The Plastification of Walleyes

Single-color tails have been around a long time, probably accounting for the bulk of all plastics purchased. Years ago, bass anglers adopted firetails; the little wiggly portion of the tail was a different, usually highly visible color designed to attract strikes. Trouble is, most of those strikes likely come from pesky panfish like bluegills and perch. Walleye anglers tend to prefer patterns that cause fish to strike at the head and hook end of the package.

Alternative color jigheads, or plastic bodies with an eye or spot of color at the head more often are choices for walleyes. If you subscribe to the school of thought that multiple colors offer multiple triggers to a potential biter, then two-colored or three-colored grubs will appeal to your sensibilities. Once again, it’s a confidence thing. The nice thing is that you can easily mix and match different plastics with different colored jigheads to achieve a wealth of combos.

Plastics with a dark back and light belly offer an increased resemblance to natural minnow forage. Many shad tails fall into this category. For increased visibility in dark water, glitter bodies have bits of reflective glitter molded directly into the plastic, helping fish locate the bait in the gloom or murk of muddy water.

An increasing array of realistic forage-pattern plastics are entering the market. If you believe that the most accurate baitfish imitations will catch the most fish, these will boost your confidence big time. Cabela’s Livin’ Eye Minnows are rigged onto a minnow-head jighead. Storm WildEyes are molded onto an internal head. Both are uncanny representations of something good to eat.

In the end, there are no magic colors or combos, only shades that usually work, hues that generally don’t, and others that fall so-so in between. Sometimes color makes a difference. Often it doesn’t, with other factors like size, shape, sound, vibration being more important. Since you never know exactly what conditions will dictate every time out, carry a selection and be prepared to experiment for the best results.

Scented, Salted, Salacious

Fish scent products were originally designed as much as de-scents to hide offensive human orders exuded from the skin or to mask unnatural scents like gas or oil or peanut butter and jelly transferred to the bait as they were as scents to attract, fool, and trigger fish into biting or striking. Oils, sprays, pastes, and other concoctions hit the market in force; many have since fizzled and failed.

What has caught on with the angling public, however, is the incorporation of scent and taste directly into plastic bodies. This is easy to do during the injection-molding process; just squirt the premixed plastisol and scent into the mold, and then pop the product in a resealable plastic bag. Open the bag and phew! the stink pours out in abundance. Great! If it’s stinky, it must be good. But are all equally good?

Hard to say. One man’s stink is another man’s perfume. Take garlic, for example. Bass are supposed to love it, it’s great in Italian cuisine, and is probably OK for walleyes.

Salt is another popular scent and taste trigger incorporated into plastics and is well accepted by anglers. Blood tastes salty, so salt should be a natural stimulant. Hard to argue with that.