Artificial Only Walleye Tournaments

Concerns have been raised about a shortage of minnows. Which brings up the question. Should walleye tournaments be artificial only? What are the reasons not to have artificial only tournaments?

I think that that’s an interesting idea Gary and if tournament anglers show that it’s possible to catch walleyes with artificials, perhaps weekend anglers will follow suit. It’s not with all live bait that there is a concern about a shortage either, it’s just minnows. Crawlers and leeches likely won’t be in short supply this season.
I fished in a artificials only walleye tournament a few years back at Devils Lake and although there was a learning curve, it was an eye opener for me how relatively easy it was to make the transiton to and catch walleyes using nothing but artificials. I’ve used little live bait to catch walleyes in open water since and there are more and more artificals options on the market every year.
Yes, fishing live bait is tradition in Minnesota walleye fishing but there are artificials that that can be used instead of live bait in the majority of circumstances. It just takes some getting used to.

How about fix the real problem and allow MN to import minnows like every other state. Most tourney guys are not using live bait anyways.

Can’t imagine too many walleye tournament anglers would like it.

Every bass and muskie tournament I know of prohibits the use of live bait. I think many walleye tournaments/circuits have converted to an immediate catch and release format now, so its an interesting question.

For every 10 walleyes I catch, I’d wager no more than 2 are on live bait when open water fishing.

Crankbaits trolled with leadcore and long lined for numbers and eaters, plastics on Dubuque rigs for size in colder water. I’ll also toss crankbaits on wingdams as long as my pocketbook will allow. One of the last tactics I’ll pull out is pulling crawlers on SDRs and Harnesses. I might throw on a creek chub or willowcat a couple times a summer in a buddy’s boat.

If there was a river tournament that didn’t allow live bait, it’d probably change absolutely nothing other than the willowcat deal on points and wingdams that lots of anglers use to get their overs.

I second what Ripjiggin said.

You don’t see many if any at all AIM or NWT winners using minnows.
Heck it’s gotten to the point if you want to win in those tourneys you better give up the trolling as well.

On a side note. It’s been 20 years or more since I fished a walleye tournament. Even when I did I never used minnows. Tourneys were always in June and I was using leaches if I used live bait.

Full draw wrote:

I second what Ripjiggin said.

You don’t see many if any at all AIM or NWT winners using minnows.
Heck it’s gotten to the point if you want to win in those tourneys you better give up the trolling as well.

Exactly maybe FFS isn’t a bad thing. Rarely see the top pros on the Cabellas tour using live bait.
Again the live bait issue is an easy fix, but are DNR is to dumb to just fix the problem.
Banning from tournaments will have little to no impact on minnow shortage.

Head to Head was all artificial when they were running those tournaments a few years ago. When they got beat down on pool 2 the guys might’ve wanted live bait but otherwise it didn’t seem to matter to them.

NWT and Aim correct most are using artificials. However, what about the number of other events each year that live bait is used pre-fishing and or during the events. Bait shops love the business these events bring to their shops in most cases wipes them out until they can get more. Yes, the DNR should look at allowing importing of minnows, a concern with tighten of AIS regulations as pointed out is the solution. AIS concerns “Trump” fisherman needs.

Exactly maybe FFS isn’t a bad thing. Rarely see the top pros on the Cabellas tour using live bait.
Again the live bait issue is an easy fix, but are DNR is to dumb to just fix the problem.
Banning from tournaments will have little to no impact on minnow shortage.
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DNR biologists are far from dumb and have legitimate reasons for their recommendations. If you have all of the answers maybe you should apply for a biologist position at the DNR. I believe there are unfilled positions right now.
You’re right, banning live bait from tournaments will have no impact on the minnow shortage but I doubt that Gary was inferring that it directly would.

Karry Kyllo wrote:

Exactly maybe FFS isn’t a bad thing. Rarely see the top pros on the Cabellas tour using live bait.
Again the live bait issue is an easy fix, but are DNR is to dumb to just fix the problem.
Banning from tournaments will have little to no impact on minnow shortage.

DNR biologists are far from dumb and have legitimate reasons for their recommendations. If you have all of the answers maybe you should apply for a biologist position at the DNR. I believe there are unfilled positions right now.
You’re right, banning live bait from tournaments will have no impact on the minnow shortage but I doubt that Gary was inferring that it directly would.
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So you’re saying you want to control who bait shops sell their minnows too?

Everyone complains about to many rules snd regulations and here we are having people campaigning for more.

Ripjiggen wrote:

How about fix the real problem and allow MN to import minnows like every other state. Most tourney guys are not using live bait anyways.

This.

There’s still a lot of live bait used in major walleye tournaments. Mainly large creek and red tail chubs, but also leeches.
Many guys catch their own, others network with bait shops all over the region to acquire what they need.
You won’t see them advertising their use of live bait in the nwt, they have tackle sponsors to plug. What you see on camera is a tiny fraction of what’s actually happening in the boat.

Quite a few walleye tournament guys can not catch fish on artificials. I personally think that was the original concept when walleye tournaments began. A lot of guys HAD to use live bait to be competitive, so the practice was in place to draw more anglers. I’ve only expperienced one time of the year and one place where live bait is king for eyes. Even then, the bigger eyes come on blades or plastics but numbers on crawlers.

The majority of tournaments I watch are won on cranks or lipless, so why not go all artificial

Karry Kilo, I’m with you. I haven’t used any live bait for 30 years. There was a learning curve of the retrieve using split tails. Once I had the lift and fall retrieve down then found out a little different retrieve was needed for paddle tails. Now I have WAY too many plastics.

