The Major Alternative To Jigging For Walleyes

Here’s the deal: It’s May. You know where the walleyes spawn and how they disperse. Get on the trail somewhere between that spawning habitat and classic summer haunts in the main lake. Flats that consistently produce can be anywhere from right outside the mouth of a spawning creek to miles down the shoreline. Lake spawners might remain near the flats where they spawned, or could be across the lake on shallow rocks. How do you find them quickly in depths under five feet? Slash away.

Longline trolling with minnowbaits is a mainstay this time of year. Trolling locates walleyes quickly, but becomes tedious, even impossible, in most lakes from the 5-foot contour to the bank, right where the most overlooked walleyes position to feed. Difficult, too, to get lures into tight corners along productive emerging weedlines.

Somewhere along the postspawn walleye trail, find the biggest shallow flats. The best flats have a slow taper from about 12 feet up to the bank, not the sharp drops we associate with walleyes during the remainder of the year. Get upwind, drop the bowmount trolling motor at about 8 feet, and start pitchin’ sinking or suspending minnows, fan casting from the bank out to the 10-foot contour. Most days, it’s possible to move quickly. Aggressive walleyes slam baits moving much faster than most folks realize at this time of year.

Slashtrix

Slashing things up right involves an arsenal of sinking, suspending, and doctored baits. My first choice, right off the get-go on opening day, is a suspending bait. According to Al Lindner, “Nothing this productive has hit the market in a long, long time. Jerkbaits trigger bigger walleyes, and more of them in less time than any other technique, whether the walleyes are scattered or concentrated. Name another lure that catches a bigger variety of fish in a wider range of conditions. From cold to warm water, and especially during transitions between those phases, jerks trigger shallow walleyes better than any other hard-body bait.”

The trick with the new suspending baits is making them dance. Rapala Husky Jerks, Smithwick Super Rogues, Lucky Craft Pointers, Mann’s Loud Mouth Jerks and other suspenders work best with a slow to moderately quick, erratic stop-and-go action. The pause is the trigger. A walleye tends to commit when the bait stops and hangs in its face without rising or sinking. At the end of a long cast (the longer the better with slashbaits), monofilament stretches, dulling the action. Braided polyethylene lines (super lines) are a much better choice for this activity.

Start with a medium-light-action 7-foot spinning rod. Add a midsize reel, such as the Daiwa 1600 or Shimano 2000 series spinning models. Use mono backing and tie it to a 100- to 150-yard length of 14-pound-test “fused” braid, such as Berkley FireLine or SpiderWire Fusion, with back-to-back uni-knots. Standard braids, such as Innovative Textiles Power Pro or Suffix HercuLine, are thinner and cast even farther in the same pound tests, and using 20-pound versions of these products is feasible.

Braids have no memory, so coils and line slap won’t reduce casting distance. Some of the problems associated with braids, such as wind knots and tangles, can be alleviated by soaking the line with Blakemore Reel Magic or WD-40 before spooling it on. But, while braids in the same pound tests are much thinner than mono, braids are opaque. Light passes through mono and fluorocarbon, creating stealthier options for leader material, not to mention the stretch factor. Mono stretches, braids don’t, so a mono leader provides a modicum of shock resistance for all the various knots being used. Along with a soft rod tip, mono leaders also keep big fish from ripping free.