Boat control, patience, and natural attraction are vital aspects of livebait rigging for walleyes. You must have good boat control skills to proceed at just the right speed over the right spot, giving your bait time to work naturally to entice a response from walleyes.

Match rigging components—snell length; weight size; and hook type, size, and sharpness—to conditions. Traditional walking slip-sinkers, for example, perform best in rocks or on smooth bottom, but tend to pick up weeds. Bullet sinkers teamed with short snells and maybe even a weedless single hook perform well along weed or timber edges. Egg sinkers are a fair compromise to both versions, allowing effective presentations in most conditions. Snag-resistant sinkers, like Lindy Little Joe’s No-Snagg, work their way through most snags, making it easier to fish cover like boulders and wood.

Slipsinkers slide down the line until they encounter a stop. Tie a #10 or #12 barrel swivel, swivel clip, or snap in-line above the hook; crimp on a split shot; or add a slipbobber stop and bead to your main line at the desired position. In all cases, some form of stop determines snell length by positioning the sinker a certain distance from the hook.

Weights like Rubbercor sinkers, split shot, or in-line weights like Mojo Lures’ (909/591-4739) adjustable slip-shot sinker are designed to be secured a desired distance from the hook. Weight secured to the line, however, prevents you from feeding line through the weight so fish can further engulf the bait. But feeding line isn’t always the answer—like in river current, where excess line creates drag and reduces control. Sometimes, keeping constant pressure between you and the fish further entices the fish to engulf the bait.

Six- to eight-pound test is standard for snells; downsize to 4-pound for finesse rigging. Three- to six-foot snells work fine for most conditions. Short snells (2 to 3 feet) reduce snags in timber or weedcover, but they minimize bait mobility. Ten- to twelve-foot snells aren’t unusual for finesse presentations. Longer snells, however, complicate hooksets and make landing fish more difficult.

Bait type, size, and liveliness can make a difference. Lively bait creates vibration and flash that attracts walleyes. Leeches, nightcrawlers, and minnows are the most popular livebaits for walleyes, which show a seasonal preference for specific baits. In spring, for example, minnows may be the livebait of choice. A preference for crawlers may appear by midsummer into early fall. Leeches can be good in spring, but they tend to excel in summer and early fall. In late fall, large minnows (4 to 6 inches) may be the ticket when walleyes are feeding heavily for the winter.

Match hook size to the size of the livebait. A hook that’s too heavy may fatigue and diminish bait effectiveness. A short-shank light-wire #6 hook allows a 3-inch fathead hooked through the lips to swim freely. A #4 or #2 offers sufficient hook gap for bulkier baits like a chubs.

A properly hooked minnow creates a natural swimming motion, even when resting on bottom. Hooking minnows through the lips is the most popular method. A minnow hooked near the tail can be effective, too, particularly when hovering or still fishing. The minnow struggles to swim away from the weight, which creates flash and vibration that attracts walleyes.

The most common way to hook nightcrawlers is threading the hook through the dark end (nose) of the crawler, bringing the hook out just in front of the collar. Thread the crawler on a #2, #4, or #6 light-wire Aberdeen hook, squeeze the nose over the hook eye, leaving only the barb protruding in front of the collar. In short-strike situations, use a half-crawler, or add a second hook and bury it toward the crawler’s tail.

A 3-inch leech can swim easily with a short-shank #8, #6 , or even a #4 hook. Smaller leeches swim better on a #6 or #8 hook. Hooked once through the sucker and out the back is a good hookup for most situations, allowing a leech to swim and wiggle.

Rigging rods generally fall into the medium-action spinning category, ranging somewhere between 6 and 7 feet. Spool reels with 6- to 8-pound monofilament line. Casting gear with 10-pound test can handle the strain of heavy sinker weights required in deep water or swift current. Superlines, like 14-pound Berkley FireLine, are options for deep water and current situations, too.

Boat Control

Boat control is one of the most important aspects of rigging. It enables you to position your livebait rig in key spots, giving any walleye in the area a chance to find your bait. The best boat control method for the situation is determined by wind (light, strong, variable, upstream, downstream, or cross-wind) waves, or current. Boat type—big, small, console or tiller steering; main engine horsepower; whether your rigged with electric bowmount, tiller motors, or both; and your ability to use them are factors.

