". Slowly troll upstream, quartering, with your hand on the line, and raise/lower it to impart action to the lures. Thats it in a nutshell. Off Shore Tackle sells the reels, and you could find more info from them at their website. Hope this answers your question. Tight lines

Keith Segar
NPAA #260

[rodbuster]

LAST EDITED ON Feb-07-01 AT 08:39PM (CST)[p]I could see it now.Long billed ball cap,sun glasses cut off shorts
no shirt no shoes,standing on bow casting weight forward spinner,
5'2" light action rod 6lb test line,waves running 2 ft.feel the first bumb,let rod tip back,slow real to feel the weight,bamb full pull rod bent 90+deg.
Get the net.......
Can't wait.....

[TNT Eye Chowder]

10 lbs of C-4, 150 yards of wire trolling line and a car battery. BOOOOM catches and cleasns em all at once!

[Juls_WI]

A New Hand At An Old Technique
Julia Davis - NPAA# 231

Handlining has been around for over a hundred years. It is a technique that involves using a spring loaded reel, heavy wire and weight, and long mono leads to pull stickbaits with. This technique was designed to be used anywhere there is current. Most lakes do not have current, so rivers are the main target. The more current the river has, the more effective handlines will be.
In September of 2000, I had the opportunity to fish with Bruce DeShano, as my partner, for the last Masters Walleye Circuit tournament of the season. He asked me if I had ever handlined before, and I told him that I hadn’t, but that I would surely love to learn it!
He said, “ok, I’ll teach you tomorrow how it’s done”. I couldn’t wait. I read a few articles about this, and talked to others that had done this before, and thought it sounded pretty neat. One of Bruce’s companies, Riviera Downrigger Corporation, makes the handline reels we would be using, so I knew I was going to learn from one of the best!
We had four days to prefish before the tournament started, so we took full advantage of my training. Bruce explained to me that handlining can be as simple, or as complicated as you make it.
Let me try to explain what handlining is, and how it’s done, before I go on with the rest of the story.

As I stated earlier, handlines use a spring loaded reel. What this means, is that the reel will take up, or let the line out as you need it. If you let the wire slide through your fingers, it lets the line out. As you pull the line in, it takes up the slack by itself. There is no handle to turn on this reel. The reel is mounted on a rail on the side of the boat, and the angler sits in the back of the boat with his/her arm over the side, working the line.
The most common wire used on the reels is 60 pound coated wire. Attached to the end of the main line is a “shank”. The shank can be any length you want to make it, but the most common length is anywhere from 3-6 foot. It’s made up of 60 pound coated wire also, and has clevises crimped on every 6 inches or so. At the end of the shank, a 1-2 pound weight is attached by a big swivel snap. This weight is used much like a bottom bouncer. By bouncing the weight on and off the bottom, it insures that the baits are working on or near the bottom.
The mono leads play an important role in handlining. Every 6 inch move up the shank, to another clevis, will raise the bait off the bottom by 2 inches. What I can tell you about the leads, is that the bottom one will always be half the length of the lead above it. This allows the stickbaits to run one right behind the other, with both baits on, or near the bottom of the riverbed.

Now that you have an idea of what handlining is, let me tell you my story of what it is like for a beginner, trying this technique for the first time. I want to add that I had all the knowledge of how it was done, but that I had never had the opportunity to try it before.
At breakfast, Bruce was going over what we would be doing, and where we would be searching for fish that day. He grinned, and said to me, “since you’re a beginner, I’m only going to let you use one lead today”. I just smiled and said, “ok, you’re the Boss”!
When we got on the water, he explained to me what the fish will feel like when it gets hooked. Unlike, when a fish hits your bait on a rod and reel set up, you don’t feel the bite. It’s more like just feeling more weight on the line, and then you feel the head shake after that. Every now and then, I would get one that really slammed it, and my instinctive reaction was to bring my arm forward and set the hook. After losing the third fish by trying to set the hook, Bruce looked at me laughing, and said, “woman, if you do that again, your never going to put a fish in the boat, your pulling the hooks right out of their mouths!” I had to concentrate, and tell myself not to do that anymore. Once I got used to not setting the hook, I landed quite a few nice walleye and sauger. After the day was over, I told Bruce, that I wanted to try two leads the next day. He said I could. He informed me that the next day we would be fishing with Bob Jensen, and that we would need all the baits out there that we could, so we would have some fish for the show. I was excited about that. Bob and I had done a show earlier in the year, and I was looking forward to seeing him again.

