Walleye Express

I must admit I felt more then a little weird putting those little Ernie's on Saturday. And was pretty glad the clients I had aboard were not exactly old pro's to trolling techniques and crankbait experts in general. It wasn't the length so much, as they are only 6" long. But it's their real life size dimensions that kinda throws you.

Your right about the size. And it seemed for a while that the smaller/undersize fish were either not around or after other forage, as I was catching 15 to 19 inch fish on my spoon sliders for 3 or 4 trips. Then all of a sudden I started catching 2 fish at a time on the same line, but the one on the spoon slider was 7 to 10 inches long and the other one was a decent keeper. Not wanting to hurt these little rascles, I took the sliders off.

I'm not sure Adam. The biggest hurdle for me and probably a lot of others has been the confidence factor to use them alone with Jets or Mini Discs. And I'm still sceptical enough about using them alone, and is why I started building and experimenting with spoon harnesses in the summer of 2000 or running them as sliders above cranks. The smaller spoons we used to have to use on three ways were a far cry from the nicer ones of today. Heck, they used to be more like thin tin then stamped stainless. But I'm not sure the success rate would have been any different. The 1/4 tot was king for a lot of years because it reflected that perfect alewife size and swimming motion our early walleyes keyed on during the summer. Bare Spoons were always popular on Erie, but were more a flasher or attractors to me until the last couple of years.

Don't know how many of you read my Apology post or my solution to it, but I tried that solution out today with some amazing results. We had 17 waleyes in the box and I traded out the Rattle tot's on one side for the Li'l Ernie Musky lures I bought. First walleye was about 4 pound on the perch color. Second walleye just a tad bigger on the same perch pattern. Last walleye was 31 inches long and engulfed the whole walleye pattern Li'l Ernie. Got some real stares from those MWC tournament boys at the dock. My second charter today was not as productive as we struggled to get their 15, so Ernie never made another apperence. :(

No problem Paul. We started adding small spoons in conjunction with cranks and 3 way swivels back in 1987 with just limited success. Then that morfed into huge egg sinkers in front of full size salmon trolling spoons in front of crawler harnesses by the early 90's, which came very close to duplicating the Eyeliminator set up. I even wrote an article about those rigs and how I was modifying and using rubber band releases that was going to be printed in the old Fins and Feathers magazine untill it went bankrupt that spring. And it's still my deepest feelings (IMV) that the Saginaw Bay's ecosystem and the ever changing fishery itself is dictating how successfull spoons have been or will continue to be on the bay. Some new invasive type species, along with increased amounts of some other native forage (IE) emerald shiners, along with the sheer growing bio-mass of natural walleyes we now have swimming around in Saginaw Bay has everything to do with why spoons are looking and working better on our fish. I wish I had as clear a view and maybe a solution to the $4.00 gas problem.

We run into the same thing occassionally on the Saginaw Bay. Only thing I've ever had luck with when this happens is L.O.N.G. leads and F.A.S.T. trolling speeds. My best method so far during this kind of funk has been using Rattle Tots 180 back with a 1/4 crawler on the belly hook and trolling at 2.6 or faster. And remember Saginaw Bay is only 26 feet deep in the deeper places I personally fish it. So God only knows if that distence back would accomplish the same visual and strike trigger for you in deeper waters. Good luck and refreshing to see truthfull bad reports when they happen as well as the good ones.

Paul. Here are the 4 ways I use the Eyeliminator Rigs. All but the third one down is with my own replacment coated wire attached to the back of their larger flasher spoon. The third one down is the way the Eyeliminators originally comes, except I have rebuilt and added a treble on the end and a huge #8 Tommy Harris Blade versus the #5 it would have originally came with.

Thanks LL. Nice to have fans on both sides of the State. :D I working on a few old river clients of mine and might get back over on the PM this early fall for a few river kings out of my Jet Sled. I do love those west side rivers.

Heres a picture of my newest versions. Scorpion Spoon/20 pound test plastic coated wire/#2 20 pound tested bead swivels front and back/treble hook off the back end of the scorpion/#2 sleeve crimps for treble and harness versus tied/#2 Mustad beak hook tied versus crimped and #8 beads out of Stamina Catalog.