Using a bowmount electric trolling motor has become the norm for many walleye anglers. Controlling the boat from the transom, however, remains one of the best ways to stay positioned over key spots—especially when strong wind, waves, and current conditions are factors.

Forward Rigging—Powerful bowmounts enable you to hover, control drift, or troll with or against the wind. Most electric bowmounts are foot-controlled—leaving both hands free—making it easier to keep the boat on course while playing a fish (or while a fish plays you). On waters where two rods are legal, foot-control motors enable you to simultaneously hold two rods while working along structure.

Under most conditions, bowmounts make it easy to follow the edges of drop-offs, work back and forth, even hover over key spots. In big waves and strong winds, however, the main problem is having enough power to work into the waves and keep the boat on course without constantly having to change motor directions. (If you shut the motor off, the wind quickly pushes the boat left or right.) Many 24-volt bowmounts offer 50-plus pounds of thrust. MinnKota’s bowmount 101hp electric motor runs on 36 volts and has plenty of power to maintain proper boat speed. When winds are howling, however, big waves and wind gusts make it hard to stay on course and to keep speed constant while using a bowmount motor.

Tiller Rigging—Pushing the outboard motor steering arm left or right on a tiller-powered boat quickly changes the boat’s path. Tillers have a faster response time than a steering wheel, offering better boat control.

Tiller-powered boats excel for backtrolling, especially in strong wind and waves. Backtrolling allows for tracing and hovering along contours, making precision presentations, and working small structural areas without being thrown off course by wind and waves.

While holding your rod with one hand, shift the engine into reverse with your other hand and then grab the tiller handle. Move slowly backwards into the wind, using just enough thrust to compensate for the prevailing force of wind, waves, or current. Watch the depthfinder and turn the engine left or right to correct the direction of boat movement to follow the contour. Simply increase throttle speed to overcome a strong gust of wind or a large wave.

A Mercury motor Smart Gauge system allows for adjusting the motor’s rpm to help achieve the desired speed, which makes it possible to forward and backtroll with big motors (150 to 225) even in a light to moderate wind. Pete Harsh, a top In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail (PWT) livebait rigger, uses a tiller boat rigged with the Smart Gauge system. “The reason I’m successful in rough, tough conditions is the boat control I get by using a tiller-powered boat,” Harsh claims. “This past season, I ran a 20-foot Warrior tiller boat and 150 Digital Mercury OPTIMAX outboard rigged with the Mercury Smart Gauge system, which allowed me to troll down to 450 rpm. In most situations, no matter the wind or presentation, I can achieve my exact desired speed while using my big motor.”

While tiller-powered boats are the traditional choice for backtrolling into big waves, backtrolling with a console steering boat is possible if the boat’s rigged with splashguards to deflect water that would otherwise flow over the transom. Again, engage the engine in reverse and watch your electronics to keep the boat positioned over key depths. Turn the steering wheel left or right and increase or decrease thrust to compensate for wind and waves in order to stay on the edge of structure.

MinnKota’s 36-volt 101-pound-thrust Vantage tiller electric has enough power to backtroll 18- to 20-foot boats into modest waves, or to fine-tune the speed for backtrolling on calmer days.

Controlled Drift Rigging—Position the boat on the upwind side of the area you want to drift. Keep your electric bowmount or tiller motor running with enough power to slow the boat as the waves push you downwind. Use the foot pedal to make forward, left, or right depth adjustments. You may also have to increase or decease motor speed to compensate for wind gusts.

Envision Your Rigging

Good livebait riggers envision the position of their rig and what the bait is doing to entice strikes. Start by using your electronics to pinpoint key depths and to look for any signs of baitfish and walleyes. In clear shallow water (5 to 15 feet), walleyes more likely spook to the side of a boat passing overhead. Typically, walleyes in shallower water also are cruising, searching for food, which makes spotting them harder via a flasher or graph.

Walleyes holding motionless at the edge of a drop-off are easier to graph. The bases of drop-offs into deep water, where the hard bottom of the drop-off forms a transition to the softer bottom of the adjacent basin, can be ideal spots to graph walleyes that are prime candidates for rigging tactics. Drop the rig to bottom, leave the bail open, and grasp the line with your index finger. Fish semivertically, minimizing line length to the bottom to reduce water resistance against the line while maximizing feel and control. Lift the rig off bottom a few inches, glide it along, set it down, and pause. Hover in place, allowing the minnow ample time to begin struggling and swimming, alerting and tempting any surrounding walleyes.

