Crawlers vs Leeches

[Alan D]

Which of these two are working best for you "eye" fishermen right now. Information from Man/N.W. Ontario would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the info in advance.
Alan D

[Alan D]

Is there anyone out there with an opinion on this topic? What is working for you at this tinme of year? Thanks for any info.
Alan D

[retire55]

Alan D:

Our group typically fishes for those "eyes" in late Jun or early Jul. Indeed, we leave for a weeks worth of "pure heaven" next Friday. Although we don't fish in NW Ontario or Manitoba, we have had much better productivity with leeches over the years.

Phil Rolfe (see http://www.justfishontario.com/) swears by crawlers. His web site also has a section on fishing reports for the NW Ontario area. There may be some reports there of interest to you.

Lastly, don't get locked into any particular fishing method or bait. Let those walleyes indicate what they prefer by trying everything. Have a good trip.

[tjsker]

Just got back from the Kenora area. All of the lunkers we caught were on crawlers and all the eaters were caught on crawlers. Hint, get yourself some nice fat crawlers and get that bait down by their noses.

[IA DAN]

Alan, we always take 2 flats of crawlers and 1-2 lbs of leeches split between 6 guys for a week on Lac Seul.We dont go until last week of July.I would take both.Good Luck

Catch and Release the Big Ones so somebody else has a chance to catch there DREAM FISH.

[Larry S]

Hey Tjsker, Did you go with John Jerina to Longbow Lake? Did you get up to Kramer? Leeches didn't work? John likes to use leeches so do I

Larry S

[tjsker]

He went up to Kramer last Sunday and caught a lunker walleye and some smaller ones using leeches. He went back on Thursday for a few hours but came back quickly due to T-storms.

His group and mine caught most of our big fish on Longbow using crawlers. Just drag them on a 3 foot snell behind a slip sinker or bullet weight. You may want to blow the crawler up a bit with air. Find the sunken islands that have a weed bed on top and slowly move around outside the weed line. For my group it meant anywhere from 12 - 20 feet of water.

We released some big walleyes.

Just returned from N. W. Ontario - Crawlers were the one, but did catch a few on leeches.

[woods]

Crawlers worked fine at Minakl last week.

[cough6609]

Just returned from "heaven" and wished I wasstill there! Eight of us had a Cabelas "Canadian" pack of 500 crawlers plus a couple pounds of leeches. Early mornings and late nights belonged to the leech, but from 8am - 6pm the crawlers ruled. We were on "stained" lake and this patterned worked for us.
Good luck and enjoy your week!
Cough