essential tackle

Essential Tackle for the Upcoming Walleye Season by Keith Kavajecz & Gary Parsons

Oh, those late winter doldrums. Ice fishing has gone boring and bad; it's too cold to hit the river. The time has come to look toward spring. Here are a few things that every walleye angler ought to own and why.

OUTBOARDS
Whether you're adding a new outboard to your little vee-hull or john boat or getting a kicker for your walleye boat, Mariner and Mercury have a new line of 8 to 15 HP outboards with clear advantages over the competition. First, a handy, easy to use lever replaces a screw to adjust steering tension. Clamp the tension down to make long trolls with the wind easy. Second, these new models also have a throttle tension adjustment. Set your trolling speed and lock it down. The third and best feature is the throttle handle with the built-in shifter mechanism. Popping the boat from forward to reverse while slowly back trolling is literally done with a twist of your wrist.
CRANKBAITS
Storm's ThunderStick Jr. and Rattlin' ThinFin, two super hot baits on the Professional Walleye Trail for the past two years, should be in every walleye angler's box. Look for the new "Watermelon" and "Metallic Green Tiger" in the little ThunderSticks; the Mettalic Orange with Chartruse Specks in the Rattlin' ThinFin. Both types of lures can be awesome and cover you for many walleye trolling situations. The ThunderStick is good when the fish are feeding on smelt or shiners; the Rattlin' ThinFin's super when the fish are eating shad and other flat-sided prey.
JIGS
All jigs are definitely not created equal. Sure, most of them will catch fish, but in today's pressured waters, you sometimes need an edge. It's the intricacies in a jig that make it better. For instance, look at the new Lipstick Jig from Northland Fishing Tackle. Look close. It has a double barb. Think back to that last big walleye that shook his head right at the net, tossed the jig out of his mouth and said "Adios." The double barb on the new Lipstick is designed to stop that from happening. If the first barb comes out on a slack line, the second barb will catch hold long enough for you to tighten up and land that fish. Northland even has double barbs on is stinger hooks, too. Or, consider the Perfection Head from WAZP. It has lots of little things that add up to more walleyes pulling on the other end of the line. It has a nice long shank on the hook -- better for hooksets in vertical presentations. It has an eyelet where you tie your line and an eyelet behind it for attaching the highly effective WAZP stinger hook. This super stinger has a reverse barb that goes into your minnow and stays in your minnow. The design of the head makes it settle on the bottom without tipping over where the hook can snag bottom. The hook is point is always positioned ready to pierce an unsuspecting walleye's mouth.
LINE
While the new braided lines were getting all the publicity last season, a new Berkley introduction quietly made walleye fishing a lot more pleasant. Berkley Select is the biggest advancement in the last 15 years. It's limp, yet strong. Select has very little "memory", so it does not form coils coming off the spool, thereby giving you greater sensitivity especially for jigging and rigging applications. It's great for everything but trolling, where we stick with the super abrasion resistant Trilene XT.
ELECTRONICS
If you're serious about walleye fishing, you ought to look at the Lowrance LMS 350 A, a unit that's already the undisputed leader for hard core walleye fishermen. Not only does it have great definition, fish finding ability and a tremendous navigation function using Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), it boasts the easiest to understand fishing plotter screen out there. With the "windows" function you can custom design your own screen configuration to match you fishing situation. Speaking of screens, the new 350A has a super twist display with vivid black and white resolution that allows viewing from nearly any angle.
RODS & REELS
Daiwa has come out with a way to make rod selection easy. The company's new LT Series ("LT" stands for "light" and "tough") is composed of several rods that are super light high modulus graphite with tremendous sensitivity. The 6-6 baitcaster is excellent for bottom bouncer fishing; the new 6-3 Rig Fishing spinning rod is excellent for live bait fishing (like rigging) and the 7-foot baitcaster is unsurpassed for pitching jigging spoons. Daiwa's premium TD-Xi spinning reels can't be beat either. The TD-X 1500i and TD-X 2000i feature high tech infinite anti-reverse and a new gyro feature that keeps them from wobbling in your hand. Talk about quick hooksets!
TROLLING MOTORS
Minn Kota has a great selection of powerful electric motors for deep V walleye boat users. The Model 524 Turbo Pro is a 24-volt, foot control model that delivers a monster 48 pounds of thrust and is available with a 54-inch shaft. With the longer shaft length, there's virtually no wind condition that you can't handle. And, it puts out the least amount of feedback torque of any trolling motor that we have tried so you don't have to constantly fight it with your foot.
ACCESSORIES
Offshore Tackle has created the state of the art with the company's OR-12 planer boards. They're physically larger that other in-line models and can handle a wider variety of weighting systems than others. The release system is the simplest and best. The boards can handle up to three ounces of weight and the deepest diving crankbait around and still track true. Off Shore's new snap weight system, developed by Mark Romanack, is a weighting system for open water trolling that has already won a bunch of money on the pro tour. Simply snap the desired weight to your line with an Offshore line release. When you get a fish on., reel in the weight, unsnap it and play the fish.
Those are a few of the things you'll be seeing at shows this winter and we'll be using on the water next year. We can recommend them highly -- because they work!

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