Walleyes respond to some of the same lures and general techniques as bass but with different presentations. Here’s how to fish three key lure types “walleye style.”
Perhaps the most “duh” statement I’ve ever made in this blog: "Walleye Are Not Bass.” But it’s a distinction worth discussing. The sheer volume of great information about bass fishing is immense. Likewise, the walleye media posts detailed descriptions of tournament-winning tactics and more. How do we as anglers utilize that information? What can walleye anglers gain from studying bass tactics and vice versa?
The jig-minnow approach has breached the info dam between species, thus uniting all with common ground. Still, to many old school walleye anglers, the term jig-minnow implies something akin to a Lindy Fuzz-E-Grub jig with a live, lip-hooked fathead chub attached. Yes, an obvious difference between the walleye community and the bass crowd is that walleye anglers use live bait! Still, advances in plastics and jig design have been whittling away at the bait game for the past couple decades. More walleye anglers use artificials than ever before.
If you’ve been absorbing the Finesse Boot Camp series from Dan Miguel and Great Lakes Finesse, you already know several parallels between smallmouth bass and walleye. Distinctions between species are less obvious when walleye, largemouth or smallmouth are on a wild bite. Just get something close, and they’ll plaster it. Feeding up or feeding down isn’t even an issue when they are feeding hard. But when fishing gets finessey, tailoring your game to walleye tendencies will produce better fishing.
Three popular multi-species methods help illustrate how we can focus on walleye-specific approaches:
· Jerkbaiting/Stickbaiting
· Dropshotting
· Jig-Minnow
Jerkbaiting Becomes Stickbaiting
In the world of bass fishing, jerkbaits are fished jerky. I watch tournament coverage almost every weekend. And what bass anglers label as a “slow presentation” or “subtle twitches” is noticeably faster and jerkier than what is typical in the walleye game. The traditional cadence is stated as “twitch, twitch, pause,” and those twitches are sharp snap or jerks.
When walleyes are hot, the same snappy approach you see in bass tournaments works pretty well. But walleyes are usually NOT HOT, and walleye anglers call the same long, thin lures “stickbaits” for a reason. We tend to fish ‘em like they are plain old sticks. The walleye equivalent to jerkbait fishing is decidedly mellower with slow pulls and sweeps (or even a steady retrieve) rather than staccato snaps. And while we may watch a bass pro trigger bass with more snapping jerky action, we’ll more often see walleye anglers trigger fish with pauses and stalls in the retrieve. The word “stickbait” implies less action, and “jerkbait” implies more action. And that’s the key difference in fishing these baits for walleyes. Most of the time, go stickbaiting.
I’m talking about lures like Smithwick Rogues, Bomber Long As, Cotton Cordell Ripplin’ Red Fins, and the newer specialty lures like the BOOYAH Flash Point, with added visual flashes in a stickbait/jerkbait frame. These shallow to mid-depth lures work well cast or trolled and have been part of the walleye game for decades.
Drop Shotting for Less Action
Less action doesn’t suggest less bites from fish, but rather less dancing action added to your dropshot plastics. If you haven’t played around with a drop shot in the shallows beside the boat to watch what it does, you need to do this the next time you have a drop shot rigged. Even subtle ticking of the sinker on the bottom creates a not-so-subtle dancing and flapping of a soft plastic bait, akin to the action of one of those roadside air dancer tube men with the addition of a supercharged blower. Most plastics on a normal nose-hooked drop shot rig move so much and so quickly it darn near makes me jump back to stay out of the way. Great for bass, but definitely NOT the best action for typically neutral or even off-bite walleyes.
Because the concept of drop shotting is so walleye applicable — almost like dragging a baited Lindy Rig that always stays just above bottom – I have played with how to make my drop shot rigs better for targeting walleye. The primary change I’ve implemented o tone it down a notch for walleyes is to thread the bait onto the hook rather than nose-hooking it. The more rigid hook attachment knocks the action back to a more subtle Reggae beat. Yah mon.