If you see fish on your electronics that don’t bite on the first pass, circle back, hover over them, and let the minnow dance and swim to entice fish to strike. Sometimes, walleyes holding tight to the bottom can be tempted into biting if you spend several (5 to 10) minutes hovering over them with your bait. Sometimes not.

How much time you spend at a spot or working a fish you’ve marked with electronics varies depending on overall walleye activity. The fish you spotted on electronics may not even be walleyes; then again, they may be. When action seems slow, going slow and spending more time in a particular area may be the best option. If walleyes seem fairly active, however, or if you spot other walleyes being caught, you may be wasting time trying to catch neutral to negative fish.

Timing the hookset is the final step. When to set depends on what you felt when the fish bit. On a firm bite, simply let a little line slip through your fingers, then close the bail, point your rod tip down, take up slack, and when the line tightens, set the hook. Strikes vary from firm grasps that indicate that a walleye really wants that minnow, to subtle pickups that don’t even feel like a fish.

A solid strike when the fish sits still suggests that the fish likely engulfed the minnow. Tighten up the slack with your rod tip and set the hook. A minor run followed by a stop? The fish probably needs some more time. Feed a little line during the run; engage the reel and begin taking up slack as you slowly follow the fish. Once the slack is out, set. A light tap or subtle weight? The fish may have the bait by the tail. Strip off a few feet of line, regrasp with your index finger, and wait. If nothing happens, slowly lift the rod tip to put a little pressure on the fish. Try to trigger a reaction, causing the fish to regrasp or engulf the bait. Then set the hook.

Deadsticking Circle Hooks

When In-Fisherman editor Steve Hoffman told me he caught 54 consecutive catfish on circle hooks, I decided to give them a try on walleyes. Hooking and reeling fish in, after all, is one of the most important aspects of fishing. Admittedly, I get a rush from the agony I experience, hoping there’s weight on the end of my line after I set the hook. For me, part of the fun is setting the hook and feeling the weight of a fish.

“Rule number-one with circle hooks, Simpsy,” Hoffman insists, “is no more setting the hook. I mean no more setting the hook at all. Don’t think about it. Don’t do it.

“Circle hooks can’t be set like standard hooks. Due to the design of the hook, the fish actually drives the hook home on its own with steady line pressure. That’s the reason circle hooks work so well on limblines for catfish and longlines for sailfish, halibut, and other saltwater species—no meddling angler to pull the hook away from the fish.

“The most difficult part for everyone is not setting the hook. Typically, once a fish engulfs the baited hook, either it eventually turns and moves away or it keeps moving with the boat. Either way, it causes the hook to move to the front of a fish’s mouth. Once the eye of the hook clears the corner of the mouth, the hook rotates and the point catches and begins to penetrate the corner of the fish’s jaw. The weight of the fish on a tight line continues to drive the hook past the barb. Once this happens, the rod tip can be lifted firmly, but never sharply.”

The fish’s jawbone must be able to fit between the gap and provide enough space for the hook to turn and rotate. The larger the circle hook, the bigger the gap. We suggest using a circle hook two sizes larger than standard livebait hooks. So, if you use a #2 Gamakatsu Octopus livebait hook for livebait rigging a small- to medium-size minnow, try a 1/0 Gamakatsu Circle Octopus circle hook.

I’ve had success deadstick rigging with circle hooks, although I’ve missed a few (which may have been due to my ingrained desire to set the hook) and not all the walleyes I caught were hooked in the corner of the mouth (one was gut hooked). Most, however, were hooked right in the corner of the mouth.

Deadstick rigging, in essence, is setting your rod in a rod holder and watching the rod tip for strikes. Again, there’s no call to set the hook with circle hooks, so they’re ideal for deadsticking. Soft-action rods work best. Long 9- to 10-foot light-action to medium-action spinning or casting steelhead rods work well. When a fish strikes, a soft-action rod tip bends, which keeps light but steady pressure on the hook in the walleye’s mouth and ideally moves the hook forward to penetrate the corner of the mouth. The long soft-action rod makes detecting strikes or snags easier, too.

In some scenarios, you may be able to deadstick a livebait rig in deeper water while pitching a jig or crankbait into the shallows. You’ll especially appreciate using circle hooks in deep water where detecting strikes and getting good hooksets is more difficult. Often with circle hooks in deep water, by the time you detect a bite, the fish is already hooked.