In 1974, while casting to rock reefs on a Canadian Shield lake, I “discovered” a new walleye killer—the Rebel Suspending Deep Wee R. When the lure smacked a rock at depths of about 7 feet, I paused it. The bait hovered, not floating up like all the other crankbaits of the day. Suspending at the spot where it clicked the rock, the Wee R waited until a curious walleye could find it, stalk it, and devour it.

Those early suspending baits outproduced every other option we tried on the reefs during the ensuing week up on the Shield. The classic options for Canadian walleyes in those days included drifting with spinner rigs dressed with nightcrawlers weighted with anything from a split shot to Dan Gapen’s Bait Walker, or trolling with lures like Helin’s Flatfish or floating Rapalas weighted with one or two split shot on the line and trolled deeper with three-way rigs. Jigs and minnows or plastic grubs worked, too, but nothing outproduced the tight wobbling Wee-R on rock points and reefs.

I couldn’t wait to see what innovations might follow this breakthrough idea. It was a long wait—about a quarter of a century, in fact. Yawning apathetically, 1970s America was unconcerned and unprepared for neutrally buoyant fishing lures.

Well, we’re ready now. Suspending baits are all the rage. Huge lure companies and workbench manufacturers alike are churning out “jerks” and making a small fortune selling them. But, as so often happens, in our haste to try new and different things, old standbys are forgotten. Doctoring floating baits to suspend or nearly suspend and using sinking minnows along with the “new wave” suspending baits combine to form a potent three-pronged attack for walleyes all season long. We call them slashbaits.

When seasons open in most states and provinces, walleyes are shallow, following their ancient postspawn routines. Still expanding out and away from the big bang (spawning), ravenous from the double-dip energy deficit created by winter stress and spawning rigors, walleyes roam the agreeable shallow flats. Agreeable because the water remains cool in the 2- to 8-foot depths in spring; agreeable because, cool though it may be, a shallow flat is warmer than deeper flats, drawing baitfish by the billions; and agreeable because perch are staging or beginning to spawn on those flats.

Imagine Rodney Dangerfield wandering through the wilderness. He gets hungry out there. “My kingdom for a liver sandwich,” he mumbles. “And I hate liver.” Weeks pass. Finally, over the next dune, a smorgasbord appears. Rodney dives in, providing a perfect example of what it’s like for walleyes immediately after spawning. They bite with authority, so why play cat and mouse? Stroke ‘em with slashbaits.

SlashBaits

The “slashbait” is In-Fisherman Editor In Chief Doug Stange’s term for all kinds of nonfloating minnowbaits, including doctored floating baits (lures drilled, filled, or altered in some way to suspend or fish deeper). The concept is to slash and burn the flats, rippin’, jerkin’, ‘n smokin’ away at those hungry walleyes, in depths and corners that can’t efficiently be trolled, at speeds that jig fishermen alternately dream of and scoff at.

Jigs are just fine—for numbers. But for finding walleyes, at least sometimes, nothing beats a little slash-n-burn. And for trophies, it’s the odds-on thing. Sort through a few thousand walleyes to get an 8 with jigs. On good water, with slashbaits, sort through a hundred or so to find a 10.

Here’s the deal: It’s May. You know where the walleyes spawn and how they disperse. Get on the trail somewhere between that spawning habitat and classic summer haunts in the main lake. Flats that consistently produce can be anywhere from right outside the mouth of a spawning creek to miles down the shoreline. Lake spawners might remain near the flats where they spawned, or could be across the lake on shallow rocks. How do you find them quickly in depths under five feet? Slash away.

Longline trolling with minnowbaits is a mainstay this time of year. Trolling locates walleyes quickly, but becomes tedious, even impossible, in most lakes from the 5-foot contour to the bank, right where the most overlooked walleyes position to feed. Difficult, too, to get lures into tight corners along productive emerging weedlines.

