Interesting Walleye Trolling Success

[Gary Korsgaden]

This past weekend I went out on a lake very close to my home. For a number of weeks i have had very good success both in size and numbers on walleyes. I fished both early mornings ( about a 1 1/2 hours) before day break and again in the evening.

Some bass fisherman recently tipped me off they were getting a number of walleyes pitching spinnerbaits for bass right at day break and sun set.

So I decided to fish the evening period on Friday, Saturday morning and evening and Sunday evening.

During the evening the hours before dark a bottom bouncer with a yellow spinner and crawler was tough to beat. A number of fish in the 15"-20" size range. Then that technique went dead when the sun hit the top of the trees. I changed to try pitching some spinner baits ,I had from Randy Coffman. They are 2.5 ounces, gold blades and white bodies. I pitched them, as hard and far as I could over the top of cabbage weeds, let it sink four about five seconds and burn it back to the boat. I caught four fish in short order doing this. I'm sure that a shallow running crankbait would work too, but the spinner bait was heavey and allowed me to cast farther. what amazed me is on the casts I didn't get bit, as the spinner bait got close to the boat I could see swarms and I mean swarms of small perch and minnows following the spinnerbait to the boat.

Before heading in I went out to look at some suspended schools of ciscoes I had marked and sure enough there were some nice hooks below the ciscoes in 109' of water 25 or so feet down. I put out one of the spinner baits on lead core 140' back from the boat and trolled about 2.0 mph. I had previously calculated the spinner bait would be in the twenty foot range. I made a couple of passes and picked up three more fish before heading in. These were in 23" to 26". I released all my fish.

The next morning I checked out the suspended ciscoes first in deep water, no hooks so I didn't stop to fish. Instead, I moved to the deeper cabbage weed beds and began pitching the spinnerbaits.Picked up three walleyes before it was all over at day break, before leaving I managed to catch two more walleyes on the weed edge on spinners and crawlers. Later connecting on a couple more fish on the shaded cabbage weed edges.

What I found interesting was the speed I was buzzing the spinnerbait, as fast as I could turn the handle and the walleyes hit the bait so hard the first fish I thought for sure was a northern or bass and I forgot to mention caught a number of those also.

Has anyone experimented or tried this type of fishing.Love to hear about it. thanks need more insight to fine this.

[Pezman38]

Good stuff Gary,
I haven't experimented with this but hope to.

[Juls]

Last year's Lake Oahe FLW event was won trolling spinnerbaits over tree tops by Chase Parsons. This year, many more were using spinnerbaits out there with much success.

Juls

[Lund1993]

I have heard of this technique but never tried it. I have heard from some pros that walleye that are stocked in lakes will live their entire lives in the weeds since they lived in shallow stocking ponds while growing up.

[Burr]

It works Gary. I've not had the opportunity to try early and late like you've documented. It works all day, you just have more of the daytime predators involved with bright light.

I need to get up there. We should talk about some other methods I've used for the weeds that yeild results as well.

It's fun to make a trip and be dedicated to something new to test it out. I've also targeted the suspended cisco schools with archs in a nearby lake. 75-95 fow, it was 30' down a couple weeks ago. I pulled northern out frequently, but no eyes. I know they are down there because I dropped the camera. But I can't get the eyes to go in that area.

[eyewinder]

Years ago, when alewife were first introduced into a few Nebraska reservoirs as a supplemental forage, many (most) walleye fishermen were having a tough time catching fish.

An acquaintance who was guiding on an "alewife lake" and had much bass experience, found that while throwing particular spinner baits, schools of alewife would gather and follow the spinnerbait. AND, he caught many and large walleye using this technique. He was casting to the banks (not alot of cabbage in Nebraska) and retrieving shallow to deep. I believe that part of his technique was to speed reel, then slow the spinnerbait, making it more available to a following (shy) walleye.

[coyoteman]

I find this topic very interesting. We have a lake here in iowa that we used to catch a lot of walleyes out of the trees while casting spinner baits. I forgot all about those days until I read this thread. Lately since it has been very hot our bite has slowed for the typical walleye baits. We can mark schools of shad with large fish below but have not been doing well hooking up with cranks. I am going to have to try spinner baits on my lead. Keep the dicussion going I am getting itchy to go fishing again.

[RyanK1]

I first used spinnerbaits last week pre fishing for the MWC event on Oahe. We didn't do well with them during the tourney due to the fact I think most of the fish moved out of our trees. But during pre fishing the amount of big eyes we caught was crazy! Im hooked on spinnerbaits now, and know they will have a lot of applications on my home waters in Minnesota.

[JiMinneye]

Gary,
I have caught Walleyes on Beatle Spins but this sounds to me like your using "Bass Baits" which I know nothing about. Could you tell us what type(s) or make(s) of spinner bait your using? What type of line, rod and reel are you using? I would like to give it a try. Sounds like a real blast. Thanks, Jim

[tugger]

Not trolling but 2 weekends ago My Dad and I caught a pile of eyes. For much of those 4 hours I was casting a white tandem spinnerbait which the Eyes seemed to love as it was slow rolling down the sides of the rock wall pier we were fishing. I wasn't counting but I'd say I caught 15 eyes that morning along with some nice SM and drum mixed in. They were hitting everything though... I caught a few on a DT-6 as well as my Dad sticking with his Jig and catching about the same amount as me. Fun Day......I wish I could say the same about this past weekend.....man what a negative mode.....Only way I could catch fish was triggering with TT-15, 20 @ 2.5-3mph. Maybe I'll try trolling the spinnerbaits next time out....sounds like a great idea actually.