Jason Mitchell’s spinner-harness hack during algae blooms. 🦠
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Props to Jason Mitchell for always sharing his sneaky little tricks and secrets with the rest of us peasants! 🙌
> Deadly walleye spinner harness hack for algae blooms, hot water temps or even during the fall when fish seem to prefer added vibration.
> Double up two spinners and clevices much like what you see on many double bladed musky bucktails like a Cow Girl. Make sure to interlock the clevices and two blades will move much more water and add more vibration.
> This modification to a basic spinner harness can work great in extremely dirty or turbid water and really shines during algae blooms. We also find situations where this altered harness really catches fish at higher speeds when water temps are warmer than 78 degrees and also in the fall when fish seem to prefer a bigger bait.
> Often add a single long shank Aberdeen hook for either threading a half or 3/4 crawler or Eye Candy Jigging Crawler if you want added durability with more water displacement and the option of experimenting with color.
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“Power corking” scattered summer walleyes. 🎯
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> During the summer doldrums...walleyes scatter in ones and twos and small groups because food is plentiful and they don’t necessarily need to gang up to feed. Anglers following conventional summertime wisdom will often slowly work a leech-tipped rig along breaklines or explore the weedlines. Anchoring on points and humps and waiting for walleyes to decide it is dinner time is another option.
> However, impatient anglers, or those preferring a faster-paced strategy, can go on the hunt to find active, feeding walleyes. One highly productive way to do so is a technique called “power corking.” In some respects it’s a watery version of road hunting, but instead of driving around looking for game, anglers use their boats to quickly track down active walleyes and catch them.
> “Real” power corking started in MN, and most likely on Mille Lacs Lake. It’s a huge body of water containing large flats ranging in depth from 15-30’, ideal for walleyes moving up to hunt. Those big flats, though rich in forage, don’t have much structure to hold walleyes because they’re basically, well, flat.
> Traditionally, anglers would drift along these flats looking for walleyes while their corks supported a leech, minnow or crawler. The problem with this is that you might have to drift a long, long way to ultimately find pods of fish.
> The “power” in the new approach refers to the boat’s motor, which is used to actively search for walleyes. Jon Thelen...says he’ll cruise along at 5 mph or so while searching for walleyes that are off the bottom. Upon spotting a fish on sonar that looks right, he’ll drop his bobber and jig right behind the boat.
> “Walleyes that are up in the water column generally are active fish, ones that will bite. If I can find them up, I can get them to hit.” Electronics are an essential part of this strategy. In the past, 2D sonar with a GPS system was all that was needed. While that still works, advances in fishing sonar have further increased the angler’s ability to find active walleyes.
> With 2D sonar, the angler slowly motors across a flat, along a break line or anywhere his or her experience suggests walleyes might be. When the boat passes over walleyes up off bottom, the angler kicks the motor into neutral and drops the bait to the fish, directly behind the boat in the sonar cone. This is an important detail: The bait must be immediately above the fish, not just in the vicinity. It’s enough to drop the bait right by the transom or just a few feet beyond – again, keeping the lure in the sonar cone with the walleyes.
> If the boat glides off the fish, you must back up and reset the cork and bait over the walleyes. While that’s still a good technique, forward-facing sonar has changed the game a bit.
> Now, anglers can scan ahead of the boat and even watch the fish’s reaction to the bait. That’s definitely a paradigm shift. However – and this is the entire key to power corking – it’s important to keep moving, to continue hunting for fish. Most pros that use this technique suggest that if the fish you’re on aren’t biting after a brief period, don’t keep trying to make them do so. Instead, move on to find active fish that will bite.
> “The fish we target are active, or at least they’re moving to find food, and you don’t have to use finesse tactics to keep from spooking them,” says Mark Courts, a pro angler from Harris, Minn. “You want to get the bait down there quickly into the zone, and adding some weight helps.”
> Courts tends to prefer a 1/16-oz jig to put the bait above the walleyes he’s targeting.
> Tommy Kemos...likes 1/16-oz jigs with live bait, but he’ll use 1/8-oz and even 1/4-oz jigs when he needs to get deep quickly. Both anglers also employ a 3/8-oz tungsten weight above a barrel swivel and below the float. This weight helps anchor the float and gets the bait down faster as well.
