As efficiency becomes a most important component of fishing, spinner rigs remain a top choice among the best walleye anglers. With miles to fish, the pace of a spinner ticking along behind a bottom bouncer—daring, tempting, exploring, searching—is to be appreciated.

Spinners in their many variations might be the ultimate in versatility and the best compromise between ultraslow and ultrafast. Add more weight and you can get on your horse and ride 2 mph. Nothing preventing you from slowing down, either, until the blade barely spins. If it’s flickering finesse the fish want, give ‘em a tiny blade and a sparse tie. If the situation demands bulk, show ‘em a big blade and make it really thump.

This family of presentations also includes relatives, like a plain hook, bottom bouncer, and livebait. Tuck a lively leech into a specific spot and stall it out for as long as it takes a fish to react.

“Other than in rivers,” says In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail (PWT) veteran Chad Hall, “spinners are my favorite overall technique. They work on lakes and reservoirs, whether they’re weedy, have a snaggy rock bottom, or both. I can work them for suspended fish or keep them close to bottom. If I can’t go through the weeds, I tick the top of them with spinner rigs weighted with split shot or bullet sinkers.”

Time and tournaments have proven spinners universal in their appeal to walleyes. No longer dubbed a western approach applicable only to sprawling reservoirs, spinners catch walleyes wherever they swim. If you’ve stubbornly held to the notion that they don’t work on your waters, toss out that tenet. The world is round. Spinners work everywhere.

The Importance of Boat Control

No matter how perfectly your spinner matches what the walleyes want, it’s only as effective as your presentation. Boat control is an important part of the equation. Selection of the right rig for the situation along with boat-control skills are, in fact, inextricable.

First, establish a starting speed. We hear about speed ranges, such as 1 to 1.5 mph, as being “spinner speeds.” Don’t get hung up on them. Instruments on most walleye boats aren’t precise when indicating boat speed, especially at slow speeds. Surges from waves when running downwind, and the counter forces of wind or current when you buck into them further complicate this issue. And some devices measure trolling units rather than miles per hour.

The bottom line, according to PWT pro Don Wood, is getting a good look at the blade while it’s boatside. Wood adjusts throttle, under prevailing conditions, until he sees what he likes, then he notes Speed Over Ground on his Raytheon GPS.

“Don’t get hung up on what the speed says,” Wood stresses. “It doesn’t matter so much what the unit says, so long as it’s consistent under different conditions. Also pay attention to the angle of your line, what the motor sounds like, and the bend in your rod. It takes time, but even without a speedometer, it’s possible to know when you’re speeding up or slowing down.”

One standard means of experimenting with speed is to make turns, both left and right. How far you move to the side depends on whether you’re trying to follow a tight contour or cover an expansive flat.

“When you turn,” Hall says, “if a rod on the inside of the boat catches a fish, that might mean the fish want a slower presentation. If an outside rod goes, the fish might be telling you they want it faster.”

When panfish become pesky, Hall adjusts his speed to leave them in the dust. “Sometimes,” he says, “you don’t have a choice. You have to keep speeding up until the panfish leave you alone.”

Keeping the Wind at Your Back

Like many pros, Don Wood likes to troll spinners with the wind at his back. “If you’re trying to learn boat control,” Wood says, “start by fishing downwind, because it’s easier.”

Many pros use a motor that can be set for a course and steers itself, leaving the angler free to concentrate on setting lines and detecting bites. PWT pro Ted Takasaki uses a TR-1 Autopilot for controlling his kicker motor. Mark Brumbaugh relies on a Pinpoint electric motor, which can be set to automatically follow a certain depth or even a creek channel.

Wood uses a MinnKota Auto Pilot bowmount electric until conditions become unruly enough that he needs his kicker. The kicker outboard is rigged to a Raytheon SportPilot autopilot, which allows him to steer his boat even on complex trolling passes by programming it through his GPS. “I can tell the boat to run right through the middle of a big school,” Wood says, “or along the edges of the school, or wherever the bigger fish are.”

Back to the reasons for trolling with the wind. Let’s say you have four lines out and you hook a walleye. Simply slow the motor or stall it out, depending on wind speed. Your other three lines continue to troll as you fight the fish. “My motor keeps the bow pointing downwind,” Wood says, “so I can fight the fish and keep fishing with my other lines. Many times, I end up with two or three fish on at the same time.”

