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It’s walleye time on Minnesota lakes
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Wednesday, 02 July 2008
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Ron Anlauf
Outdoors Writer
It’s a great time to be a walleye angler. Now’s when early summer patterns set up that can be easily exploited and when modern technology really comes into play.
With a good map and great electronics (and a little know how), you can really put a hurt on ol’ marble eyes.
By using a graph and an accurate map you get to and get over potential fish holding structure and quickly scan an area and know if you’re barking up the wrong tree. You can do it all before ever wetting a line and save yourself a lot of wasted time fishing dead water.
The thing is deeper fish show up readily on a high definition graph like the Humminbird 997c, and if they’re there you can see them and if not you won’t. In that case it might be time to move on down the road.
Lakes like Mille Lacs, Winnie, and even Leech are loaded with good potential hot spots that can stack up with super summer ‘eyes.
On Mille Lacs it’s offshore mud flats and rock humps. On Winnie it’s tons of bars and humps. And on Leech its humps, bars, and mid depth flats that break into deeper water.
All can hold big schools of active fish and best of all they can usually be caught all day (my kind of fish) and not just during the first and last few hours of daylight.
Live bait rigs like Northland Roach Rigs tipped with big lively leeches or crawlers slowly trolled along the top edges of quick breaking drop offs and on down the break is a top early summer producer.
The trick is to move just as slowly as you can and give your leech some extra time to work its magic. It’s not a fast way to fish but hopefully you’ve already done your homework with your electronics and have located some concentrations.
A quicker and extremely efficient way to cover water is to troll a spinner and crawler on a multiple hook harness and get moving. It’s also a great way to approach fish that are more spread out and not stacked up in a particular area.
A spinner rig trolled behind a bouncer is a great way to work over unfamiliar water and is relatively snag resistant when used properly. That means keeping the bouncer running as straight up and down as possible while staying in contact with the bottom.
If you let out too much line and let it tip over the bait will drag on the bottom and won’t get hit and you’ll spend too much time snagged up.
See you on the water.
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