> While most walleye anglers utilize standard slip bobbers or corks, Kemos veers toward Wobble Bobbers – ovoid floats that don’t have the “sticks” through which the line slides. The ovoid bobber is more compact, and it responds just as readily as the standard slip bobber.
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> When rigging up with slip bobbers, ensure your bobber stop is set so that your bait will tantalizingly hang a little above the fish. As with ice fishing, Thelen says that a walleye that moves up to look at a bait is often one that will ultimately hit it.
> Kemos seconds this suggestion of putting baits above target fish. He also uses FireLine for his main line. He feels this is essential because many active walleyes will take the bait as it is still falling, and FireLine lets him feel the hit a bit better. Generally, fluorocarbon (6- to 10-lb test) seems to be the choice for leaders because it is nearly invisible in water and resists abrasion. Conditions will dictate what pound test and what leader length should be used, but a 3-4’ leader is a good start, with longer leaders potentially necessary in ultra-clear water or when fish are finicky or pressured.
Keep reading here.
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New-school spinner tactics for summer walleye. 👀
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The Virtual Angling crew tracked down full-time guide and tourney angler Colt Anderson to break down his new-school method for fishing spinners. I thoroughly enjoy when folks combine proven tactics + today’s technology = to boost their walleye fishing results:
> Fishing spinners for walleye is a time-tested tactic that is still a great fish catcher. Yet, as time progresses, new technologies in materials and electronics have elevated the game to a whole new level of efficiency.
> We catch up with Anderson on a flat, calm, hot day in mid-August, arguably one of the toughest times and conditions for walleye fishing. This time of year, walleye head to deeper offshore structures and tend to scatter more than school. For this, you need to cover water and keep your presentation in the strike zone for as long as possible. For Anderson, there is no better way to do that than to troll spinners.
> Before dropping lines, Anderson first looks for areas holding these small and scattered schools on the edge of deep humps. He does this by following contours with his 200hp mercury pushing forward but utilizes a sneaky trick to scan larger areas. Anderson has attached a Garmin LiveScop transducer to his transom mount Minn Kota Vantage trolling motor, which allows him to pan 270 degrees around the boat. This enables Anderson to look at the hump from all angles and affirm fish seen on side imaging to determine if there are enough fish in the area to target.
> ...Anderson custom rigs his spinners with a set of specific components. First, he ties a double hook crawler harness using two #6 octopus hooks attached via snell knot on a 3’ chunk of 15-lb fluorocarbon.
> [His] go-to spinner is the XTackle Spin Bead. ...when zig-zagging across humps chasing fish, the Spin Beads stay up and continue to spin, unlike conventional metal blades. The Spin beads are so inline and small that they completely resist getting bound up while spinning continuously [and won’t twist your line up if the swivel becomes clogged with debris]. As mentioned, they also don’t sink to the bottom, especially with an inflated crawler – a major benefit over metal blades at slow speeds or inside turns.
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> Anderson uses a full crawler on his double-hooked snell. This helps combat greedy perch from removing all of your worm when dragging across a structure. When fish are being finicky, they often need time to commit. Whether that’s no time at all, like with reaction tactics, or a long time to follow and decide. Again, the beauty of a spinner is that it travels at slow speeds and stays in the strike zone for as long as you want it to. Anderson uses a 2-oz bottom-bouncer, a great average size for fishing various depths while consistently keeping the spinner near the bottom. At times, Anderson trolls down to 0.5 mph, but in summer, they tend to like it rolling around 1.3 mph with the walleye’s heated metabolism.
> This unique spinner presentation combined with forward-facing sonar means you’re always on fish, significantly upping your odds of putting fish in the boat, even in the toughest conditions.
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You can keep your pumpkin spice....
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' this fatty right here is the definition of fall! (no offense, Bobby 😅)
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That’s Capt. Bobby Greene of Meals On Reelz Charters running WNC Reapers for insanely paunchy Lake Erie walleye on the western basin. 🤯 That fish is on a whole ‘nother level!
Don’t get me wrong, I love sweeeeet summertime...but I am SO ready for the fall bite when walleyes are finally like:
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New “Top 5” vid coming in hot! 🍿
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I just posted episode 77 on our YouTube channel. Hope you dig it 👊 and thanks SO much for taking the time to watch and comment!
Also a big thx to our friends at Sea Foam for keeping us running smooth and making this fun video series possible!!
Here we go:
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1. MI: NWT championship, Lake Huron, Sept 4-6.