Gone With the Wind

Even though it’s not their first choice, sometimes PWT pros troll into the wind. Let’s say they’ve just made a long trolling pass (might be a mile or more), and they don’t want to lose fishing time by running back to the starting point. “If the wind isn’t too bad,” Wood says, “I use the kicker to push myself up against the wind, programmed off the GPS, and use my electric to make left and right adjustments. That’s the key with going into the wind; if you can keep your bow from being blown off course, you can control the boat.”

Wood and others stress that spinners can be pulled effectively without automatic steering, but boat control becomes increasingly difficult as the wind gets stronger. A big wind makes boat control tough even when you move with the wind. When surges power you forward too fast and the stallouts that follow bring you almost to a complete stop, it’s time to employ a drift sock to slow down and make less dramatic speed changes.

Hall also makes adjustments in his tackle when a big wind causes major surge-pause cycles. “I go to a heavier weight than I’d otherwise use for the depth,” he says, “and I tend toward faster trolling speeds, so the spinner blade never stops spinning.” This may be a good time to bring up a helpful rule of thumb from PWT pro Ted Takasaki. At typical spinner speeds, Takasaki uses a 1 ounce weight for 10 feet of water, 2 ounces for 20 feet, and 3 ounces for 30 feet and deeper. Also a safety note: When fishing with the wind, if your boat is too short to span the waves, your bow could catch under and spear a wave.

Tight Turns

Compared to other forms of walleye trolling, where you might have 200 feet or more of line out, a typical spinner presentation involves much less line. Therefore, unless conditions are unruly, relatively tight turns are possible to repeatedly present spinners in a small area. Tight turns not only bring your bait past a group of fish more times in a short period, but also allow you to experiment with speed and depth on one group of fish.

“I turn left and right as I go through the fish,” Wood says, “and I also try accelerating a bit, which lifts the spinners higher, in case some fish are rising. As fish rise off bottom, they’re most likely looking for food. And trolling below rising walleyes is ineffective.”

Refining Boat Control

Most anglers would do better if they paid closer attention to boat-control details. “The mistake the average person makes,” Hall says, “is just to drift along, not noticing the little hard-bottom area just passed over, or that he’s moved out into deeper water.

“If you pay attention to the little things, your boat control will follow. Notice if the wind blows you off the breakline. Don’t assume you’ll eventually run into a fish by luck.”

Sometimes, deliberately maneuvering up and down the breakline can mean more fish. Wood, for one, is a believer in the effectiveness of such a presentation, but he, like Hall, says it’s a matter of doing it on purpose. “You can’t do the drunken sailor thing and claim you’re moving up and down the break,” Wood says, laughing. “But it can be deadly. For one thing, you might not know exactly what depth the fish are at, but you can follow the break while you’re searching.”

I still think, however, that pulling the bait off the top of the break and fluttering it down or bringing it up from below the fish can, at times, be better than just pulling it straight along the contour. “A lot of the big fish I’ve caught,” Wood says, “were lying in ambush off a lip, and they hammered the bait when it came floating down off the top of the break.”

Precision on Suspended Fish

“A bottom bouncer doesn’t have to be fished on the bottom,” Wood says. “I often work out a formula that allows me to present a spinner rig to suspended fish. Doesn’t matter where the fish are or the depth of the water. If walleyes are showing up at 20 feet over 90 feet of water, I find a 20-foot flat and work out a formula based on bottom bouncer weight, length of line out, and boat speed. I establish a productive combo that ticks bottom in 20 feet, and then I simply move out over deeper water.

Suspended can mean elevated off bottom, too. If your bait is tight to bottom and the walleyes are three feet up, you’re too deep. Again, it’s a matter of paying attention to detail. Note on your depthfinder when fish are rising up, and either speed up or lighten your bouncers slightly.

Now it’s time to get out there and start controlling your own boat while these ideas are fresh in your mind. n

*Mark Strand, a freelance writer from Woodbury, Minnesota, has written articles for In-Fisherman magazine and also helped compile the In-Fisherman Ice Fishing Secrets book.