I'm also picking up 2 or 3 perch on every charter. And as you can imagine the ones you catch on 3/8 Rattle Tots trolling 2.6 mph are some dandys. Along with having 4 banner years for walleye natural reproduction, the Bay has had 3 banner years for perch reproduction. The down side is the DNR figures most of them become mortality victims as forage or winter die off. Yet with having less pressure on them, both the size and just maybe the numbers will get close to what we used to have on the Bay. That would be sweet. :D

Heres the BIG lures I picked up. Top one is 6 inches long and is a Drifter Tackle "Muskie Mania" Li'l Ernie. Bottom one is 9 inches. Called a Triple D Series. Both are Muskie baits. Picked up 6 of each in some good colors. Also contacted my DNR buddy about what numbers of walleyes he knew of that are being taken out of the Bay this year. Below is his answer. Dan: Yes we have that walleye take information via our annual creel survey study. We won't have the results for 2008 until like March 2009 but I can tell you that last year (2007) that there was an average of 1,792 walleyes harvested per day in the month of July. My hunch is that that value is even greater this year. This is just the July value. June is very high too but the rest of the year is not as great. All tolled, last year's harvest was 286,607 walleyes from Saginaw Bay. By most estimates, this is about 10% of the harvestable total number, so a crude way of estimating the total number of walleyes (15" and larger) in the bay in 2007 would be 286607/0.10 or 2,866,070. Remarkably we believe this this is still shy of our recovery objectives. Put another way, this is still somewhat less than what the bay historically sustained on average. As you know, the vast majority of these walleyes now are all naturally reproduced (not many hatchery fish remaining in the population any more).

This morning I've decided on a plan. I'm taking a trip to Franks Great Outdoors this morning and buying 8 huge crankbaits. Don't know what type or brand yet, but they will be bigger then anything I've ever used before. They may even be Musky cranks, I don't know. One thing I've always done on my summer charters is reserve my own legal limit for counting mistakes we might make when moving the fish around in a cooler. One or two over the clients limit, yet under the total licensed legal limit protects me from an embarrasing ticket if it ever happened. My plan first is to ask the clients what they would like to do. If they want to stay out, I'll remove the cranks or gear that we're using when we've reached the clients legal limit and replace them with these giant lures. I've caught BIG walleyes on the Bay before that have had perch 8 inches long in their bellys. So our new mission will be to catch a trophy. I'm also going to file down the barbs on these lures in case the little guys get up the nerve to strike them. But I'm hoping nothing but the monsters or maybe a large PIKE will be interested. It may be a waste of time and be pretty boring for the remainder of the trip, but it will be more fair to my clients and less stressfull on any fish we catch on them in my view.

Wheeler. The guys who offer that "Limit every time" charter won't be in business very long.

I remember my first trip to Lake Erie in 1979 with my wife Debbie. We went down to see my Ma and my step dad. It was not even a year since my real dads death and Ma had some stuff she wanted me to have of dads that she had kept. While we were there me and my step dad took his old Lyman wooden boat out to the West Sister island and casted these new lures called Hot-N-tot's and limited out on walleyes. Then again in the spring of 86 we took a trip down and we took home three 3 man limits in as many days casting Gold Nuggets and crawlers near the Coolie (spelling?) Canal, out from the cooling towers in 7 feet of water. Then came the summers of 1988 and 89 on Saginaw bay, when 3 and 4 man limits by 10:30 was the norm. But I'm here to tell you that all those great trips and those particular fisheries pale in comparison to what's happening right now on the Saginaw Bay. The fishing is so good in fact I've had to apologize to my clients the last 3 trips for limiting out so early in the trip. Today we set lines at 8:00am and were done at 9:30am. I feel kinda weird apologizing actually, as what could be better then limiting out. I've been asked by a few clients if we could catch and release after that, but I refuse to continue to catch and possibly injure or kill any fish that may get stressed or gilled with a hook for the sake of just catching them. Give me a few honest answers about how you might feel if your trip was cut short because of good fishing. My rule is 5 hours or limit and 7 hours or limit (witch I actually thought I'd never use, at least not as fast as I have been), so refunding any portion of the charter fee is not done.