The Super Bowl of walleye fishing kicks off TOMORROW. If you’re curious as to what it’s gonna take to win 🤔 I did a little preview a couple weeks back.
The live leaderboard will be here tomorrow when folks start weighing in. They’ll also be livestreaming the weigh-ins beginning at 2pm cst.
2. AR: Beaver Lake fishery reestablishes walleye.
> Walleye were native to the White River before Beaver, Table Rock and Bull Shoals lakes were built. Between 1964 and 1969, Beaver Lake was stocked with 6 million walleye, but these fish didn't thrive.
> In 2020, Game and Fish began stocking 100,000 walleye fingerlings every other year [in Beaver Lake] because research indicated that walleye typically do not produce strong year classes annually. A good year class one year often leads to less successful classes in later years due to competition and predation from larger fish. Essentially, Game and Fish aimed to maximize the effectiveness of its stocking efforts.
> Biologists conduct a walleye age sample at Beaver every 5 years. These surveys show that the fish grow very quickly here. Most walleye reach the minimum legal length limit of 18” in 3-4years. That's much faster than in the upper Midwest, where an 18” walleye can be 6 years old. This difference is attributed to more forage and a longer growing season in Arkansas compared to northern climates.
> The walleye fishery in Beaver Lake is improving, though it is still young. Recent gill net samples indicate the average size of walleye is increasing.
Super cool!
3. MN: “Chili Bowl” walleye derby happening Oct 11-12.
Registration is open for the 14th annual tourney hosted by Border View Lodge on the Rainy River.
It’s catch-measure-release format, capped at 75 boats (they filled up last year again) with great cash payouts to the top 13 boats and followed up with a chili dinner/celebration afterwards. Btw this year there’s a free prime rib dinner at the rules meeting the night before.
Father/daughter duo Chad and Olivia Olson have won it back to back years running #9 Rapala Shad Raps upstream into the current between 1.3-1.8 mph on leadcore. And yet everyone else just keeps jigging with frozen shiners? 🤷♂️😅
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Might I recommend a few other teams try tying on this bad boy? Lol
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7. Russia: Scientists have found an extinct species of fish.
> DNA studies have confirmed their belonging to the species Clupeonella abrau, which was considered extinct due to changes in the ecosystem of the lake, as well as the settlement of other fish species like walleye.
> The discovered fish species has not been encountered by scientists since 2008. To confirm the results of the study, experts had to refer to the data from 1938. They compared the mitochondrial genome of modern samples with the museum one. According to the results, the differences amounted to 0.15%.
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The #6 size VMC Bladed Hybrid Treble is the one I use probably 90%+ of the time. It’s perfect for #11 Original Floaters, #7 Shallow Shad Raps, #12 Husky Jerks, #9 Jigging Raps, and #6 Rippin’ Raps.
Most sites will list the stock hook size that comes on their cranks – go by that and it’s a direct swap. Typically they’re gonna be #6, but some larger cranks will be a #5, #4 or #3.
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Little more about the Rapala Glass Shad Rap if you haven’t seen it yet:
> ...molded high-impact plastic with holographic foil insert that allows the chameleon-like Glass Shad Rap to pick up the color of its surroundings and bounce the same color back in an iridescent glow.
> Glass Shad Raps suspend on pause and swims with a slightly different action than the legendary balsa model. Add internal rattle, VMC black nickel hooks and hand-tuned and tank-tested features, this lure truly has it all.
I’ve had some awesome luck with these baits, especially in clear water. Of course they have some great natural looking colors, too. Pics don’t do ’em justice:
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They also have a Scatter Rap version that's GREAT for intercepting fish during the early-fall transition. Target the edges of weedlines – just off the first break in 10-14′ – while longlining braid 100-150′ behind the boat:
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Thanks SO much for reading! 👊 I’ll see you back on Thursday....
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FRIENDS OF TARGET WALLEYE
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Target Walleye – walleye during open water and all species during hardwater – is brought to you by Al Lindner, Jay Kumar, Chris Philen, Brett McComas and other diehard fish-heads like you!
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Brett McComas is the main man for Target Walleye He was discovered in Brainerd, MN after years of wondering how in the heck people break into the fishing biz. He's in it now, but still can't answer that question.... Brett is one of those guys who majored in marketing, only because there was no such thing as a "fishing degree" at the time.... Get him at brett@targetwalleye.com
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