A Tactic for Neutral Fish

There are several keys to using slipbobbers for river presentations. The first is the location you plan to fish the slipbobber.Is it in a current flow situation, or calmer water? The answer determines which livebait you should put under the bobber.

In slackwater situations, minnows are the bait of choice. They create the motion needed to make the presentation effective, slowly moving the bobber around in the still water.

Leeches may also work well in this situation. If you're using minnows and not getting bit, switch to a leech. In some instances, minnows have too much movement for the fish's neutral mood. A leech, however, is just right: it's subtle enough to draw the fish in, yet not too active to spook the fish away. It's the ultimate trigger for neutral, and sometimes even negative, walleyes.

If you're in a fast-current situation, however, you want the slipbobber to drift exactly along with the current; if you put a lively minnow on, it may continually pull the bobber out of the drift zone. So, when working such areas, a leech is your best choice for bait. The leech still has good motion, but is not strong enough to hinder the drift of your bobber. A nightcrawler might also work, though leeches are your first choice, outproducing crawlers in fast-water situations.

But there is one situation in which nightcrawlers might be your first choice, when slipbobbering. Crawlers barely move under a bobber, and if walleyes are in a negative mood, they might gather enough interest to nip on a crawler, but not much else. Even here, though, leeches work just as well and are cleaner to handle -- no messy bedding.

The location aspect of river slipbobbering is pretty simple: fish the same locales you'd normally fish for walleyes. Current breaks, wingdams, mudlines, and the edges of shallow flats are all good locations for slipbobbers. If the water is deep enough to mark fish on your electronics but you still can't catch them, definitely pull out a slipbobber and give it a try.

The hardest part of this technique is actually doing it. Stepping "out of the box" and trying something different can be difficult. The only way to see if this works, of course, is just to try it out, yourself. The technique can pay great dividends, so why not give it a shot? For fishing stubborn river walleyes, you might be amazed how well a traditional bobber presentation can still perform.