Un-Natural Walleye Baits by Gary Parsons and Keith Kavajecz

It's safe to say that most of us walleye fishermen are used to being up to our elbows in worm guts. Many of us started out using live nightcrawlers to tip jigs, adorn spinner rigs and inflate with air for use behind Roach type walking sinker rigs. Paying cold hard cash for fresh crawlers, then worrying about keeping them cool and alive, combined with the daily ritual of cleaning your fingernails was just an unpleasant, though necessary part of the sport.

That old thinking that walleyes could only be caught on live bait has pretty much been tempered with the wild success of trolling crankbaits and casting jigging spoons. Two fellow competitors, Iowans Dave Lincoln and Art Lehreman, have turned more than a few heads by bringing in nice catches on jigs adorned with plastic swimming shad type baits dipped in fish scent. Still, though, when the fish are on a nightcrawler and jig bite, there just hasn't ever been a good substitute.

That's the problem Berkley tackled when they started making Power Baits for walleye fishermen. Power Baits are flavor enhanced plastic trailers and lures designed to trigger strikes and make fish hang on after the strike. They've taken the bass fishing world by storm, and now, through tweaking the flavor formula, Berkley scientists have made several baits that are outstanding for walleye fishing. Among these are Power Teasers, which is a molded piece of Power Bait with a tantalizing marabou tail, perfect for adorning jigs. They also have Power Grubs, which are twirly-tailed baits that are also great with or without minnows on a jig head.

The bait that we predict walleye anglers will be raving about in the very near future are the new Berkley Power Crawlers, which are six-inch, nightcrawler-shaped baits. Experimentation has shown that these baits are excellent in a wide range of walleye applications.

First, of course, they work just about any time that you'd normally use a nightcrawler -- or minnow -- to tip a jig. We break them right in the middle and use the half with the flat tail, saving the floating, colored head end for other purposes. The tail goes on our favorite jigs in two different ways. First, try threading the hook point through the worm starting at the broken end. The idea is to thread it so it hangs straight, with the flat, broken end flush to the jig head. In this fashion, the jig can be used in place of crawlers OR minnows. With the flat tail rigged horizontally, it flips every time it is jigged and visually tantalizes walleyes with good tail action. With this rig, you can literally catch fish after fish without replacing the bait. The other way to rig it works when the fish want even more tail action. Simply hook the Power Crawler piece about an 1/8 of an inch from the broken end leaving the flat tail, so it waves erratically in the water.

The type of jig head that works best with a Power Crawler depends on how you're going to fish it. For vertical jigging, we like long shanked hooks with a head like the Northland Lip-stick, which is a stand-up design with an innovative two-barb hook. John Peterson, who owns Northland and is a great walleye fisherman in his own right, claims that the two-barb style loses about 25 percent fewer fish than a single barb design. As often as head-thrashing walleyes manage to come unpinned from a jig at boat-side, we believe him. Power Crawlers, incidentally, allow you to use stinger hooks to nail the short biters. Stinger hooks are almost impossible to use with live 'crawlers.

For casting, we like the jigs with shorter hook shanks like WAZP's Short Shake or Northland's Fireball. A jig that caught hundreds of aggressive fish in Canadian waters last year was Northland's Whistler Jig, which has a tiny propeller right behind the jig head. The Power Crawler works perfectly matched with this little buzzer, staying close to the propeller and giving the profile of a single animal. Power Crawlers are great with spinners, too, whether you're chucking a weight forward model for Erie 'eyes, or trolling them behind a bottom bouncer on a Missouri River reservoir. They're a lot easier to put on a two-hook harness than live crawler are and properly placed hooks (we've gone to dual No. 4 Mustad Trebles for our open water spinner rigs), you're virtually assured of better hook-ups. Again, their durability is a big plus, since pesky little panfish can't steal your bait.

OK, we know what you might be thinking. Aren't Keith and Gary in left field saying these plastic things are better than live bait. How absurd, you say. Our only answer is that if you try them, you'll like them. Time after time last year one of us fished these new plastics while the other used a real nightcrawler. The results were astounding. First, many days the Power Crawler caught as many fish as the real thing. Second, and more surprising, there were times when the Power Crawler out-fished its live counterpart (mainly because the hook stays baited and is not plucked clean). A dozen Power Crawlers doesn't usually cost more than a dozen real crawlers, and especially when you consider how much longer they stay on the hook, they can be a real bargain.

The revolution away from bait for walleyes started a long time ago. Power Baits are the latest step. It's all only going to get better.

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