The next day, we met up with Bob and his cameraman Don for breakfast before hitting the water. It was decided that Bob would drive his boat while Bruce and I did the handlining. Bob and Bruce talked about the history of handlining, and some of the little tips that will come in handy for anyone who wants to try this for the first time. Things like, the bank side of the boat catches more fish, or with a big fish, turn the boat down current to the side of the boat the fish is caught on. Another tip is to keep your big motor in gear when you shut it off, so the prop doesn’t spin in the current. If the prop is spinning, there is a good chance your line could get tangled in it. This I know from experience! I had a fish caught on the prop one time, but didn’t know it. It felt like a fish, but then it would feel like my line was caught in the prop. As it turned out, when we lifted the big motor up to untangle the line, there was a fish on it. It sat there flopping around on the prop until it freed itself and swam away. Another great tip is to install a “Mac’s Prop Saver” on the kicker motor. This gadget is a metal ring that fits around the prop, so that the line will not get tangled in it. These can be purchased from Cabela’s or directly from Mac’s at 888-658-4700.
Slipping the current is very effective when handlining, but if there isn’t enough current to do this, your next best tactic is to cut back and forth across the river, from bank to bank diagonally. Watch the electronics to see the changes in the bottom contour, and adjust your line, so that you always keep contact with the bottom. The idea is that walleye and sauger will hold in areas with less current and wait to ambush any prey that comes their way. The bottom of a riverbed usually has less current than the water flowing just above it, due to the fact that rocks, sandbars, and other structure cause the water to flow around them leaving pockets of slack water. The fish will sit in these pockets waiting to feed.

The day ended with a great show for Bob’s “Fishing The Midwest” series, and a boat full of happy anglers! Oh, and before I forget. Bruce and I were one of only 17 teams out of 195 teams, to come in with a limit both days of the tournament and finished in 30th place. I credit the handlining technique for that. It’s a very effective way to catch river fish!
If you want to learn more about handlining, and how it is done, tune into Bob’s show this spring. It should be airing sometime around March 17th (I think?), 2001. For more information on handlining, write to Off Shore Tackle for the 2001 Off Shore Release paper, or visit their website at www.offshoretackle.com. Feel free to contact me too. I would be happy to help you out if I can. I can be reached at juls@walleyecentral.com.

[ezmarc]

Excellent explanation Juls!

[Scott Richardson]

The one that works! The fish tell me my favorite every day.

[Jim Carroll]

THIRTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE WORDS!!!!! More or less I can't be sure because I think my eyes are crossed..:7 WHEEEEWWWW Great post....no....great article. I think Scott should put it on the WC Mainpage. Good Job Juls. JC

[RIVERRUNNER]

At night, on new moon,1/8oz jigs w/pearl twister, 1 ft or less of water.Just me, my current break, the bird? that showed me it, and walleye,s with thunderous hits and no place to go but up.Oh ya the odd frieghter. GOOD FISHIN

[lobo]

If I had one favorite way to catch walleyes it would be to go to a far northern Ontario lake (preferably un-named) that has seen little or no fishing pressure and do anything the rest of you guys said. It wouldn't matter which one I chose because they all would work !!

Next choice would be Tots on the boards with crawlers on the balls - in Saginaw Bay.

lobo

yup - still trying to make some time to actually do these things again !!

[Juls_WI]

Thanks ezmarc and Jim!
Jim, please tell me you did not sit and count all those words..LOL Too funny!!

Juls

[Eye Catcher]

What is Crawlers on balls?