Heres a little more banter I took off my board on the fishing subject side of my post that may be helpful to some. great pictures and I tell ya, if you get stranded out there, your glad beyond words to get rescued. Im so glad you do that. It could really be hard with a paid charter in progress. Maybe on the way in eh? I remember helping some young guys out of Au Gres that were floating adrift. Whew that can be scarey!! Your fish still all on the rattle tots?? Answ: Yup. Rattlers still kicking azz and taking names. I like that!! what a lure.. and your convinced they are better, as opposed to just different, then hot n tots, or the frenzy's, or bombers etc... if your still putting a tad bit of meat on them... that has to be key... now... this is going to seem like a dumb question, probably obvious, but if I knew for sure I wouldn't ask... so with your system, your run them all those diff lines at different depths? Til you get hits, or just at different depths period cuz they hit at diff depths all the time.. or do the active fish tend to be at a certain depth.. ok ok... thats all capt... some dandy pictures coming in on the board.... PS any idea what happened to the cripple? motor konked out... ? Answ: You cannot/should not run cranks at different lengths on the same Mast type planer board tether line. You are asking for a big mess when doing so. Making turns or reeling in fish over the top of shorter or longer leads is not the best method believe me. I do ocassionally run either side at different depths though to cover high or low fish. But with the Rattle Tots or any diving cranks for that matter (and the proper leads to begin with) you can accomplish that to a degree by speeding up or slowing down. Every time I see suspended fish on the graph I slow down to about 1.6. They float up some then. See them on the bottom speed up to 2.4/2.6 and they dive deeper. Have also been adding the 1/4 crawler to each belly hook. It's been working great. Rattlers diving range is deeper then the regular 1/4 tots. The guys in the boat we towed in suspected the engine blew. Even mast type (when running 4 or more lines) have to be allowed to fall back away from the other lines for a few seconds before you start reeling at all. It's also part of the reason I prefer Mast type boards over In-Lines myself and deals with your question about varying line leads on the same tether line to possibly cover more of the water column. The top of my planer mast on my boat is about 10 feet off the water. Then the tether line tapers down and attaches to the board at the water line. Only the very outside line you set and slide down closest to the board, is riding near the surface of the water similar to what In-line boards would be. The rest are progressively spaced up the line (closer to the boat) and riding higher off the water. And with all having the same lead lengths, they are progressively running shallower in the water column the further up the line they are set. So starting to pull a fish over them right away from any line released further out and down the line is not a good idea. I'm guessing that my most inside line attached to the release, the one closest to the boat, is riding about 6 feet off the water and the crank might be running as much as 3 feet higher in the water column then the fourth and end line is. So I'm running what is like an angled line of cranks progressively down through the water column. What crank gets hit also tells me something about where the fish are foraging. If I get more fish on the outside line (the deeper running of them all) I speed up to get more of the cranks down deeper. Inside line (shallower) slow down to raise them up. It's not rocket science, but pretty d*mn near.

GJ Frank. Same thing happened to me last week with my buddy. Seems his brother in law was very sick in another state so they flew over to support him. I knew it had too be something serious for him to miss a fishing trip. I'd give him a call if he's a very good friend.

You mean add one more thing to remember to do on my charters. No thanks. I'm starting to long for those days only a few years back, when 7 walleyes in the box for an all day trip and you were considered the Marina Stud.

Ya, I bought one of those as well. But the damn thing has to be clicked to 100 before it starts over and there isn't any button to zero it out. Must be one of the cheaper ones.:D

Started at 8:00am and threw #20 in the box at 11:10. But when we got back to shore we had 23. See pictures. Always nice to help somebody out in case you ever need it.

Ya, I know when to slow down, and I always take 2 jugs of iced Gator Aide on every trip out. Being a big guy, me and hot or humidity never did get along. I'm the guy you see outside wearing a T-shirt until November.

Started out this morning in the spot that has been treating me good. Had 3 poles out and "BANG" fish on. Then caught 2 more quick ones on the remaining 3 rods and things went dead the further East I trolled towards the shipping channel. I turned the boat back around and started back SW against the waves and when doing so poped a fish on the slow side of the boats turn. So I slowed our troll down to 1.6, which is kinda slow for rattle tots. Things soon picked up but only for a while. I should mention when we started out this morning it was 68 degrees. By this time 11:00am it was in the low 80's and climbing. I'm not sure if I speeded up to keep cool or thinking the warmer air and water temps would get the fish excited. But by the time we threw #20 in the box I was trolling 2.7 mph on the GPS and we were catching fish after fish. Ended up throwing the last 3 keepers back. But man did that heat take its toll on me.

I like it. Would make scrolling a lot easier for those looking for one section over the other.

As far as I can tell we have 4 distinct groups we keep catching, which reflects the 4 record year classes of naturally spawned fish our DNR has detected in their fall trawls. We caught fish from 6 inches to 25 1/2 inches yesterday. It was also my understanding that Erie to has had 3 great year classes in a row. Don't be to discouraged because your not seeing any as they often segregate in waters as deep as Erie. Remember we call a spot just 24 Feet deep here on Saginaw Bay "The Balck Hole".

After the workout I got today on the bay, then cleaning/bagging all those fish and going through my boat scrubbing regiment, I seriously thought about calling 911 to get tranported off the dock to my truck. Fishing today came as close to work as it ever has for me. If one of my clients would have suggested "Cheeking" the fish I might have blown the generous tip I ended up geting.

Notice I didn't put a title but just a date on my post? I'll tell you why. I'm out of adjectives that describe what the fishing has been like on the Bay so far this year and totally speechless to describe the last 2 days. 24 keeper walleyes 1 giant perch and a white bass in about 2 hour 10 minutes this morning. This on top of yesterdays catch and release fest with the TV guys and I'm ready for a long rest. All the smaller walleyes were coming on the spoons sliders today so I removed them pronto and we kept pounding them on the Rattle Tots. Same place in 21 FOW. Nicer size fish as well today.