Trolling crankbaits over submerged timber

Spend extra time in areas where you see baitfish suspended above or outside the trees.

To raise your baits, increase your boat speed until they are no longer ticking the tops of trees. Then slow your speed until the baits again start ticking the cover. After you get a feel for how leadcore responds to boat speed, it's easy to speed up to raise your baits over the trees, or slow down to let them settle and work deeper.

Crankbaits will eventually snag if you let them dive deep into the cover. Even if a walleye strikes before your bait gets hung up, it's extremely difficult while trolling crankbaits to pull a walleye from cover -- particularly in deep water. Walleyes instinctively fight their way back to the cover, often swimming in and around branches until you have little chance of catching the fish or salvaging your bait.

Consider underwater current, especially when you're trying to position crankbaits at a specific depth. When trolling against current or into waves, the increased water resistance on the line raises the baits. When trolling downstream or with the waves, crankbaits tend to dive deeper. To keep them tracking at the same depth in either direction, simply let out less line going downstream and more while going upstream.

When a walleye strikes close to cover, horsing the fish up and out of the cover is the best option. Simply raise your rod tip and start cranking fairly fast and hard until you feel the fish is up and away from the trees, then start fighting the fish with a little more finesse. Horsing fish may cause the hooks to pull free from a fish's mouth, or possibly even cause the line to break, but it's worth the risk. If you give a walleye the chance to swim back down into the cover, you'll rarely land the fish.

A section of monofilament, fluorocarbon, or superline spliced to the end of the leadcore provides a low-visibility leader (compared to the relatively thick diameter of leadcore line). Use a snap for attaching crankbaits and a snap-swivel for connecting big-bladed spinners that might twist the line. John Butts, a PWT pro who has had success trolling crankbaits near the tops of trees without losing many crankbaits, prefers using a long superline leader.