Somewhere along the postspawn walleye trail, find the biggest shallow flats. The best flats have a slow taper from about 12 feet up to the bank, not the sharp drops we associate with walleyes during the remainder of the year. Get upwind, drop the bowmount trolling motor at about 8 feet, and start pitchin’ sinking or suspending minnows, fan casting from the bank out to the 10-foot contour. Most days, it’s possible to move quickly. Aggressive walleyes slam baits moving much faster than most folks realize at this time of year.

Slashtrix

Slashing things up right involves an arsenal of sinking, suspending, and doctored baits. My first choice, right off the get-go on opening day, is a suspending bait. According to Al Lindner, “Nothing this productive has hit the market in a long, long time. Jerkbaits trigger bigger walleyes, and more of them in less time than any other technique, whether the walleyes are scattered or concentrated. Name another lure that catches a bigger variety of fish in a wider range of conditions. From cold to warm water, and especially during transitions between those phases, jerks trigger shallow walleyes better than any other hard-body bait.”

The trick with the new suspending baits is making them dance. Rapala Husky Jerks, Smithwick Super Rogues, Lucky Craft Pointers, Mann’s Loud Mouth Jerks and other suspenders work best with a slow to moderately quick, erratic stop-and-go action. The pause is the trigger. A walleye tends to commit when the bait stops and hangs in its face without rising or sinking. At the end of a long cast (the longer the better with slashbaits), monofilament stretches, dulling the action. Braided polyethylene lines (super lines) are a much better choice for this activity.

Start with a medium-light-action 7-foot spinning rod. Add a midsize reel, such as the Daiwa 1600 or Shimano 2000 series spinning models. Use mono backing and tie it to a 100- to 150-yard length of 14-pound-test “fused” braid, such as Berkley FireLine or SpiderWire Fusion, with back-to-back uni-knots. Standard braids, such as Innovative Textiles Power Pro or Suffix HercuLine, are thinner and cast even farther in the same pound tests, and using 20-pound versions of these products is feasible.

Braids have no memory, so coils and line slap won’t reduce casting distance. Some of the problems associated with braids, such as wind knots and tangles, can be alleviated by soaking the line with Blakemore Reel Magic or WD-40 before spooling it on. But, while braids in the same pound tests are much thinner than mono, braids are opaque. Light passes through mono and fluorocarbon, creating stealthier options for leader material, not to mention the stretch factor. Mono stretches, braids don’t, so a mono leader provides a modicum of shock resistance for all the various knots being used. Along with a soft rod tip, mono leaders also keep big fish from ripping free.

Tying in a mono leader is a wise choice, but differences in diameter and the slick exterior of braids can make knots slip. Tie a spider hitch or Bimini twist in the end of the braided main line, creating a two- or three-foot loop of line. Use the doubled line to add a 4-foot, 10- or 12-pound mono leader with back-to-back uni-knots. Trim the tag ends close for easy passage through the tip of the rod.

The basic retrieve to begin with most days is the sweep-pause. After a long cast, start with the rod extended out in front, with the tip pointing down, and sweep the lure down to its running depth by drawing the rod tip back just above the surface of the water. When retrieving slack line, reel up after bringing the rod tip forward. Don’t move the bait. Let it sit for five seconds or longer before sweeping it again. Most strikes occur during the pause, and they aren't felt, so the ensuing sweep sets the hook. Play with the strength of the sweep and the length of the pause. Some days walleyes won’t commit to the lure until it sits still for 20 seconds or longer. In most cases, the wobble attracts and the pause triggers.

Really active walleyes respond better to a snap-snap-pause-snap retrieve. Starting from the same position, rod tip pointing down, snap the rod tip back six inches to a foot, push the rod tip back to the starting point while retrieving, and snap it again. The lure, if tuned correctly, should dance from side-to-side, almost like walkin’ the dog with a Zara Spook, only underwater. Braids are critical for this technique, the lack of stretch providing a much sharper snap at longer distances. Here again, the flash attracts; the pause triggers.

But my favorite retrieve for walleyes most days is a twitch-twitch-pause-sweep-pause-twitch. The twitch, if done properly, causes the bait to move side to side, but at a slower pace. The pauses can be anywhere from five to twenty seconds, depending on what the walleyes want. The sweep is just fast enough to make the bait wobble, the slight vibration easily felt with braided line.

