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I have a fishing buddy who actually can crawl a spoon over the bottom,
dragging it slowly, a foot at a time.
How he does it without losing spoon after spoon I'll never know. I
can't do it. And he catches fish doing it. A
young child or a novice fisherman seems to catch fish easily with
a spoon. They don't know how they are
supposed to fish it so they jerk it, let it lay, move it erratically,
forget about it for minutes at a time and end
up giving it a unique action that those poor fish have never seen.
I fish a lot of
Walleye tournaments and jigs were my "go to" bait for
years. I am convinced that the spoons
are another versatile way to cover water fast and yet have
the option to slow down and finesse without having
to change baits. Try vertical jigging with a crankbait! When the
fish are up shallow and feeding I cast and snap
jig the spoon back to the boat. For those of you with a Bass fishing
background, you will have to form a new
habit. Finish your cast! Most Bass fishermen are casting
to spots that they hope will hold fish. With Walleye,
those fish could be anywhere between where your lure lands and the
boat. Always finish your cast, ending up
directly under the boat, vertically jig the spoon a few times, let
it rest a few inches off the bottom, and jig it
again.
Many fine Walleye
are taken directly beneath the boat. I try to maintain bottom contact
with each jigging
stroke; snap it up and let it fall to the bottom, kicking up puffs
of sand or mud or clicking on gravel or rock.
Experiment. Sometimes the fish seem to want the spoon to fall on
a fairly tight line. This holds the nose of the
spoon up and lets it pendulum forward. Other times they seem to
prefer you to just dump slack and let the
spoon dart erratically down, this way and that. This is probably
the most difficult to master because, when
in an aggressive feeding mood, Walleye tend to hit the spoon on
the fall, making it difficult to feel the hit.
Be a line watcher
and take up the slack quickly. Set the hook at the slightest sign
of resistance on the
upstroke. The way I fish a spoon most often, though, is to let it
fall on "controlled slack". A slight bow in the
line allows the spoon to flutter down with a side to side motion
and in a more vertical descent. When fishing
in this manner I don't snap the spoon as much, rather gliding it
towards me on the upstroke. When the fish
are biting short, skinning or stealing minnows or leeches, we've
all had those days when a stinger hook just
doesn't work. They just don't seem to want it. With a spoon, the
business end is the back. It's hard to hit
too short to miss the treble hook on the back of a spoon.
I fish bladebaits
basically the same as spoons except that I rely on bladebaits more
often for vertical
presentations. Some days the fish seem to want the flash of a spoon
and other days the vibration of the
bladebait is the ticket. In my experience, the bladebait is
a better performer in colder water.
Have any of you
ever fished in a tournament where the fish just weren't to be had?
Of course, we all have,
at one time or another, encountered conditions that just shut the
fish down as if they had lockjaw. Let me
give you an example of what heavy metal can do in these situations.
In late October
of 1999, The Southern Ohio Walleye Club held it's two-day, year
end championship on
Tappan Lake, in East Central Ohio. Saturday dawned clear and cloudless
and there had been a twenty degree
drop in temperature overnight. The water lay like glass with not
a ripple on the surface for most of the day.
The majority of
the contestants in the tournament fished tried and true traditional
methods. My Partner and
I went to deep water where we had located fish during pre-fishing
and began vertically jigging large, 1/2 ounce
Vib-"E" bladebaits. We worked the blades aggressively,
ripping them on the upstroke and dumping the slack,
letting them fall erratically. At days end, at weigh-in, it was
a glum and solemn group that gathered around the
scales to see how everyone else had done.
Out of the entire
field, only two boats weighed in fish. Our boat weighed in a limit.
One other boat weighed
in two fish for a total weight of under 4 pounds. Day two was virtually
identical to day one as far as the weather
was concerned. We started out with ice in our rod guides. One boat
came near where we were fishing and
asked us what we were using. We told them what, where
,and how and gave them some Vib-"E"s. At weigh-in
that afternoon, again, only two boats were able to bring fish to
the scales. The boat that had asked us for help
weighed in four fish, moving into second place. We again weighed
in a limit.
Total weight for
third place after two days of hard fishing was less than 4 pounds.
Second place was less
than 7 pounds. Our boat weighed in a total of 43.23 pounds! Our
biggest fish was nearly 7 pounds. Now this
doesn't sound like much weight if you are used to fishing Lake Erie
or one of the other premier Walleye lakes,
but this is a small, inland reservoir and these were Saugeye, not
Walleye. With a minimum 14" limit, many
events here are won by weights ranging from 10 to 15 pounds. We
could see the fish on our electronics and
the bladebaits triggered the otherwise neutral to negative fish.
And all you Bass
fishermen take heed! We catch a lot of Bass, both Largemouth
and Smallmouth, on
heavy metal during the course of a season while fishing for Walleye.
So dig out some of those spoons or
bladebaits that you rarely use , and give them a try. You might
be pleasantly surprised.
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Congratulations
Jim, on qualifying for the Cabela's National Team Championship in
2002!
Jim Corey is a bait & tackle store owner and tournament walleye
fisherman from Dennison, Ohio.
He was a member of the S.O.W.C. Point Championship Team in 1996,
"Top Gun" in 1998, and
S.O.W.C. "Top Gun " and "Angler of the Year"
in 2000. He became the first member of the
gofishohio community in January, 2001. Click
Here to visit his bait shop and tackle store.
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