Veteran Insights To Big-Water Trolling Success

(An interview with Gary Parsons, as told to Dave Csanda.)

Fox News bills themselves as the network for fair and balanced coverage, while MSNBC claims to be America’s News Channel. Both are comparative upstarts to the veteran Cable News Network, which keeps trollin’ along to the deep, distinctive baritone of James Earl Jones’ This is CNN! The moral is, you can cover the world in different fashion, with different personalities, but the stories remain the same. Only the presentations vary.

And so it goes for covering open water for suspended fish; there are numerous ways and means to do it, and you’ll develop your own preferences, but the task—to reach out and catch viewers—remains the same, and only the presentations vary.

Open-water trolling tactics broke big-time on the angling scene in the early ‘90s, and today, after a decade and more of refinements, many of the original techniques remain as productive as ever. But nothing in life remains static. Staying ahead of the learning curve will catch more and bigger fish. To do so, you should not only familiarize yourself with new wrinkles and products, but also their growing range of applications. Because many of these big-water systems apply in other arenas as well.

Basin Trolling—An Ever-Evolving Art Form

Gary Parsons, two-time PWT Angler of the Year and acknowledged pioneer of open-water trolling, has played a major role in the development and popularization of fishing basins for suspended walleyes. As one who was there from the beginning and shaped the evolution of the sport, Parsons is the ideal angler to meld the past, present, and future of open-water walleye fishing into a broad yet concise overview. Here’s a rare look into the mind of one of the best in the business to see how he approaches basin walleye fishing today.

“In barely 20 years, open-water fishing for walleyes has changed from being nowhere on the map—nobody knew anything about it—into one of the most fascinating aspects of fishing for any freshwater species,” Parsons recalls. “In the early years, there was no gameplan; every day was exciting, because each and every time, you discovered something new. Nowadays, anglers embracing this element of the sport are spoiled, because information is so widely available. For instance, you can pick up a copy of the book Precision Trolling, check the dive curves for numerous models of crankbaits, and know how deep they’ll run when trolled on certain lengths of line.

“But back then, we didn’t even know how deep our crankbaits ran. I remember assuming that all my crankbaits ran near bottom, and that was where I initially must be catching basin walleyes. But when I first motored into shallower water and discovered that some of my favorite lures only ran about 8 feet deep, a light bulb went on: walleyes were often suspended in the water column, not on the bottom. It was perhaps my biggest surprise and the most exciting time in my fishing career.

“Most early trollers on inland waters began fishing open basins with large mast and trolling ski systems. In the early ‘80s, Gary Gerhrman of Rover Boards came up to me after one of my seminars, said he was sitting on 5,000 unsold online planer boards, and asked if I could please help promote them to fishermen before the company went out of business due to lack of demand; well, the next time I saw him, his hands were blistered from sanding new boards to meet the growing demand for Rovers. Cannon eventually bought the company. I later helped promote and design online planers for both Wille Products and OffShore Tackle. Interest in open-water fishing was exploding across the angling scene, with new tackle and equipment evolving to meet the demand.