My favorite dropshot plastic is a fairly subtle YUM FF Sonar Minnow. Part of the allure of this bait is that it’s designed for you to add whatever action you want. Of note, the tail of the FF Sonar Minnow only waggles side-to-side — like a real minnow. No up and down wiggle. I suspect that subtle FF Sonar Minnow tail wag is also part of its appeal to both green and brown bass. Several of the plastics from Great Lakes Finesse are also designed with controlled fluttering action. Although I’m just starting to experiment with crossing over the GLF gear for drop shot walleyes, it’s pretty obvious these mellow plastics reproduce exactly what I’ve been doing with the FF Sonar Minnow. I’m talking about Great Lakes Finesse baits I’ve been running with a jig for a couple of years, including the Drop Minnow, Drop Worm and Hover Minnow.
Jig-Minnow Distinctions
The glory of the Jig-Minnow technique is that it works for everything. Hardly a fish that swims won’t smack a nicely “strolled” bait. Same for hovering plastics at a fish’s eye level. And this approach works great whether you are fishing traditional methods or sniping with forward facing sonar. It’s a fantastic way to present plastics in a realistic manner. But again, walleye aren’t bass!
I follow the bass tournament circuits closer than most walleye guys, and I feel empathy toward those poor bassers having to shake the rod all day long. I am old enough to have a bit of natural shake in my hands but nothing like the bass angler’s jig-minnow shake. Coupled with various jig designs and plastics with enhanced body roll, this is mostly a way to add action to the subtle technique. But is the shake the best action for walleye? Is more action the goal for triggering walleye, as it seems to be for bass?
Of course, when the bite is on, the key is to get the jig-minnow near an feeding bass or walleye, and wild or mild action seems to make little difference. When they are really on, they’ll commit pretty readily. The distinction between walleye jig-minnow presentations and bass jig-minnow tactics matters more when we are trying to tempt fish to bite that are just barely willing.
It’s not news that walleye like jigging action. Up-and-down movement has been a big key for catching walleyes since recreational fishing began. Well, that up-and-down motion isn’t just for vertical jigging. It also applies to jig-minnow methods. It seems to me and my forward-facing sonar that walleyes respond best when my jig-minnow gets dropped a foot or two and rebounds back to its path – basically jigged horizontally.
When fishing for bottom-related walleye, I’ll drop to the bottom and jig back up to stroll…drop and stroll, drop and stroll. I’ll generally pause on the drop with the timing dictated by water temp and walleye attitude. What I see on the televised bass circuits is more raising the bait to get bass to feed up. Of course, that teasing upward climb will also get walleye to feed up, but perhaps not as often as they feed down. In the walleye game, “pinning” a jig-minnow to the bottom with a nose down biting angle seems to be the norm (though each fish delivers its own attitude, which may or may not match expectations). And as much fun as it is to get fish to follow baits up before the strike, walleye anglers tend to drop down to trigger the strike more often than bass guys do.
As noted above, controlled action baits like YUM FF Sonar Minnow, plus GLF plastics like the Hover Minnow, play the stroll technique to a “T.” What about pintail baits like the new YUM Scottsboro Sniper Shad and GLF Drop Minnow? Same approach. The first walleye that followed my Sniper Shad this spring triggered as soon as I dropped it to the bottom and paused. Pinned it!
I’d be remiss not to mention the jig-crawler game that’s been so productive on the walleye tournament circuits. Basically, this is the baited version of the jig-minnow approach, and walleye love it! Take a round-ball jig like the B-Max Lindy Jig or the YUM Forward Facing Sonar Jig and add a whole or half crawler. The presentations are pretty similar to what both walleye anglers do with plastics – just done with bait.
At the risk of oversimplifying the subtleties, walleye and bass commonly have different triggers that prompt them to react. These subtleties may be less important when either species is in full vacuum mode inhaling anything that comes close. It’s when the fish get picky that playing to walleyes tendencies will get you more bites!
