Divergent Patterns For Big Fish

In the immortal words of John Belushi in the movie Animal House: “Nothing is over until we decide it is." And it ain’t over now. Cause when the goin’ gets tough, the tough get goin’. It isn’t always pretty, and no one said it was always going to be comfortable; but for those willing to lay it all out there, it can be the wildest walleye party of the year. So are you with me?

A few years ago, on the morning of December 7, it so happens, I was finishing another 14-hour fishing adventure with my buddy Paul Delaney. The sun was just rising and the morning light revealed the tenuous nature of our surroundings and our senility. With single-digit air temperatures and wind chills below zero, steam rose from the narrow path our boat cut in the ice as we broke our way back to the launch. The upper portion of Little Bay de Noc had been locked in ice for more than two weeks, with the big water of Lake Michigan holding off the onslaught of winter ice.

This day ice stretched for as far as we could see and the lane we cut was solid again before the boat was on the trailer. Icicles looked like 12-inch fangs hanging from the Ranger. We were the last of the crazies to fish Bay de Noc that fall. Our reward that day was 27 walleyes, with a dozen from 9 to 12 pounds.

Big Water—

Get The Lead Out

The license plate on Paul Delaney’s truck reads I FISH L8. By the last week of October, he goes strictly nocturnal in his pursuit of big fish. By the full moon in November, he is all but a vampire, sleeping during the day and stalking his prey at night. “If their eyes aren’t glowing, I’m not going,” he says. “Ideally, I want cold, stable weather with steadily falling water temperatures into the low-40° F to mid-30°F range—and waves of less than three feet. The fishing often is just peaking as the water turns solid.”

Delaney’s passion for giant walleyes spans three decades and includes thousands of hours on the water. He favors big water for big fish and spends most of his time guiding on portions of Lake Michigan. His system is to longline troll deep-diving stickbaits on light braided line and run big minnowbaits on leadcore line, often behind planer boards.

“I give up livebait rigging or casting cranks once the water hits the low-40°F range,” he says. “You can still catch them that way but the odds are in favor of trolling techniques that keep lures in the feeding zone.”

As the water cools into the 40°F range, walleyes move from offshore haunts and stage in large basin areas just outside of wintering and spawning grounds. Rock reefs, pier heads, weedflats in front of river mouths, and mudflats hold fish, but steep edges get the largest concentrations. The biggest groups of big walleyes use quick-breaking contour lines near deep-water transition areas.

Delaney: “Some walleyes suspend near baitfish schools over 70 feet or more of water—trolling open-water basin areas with deep-diving crankbaits is an option, but especially during late fall, it’s a lower-percentage affair than fishing structure. Fish that are scattered over deep water push up on edges at night.”

Delaney focuses on long tapering flats that drop from 18 to 45 feet deep. Many of these edges are the width of a trolling spread. To fish these areas, lure placement must be precise.

Leadcore allows fishing shallow-running minnow baits with subtle wobbles in deeper water. Thus, a hard-thumping Rapala Deep Tail Dancer can be freelined on braid to run side-by-side with a slow-rolling Rapala Flat Rap behind leadcore, both plugs running at the 20-foot range. Walleyes often show a preference for one lure action over another, and with multiple setups ready, productive patterns can be quickly duplicated.

Delaney: “Between setting lines, battling waves, and landing fish, things can get messy after dark unless you keep it simple and stay organized. That means working with no more than four rods.”

Flatlines work best in water less than 25 feet deep, while leadcore excels in water from 20 to 45 feet deep. Usually two rods are on Church planer boards while the other two rods are flatlined directly in back of the boat.

Ten line-counter rod-and-reel combos are rigged to cover all possible depth ranges. Four outfits (flatline rods) are spooled with 15-pound PowerPro braid. This braid is equivalent to 14-pound Berkley FireLine and 14-pound Suffix Fuse. Meanwhile, working with 18-pound leadcore, two rigs have two colors of leadcore; another two have three colors; and the final two have four colors. He carries one spare reel for each setup.

With leadcore, each color (50-foot segment) pulls a lure 5 feet deeper than it runs normally. Boat speed and the amount of backing let out further affects lure depth The leadcore reels have a 50-foot leader of 20-pound PowerPro and a monofilament backing of 12-pound Berkley Trilene XT.

The super-thin, no-stretch PowerPro allows lures to run deeper as it adds a measure of protection against cutoffs from zebra mussels and rocks. Braid also transmits the vibration of lures to the rod tip better than monofilament. This is important when running leadcore, which has a dampening effect.

The mono backing is preferred in sub-freezing temperatures because it doesn’t freeze up so quickly and it holds better in the release pads on the boards. Braided lines are so slick they require a half hitch around the release pad to keep from slipping in choppy conditions. Untangling a wrapped line from a frozen release is one less thing to worry about when conditions are brutal.

Through years of trial, Delaney has doctored up the basic figures from Precision Trolling: The Troller’s Bible, to account for trolling speeds of 1 to 1.5 mph and for the amount of monofilament backing he runs behind leadcore. For those just getting started with leadcore and longline trolling, the book shows dive curves for all popular walleye lures—at a glance, you know how deep a Rapala Minnow Rap runs on 12-pound line set 100 feet back.