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Back from ICAST (the fishing biz trade show) where we got a first look at all the new fishing gear coming down the pipeline. I’m still wading trolling through that and it'll be coming your way soon-ish, but firing off this quicker-than-normal TW to hold you off in the meantime. 👊 Thanks so much for reading!
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"When you're throwing them big jigs, you're going for those really aggressive fish...trying to cast at as many possible every day."
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That's recent NWT champ Jayden Wendel on Chasen Walter's Between Hooksets podcast. The more you talk to the top guys on tour, the more you hear about how FAST these guys like to fish with FFS. Everything they do is optimized for speed and efficiency and it's no wonder these dudes are so dominant.
Here's more from Jayden on how he's fishing fast and putting on the turn and burn out on tour:
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> "With your more finesse [lighter] jigs, it takes a while to land it on their head. So you're only getting in front of so many fish a day.
> "With a bigger jig, you can get in front of them a lot more. It depends where you're at and how the fish are biting.
> "It does take a little bit to get used to that great big rock [jighead]. It's great once you see how fast [heavier jigheads] go – you can get down...even quicker than you thought you could.
> "A 1/4-oz [used to be] heavy for me. It's was usually a 1/16- or 1/8-oz that I would throw last year.
> "I was on Sakakawea and I would throw at a fish maybe 30 to 40 casts before it actually landed in front of their nose but I was pretty confident once I seen that bait get there, it was game over.
> "With your more finesse jigs, it takes a while to land it on their head if you're trying to do something like that, so you're only getting in front of so many fish a day."
Beau Schilling is on that pod with Jayden and they said that Beau actually put him on the bigger jig deal, so I guess you'll be seeing a lot more of this from Beau and Jayden this season:
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How Ross Robertson adds meat to his spoons 🥩
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Ross "Bigwater Fishing" Robertson dropped some sneaky bait mods in a recent YouTube video over on his channel Bigwater Fishing – awful kind of him – and the dude likes to throw a ‘crawler on the back of his spoons to give 'em a little flava flav....
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Here's Ross on of his best summer spoon mods:
> "Basically – Silver Streak Junior Spoon.... And this is a VMC SpinDrift Hook. So it's kind of like a Slow Death, but it's got a built-in swivel....
> "One thing that I'll tell you about this with the spoon thing, you go, 'Man, I'm killing them on spoons. I don't need your little modified spoon rig.' I'm like, 'Yeah, a lot of days you probably don't.
> "But I would tell you, notice how these [fish] are hooked really well.
> "A lot of times, when they're just coming up on spoons or they're falling out or you're losing them – these [hooks] are in there.
> "They just get on the meat.
> "I take this [whole] crawler...[and] try to thread this up as much as I can along the whole shank. That's going to cause this to whack around also with a little wobble of this spoon here.
> "So I just take the treble hook off, I put that on and I thread that crawler right up on there. Some days the little variations of these different spoon harnesses, whatever you want to call them, make a huge difference in your catching.
> "So when you're out there, if you're catching, tweak it. If you're not catching, definitely tweak it."
More details in his full YT vid here:
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And when Ross isn't trolling for Lake Erie giants with his sneaky, modded lures 👀 he's tossing VMC Snitch Jigs at 'em like in this vid he got on his Humminbird MEGA Live 2 of this big 'ol walleye giving him the old fake out, but still got it! Is that awesome or what?!
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“The perfect slot doesn’t exis...” 🫢🤥
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- That’s Layne Maier stopping in his tracks while talking about this Last Mountain Lake (SK) ham that measured 17.5” yet was pushing 4 lbs!
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Thing is built like Jimothy, the ultra-famous Seattle raccoon lol.
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Glide bait setups to lose less fish 💯
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Here's a little throwback to a Target Walleye vid from last summer catching 'em how we used to in the “olden days of walleye fishing” – sharpshooting with a #7 Rapala Jigging Rap. I was out using crazy ancient tech like Side Imaging and 2D (lol kidding of course 😂), graphing the biggest most obvious points to find those pods to pick off with the Jigging Rap.
Something with reaction baits that I think is still a little slept on though is the gear you fish it with. Here a couple important notes on my gear from the vid:
> "I land so many more fish that I hook into with mono, this is 10-lb Sufix Advance Mono. A lot of folks still swear by braid with it, but you've got to compensate somewhere. You've got to have a shock absorber in your system.
> "I run a stiffer rod. I've got a 7' M F Fenwick Eagle Spinning Rod. It's a powerful rod with tons of backbone. Imo it would be way too stiff for Jigging Raps if you were running braid
because you're going to be tearing hooks out.
> "They've got a lot of weight they can throw around. When they head shake and you've got a 5/8-oz, 3/4-oz or 1-oz bait down there with 1 little hook, they go like this and it slingshots out.”
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> “You combine tiny little hooks with the momentum of super heavy baits, and the leverage of those head-shakes might as well be them waving goodbye.
> "For me, the stiffer rod with the mono being the shock absorber – and keeping steady pressure on ‘em – I just land way more fish with that.
> "I'm going to run a fluorocarbon leader – 12 or 14-lb, 12-18-inch leader of Sufix Advance Fluoro – just helps keep that bait from wrapping up.
> "I've got a little #10 or #12 VMC Rolling Swivel on here. These things are constantly darting around down on bottom and creating line twist. Having that swivel just makes it so you don't create tons of line twist and issues. It just fishes so much better.
> "I've got the Abu Garcia Revo Rocket, the highest-speed gear ratio in spinning reels that I'm aware of. I'm bringing in 43-inches of line per crank.
> "That's super important with glide baits, Jigging Raps, heavy lures like that and baits where you're getting a reaction bite. You might get bit, or realize you're bit, when you go to snap and you're right here – and you've got to pick up line real fast.
> "With 1 crank, I'm bringing in almost 4' of line and I'm choked back up on them. If you get any slack in this setup, they are off.”
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How Kyle Peterson is matching the hatch 🎯
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This is exact reason he picks the “ghost chrome gill” color Berkley Finisher almost every time in northern fisheries:
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Uncanny color match...but can we talk about how Kyle might need to be less concerned with what his bait looks like and more concerned with getting that back hook replaced! 🤣
Also, please tell me that that perch is not what did that to that hook...maybe lighten up the gear a little man!
I guess this pic right here from Kyle's Facebook will have to suffice as proof that it's not micro perch bending his hooks out...but we got our eye on you man! 😅
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Sending 'er off with an interesting critter Dylan Nussbaum caught while prefishing for the National Team Championship (kicked off today) on the St. Mary's River. 😅 Just a tale of a man, and a monster. #Quasimodo
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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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