The longer 7-foot rod makes longer casts, longer sweeps, and more powerful sweep sets. Long casts are critical because walleyes tend to follow these baits. The farther the lure travels on the cast the better, creating more room for triggering fish before they follow into the shadow of the boat.

Larger suspending baits dig deeper than floating models, sometimes two feet deeper than corresponding sizes of floating minnows, making them poor choices for casting to 2- to 3-foot depths, where walleyes can stack up even during the day in spring when the wind is blowing in on a spot. Smaller suspending baits (C’ultiva-Owner Rip’N’Minnow or smaller Excalibur Ghost Minnows) and sinking minnows (Countdown Rapala) tend to work better in really thin water.

Don’t be afraid to work minnow-style suspending baits in 12- to 15-foot depths. Walleyes come up for them, especially in spring and fall. In darker waters, deep divers that suspend can get right in their face at those depths. Lures like the Rebel Excalibur Suspending Shad R, the Smithwick Suspending Deep Rogue, and the Rogers Slim Jim take deeper fish with the same tactics, and they serve as excellent stop-and-go trolling tools as well.

Other Slashbaits

Whenever walleyes respond best to a steady retrieve, such as in cold water, sinking or “countdown” baits excel. Wide, erratic wobbling lures can intimidate walleyes in cold water. Something with less action or a subtle wobble tends to produce more strikes in water temperatures below 48°F, though fairly quick retrieves often work better than most anglers realize. These baits are prime for covering 4- to 7-foot depths in tight corners along weedlines where trolling can’t reach them. Larger models can be worked effectively to about 10 feet.

“Hold your rod tip high in shallow water, low in deep water,” Stange suggests. “Vary the retrieve speed to slightly modify the running depth of countdown lures like the #5, #7, #9, and #11 Countdown Rapala. On limp 8-pound mono, a #5 or #7 can be pitched to a lipped shoreline or worked over a bar 2 to 5 feet deep at the right speed with the right rod angle. The #9 works well in water ranging from about 4 to 7 feet deep, the #11 down to 10 feet. Worked correctly, these lures can outproduce longline trolling at night when fish are concentrated in hard-to-reach spots.”

Stange also prefers doctored minnowbaits to suspending baits for shore casting at night. “For me, achieving absolute neutral buoyancy has never been the key to catching walleyes at night,” he says. “Depth control is critical, not the ability to suspend a bait or work a lure. In my mind, the best lures barely float at rest. Speed, action, and depth control are more important than the ability to suspend. Something that wobbles right at a slow, steady pace allows walleyes to zero in at night.

“A Rapala Husky Jerk, for example, doesn’t have quite the wobble that a well doctored #13 Husky Rap has on a straight retrieve. The Husky Jerk also dives deeper, which gets you into trouble with sandgrass and rocks in those 3- to 5-foot depths that are so key when fishing from shore. Similarly, whenever a straight retrieve is critical, I wouldn’t count out the old countdown-style lures.”

Stange doctors the #13 Husky Rapala by drilling two holes deep enough to add five 3/0 Water Gremlin round shot. He drills the holes in the side of the lure about halfway between the head and tail of the lure, but slightly closer to the head. Cover the holes with epoxy. He also reduces the buoyancy of injected-plastic minnows by heating a sewing needle, using it to poke a hole in the lure, injecting about 2 to 4 cc of water (depending on the make and size of the lure) with a hypodermic needle, and then using the heated needle to melt the hole shut.

Though it took 25 years to reinvent the wheel with regard to suspending baits, slash-bait tactics have been with us for a long time and continue to produce hot early-season walleye action. The key is applying them in the right times and places. Wherever walleyes gather there will be hot spots too shallow or corners too tight to troll through.

Heavy concentrations may require a slash mentality, too. Where trolling might produce four or five fish, slashtrix can pull double-digit numbers of ‘eyes from a small spot. No time lost reeling in and turning around or working unproductive water. This is the major alternative to searching in slo-mo with a jigging approach.