The minnow shortage isn’t JUST from state regulations. There are other factors at play too. Drought is a measureable factor too. When I talked to the 45 year owners of Wayzata Bait & Tackle frequently before they hung it up the October before last, they would flat out say that its just simply “a dying business.” Its a lot of work seasonally for not much money.

nord wrote:

Karry Kilo, I’m with you. I haven’t used any live bait for 30 years. There was a learning curve of the retrieve using split tails. Once I had the lift and fall retrieve down then found out a little different retrieve was needed for paddle tails. Now I have WAY too many plastics.

I still use live bait but I have too many plastics. The ones that I do not take with me for a specific fishing outing are now stored in a couple of 5 gallon buckets plus a few small tubs….

The impact of using live bait in a tournament is quite minimal to none so I do not see the point. We surely have a shortage of minnows. For what is available to import to resolve this problem this has basically become a no brainer to allow. The better question currently maybe why the DNR is not allowing importation currently.

Live bait might not get used alot during the tournament, but how about pre-fishing? Two words on why there’s a shortage and we wont bring in minnows. Invasive Species.

Ripjiggen wrote:

How about fix the real problem and allow MN to import minnows like every other state. Most tourney guys are not using live bait anyways.

x5.

Not sure what banning live bait from tournaments would do to help the shortage. Tournaments are for determining the best anglers on a given day, taking away one of the oldest tools of the trade seems like it would not result in truly determining who the best is that day.

DNR biologists are far from dumb and have legitimate reasons for their recommendations. If you have all of the answers maybe you should apply for a biologist position at the DNR. I believe there are unfilled positions right now.
You’re right, banning live bait from tournaments will have no impact on the minnow shortage but I doubt that Gary was inferring that it directly would.I’m

You are right they must be smarter than every other state biologist then that allows minnows to be imported.

gim wrote:

The minnow shortage isn’t JUST from state regulations. There are other factors at play too. Drought is a measureable factor too. When I talked to the 45 year owners of Wayzata Bait & Tackle frequently before they hung it up the October before last, they would flat out say that its just simply “a dying business.” Its a lot of work seasonally for not much money.

It being a dying business has nothing to do with the minnow shortage.

I’m not so sure it’s a dying business. It definitely fluctuates depending on weather and in winter, ice conditions. The past couple years have been hard for them.
The bait shops in my area have been swamped all winter. The minnows they do get are gone within hours.
I’m good friends with a bait shop owner, he’s having his best season in more than 10 years this winter. The only thing holding him up is minnow availability. He’s made many late night runs to northern mn for just a few dozen minnows, just trying to have something other than fatheads for his customers.
If you’re willing to put in the work, there is money to be made.

gim wrote:

The minnow shortage isn’t JUST from state regulations. There are other factors at play too. Drought is a measureable factor too. When I talked to the 45 year owners of Wayzata Bait & Tackle frequently before they hung it up the October before last, they would flat out say that its just simply “a dying business.” Its a lot of work seasonally for not much money.

The minnow shortage doesn’t seem to be a thing when I drive 10 minutes in to wi land. We have no minnows, they are fully stocked. If that doesn’t paint a picture that the shortage is fully on the state.

Ripjiggen wrote:

It being a dying business has nothing to do with the minnow shortage.

That’s only what the guys at the bait shop said to me. If there’s not as many workers in that line of business, there’s not going to be as many trapping, transporting, or selling them.

As far as tournament guys directly related to a shortage, that does seem pretty irrelevant given the majority of the anglers as a whole. It also seems based on some of the responses here that live bait specifically used in walleye tournaments may not be used as much as originally thought.

Matt Moen wrote:

Head to Head was all artificial when they were running those tournaments a few years ago. When they got beat down on pool 2 the guys might’ve wanted live bait but otherwise it didn’t seem to matter to them.

Matt, it was fun watching this one when they had it here on 2.. They did get their butts kicked!! I thought they would have figured out something better than they did. Thats for sure.

buschman wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Matt Moen wrote:</div>
Head to Head was all artificial when they were running those tournaments a few years ago. When they got beat down on pool 2 the guys might’ve wanted live bait but otherwise it didn’t seem to matter to them.

Matt, it was fun watching this one when they had it here on 2.. They did get their butts kicked!! I thought they would have figured out something better than they did. Thats for sure.

That was a brutal summer for fishing. If I remember we never got any high water in the spring. There were fish up north of the confluence that may have been over the 2# mark but no one fished up there. They weren’t very creative.

I talked to the woman who won who was back in Hog…I asked how she got back there with her big Lund. I was back there in a buddies jon the week before and we had a tough time in the low water. She said full send and hope to not hit a stump. 70 mph through mud with a 400hp Merc.

You’re right, banning live bait from tournaments will have no impact on the minnow shortage but I doubt that Gary was inferring that it directly would.

Excuse my ignorance then what was he inferring exactly? If it was just a discussion on should tournament anglers only use artificial baits why bring up the minnow shortage?

Gary was likley making the point that if anglers (especially younger anglers) reading about and observing that tournament anglers don’t need live minnows to catch heavy limits and numbers of walleyes, they may follow suit and the demand for live minnows may eventually decrease as a result. The topics are related.

“NWT and Aim correct most are using artificials. However, what about the number of other events each year that live bait is used pre-fishing and or during the events. Bait shops love the business these events bring to their shops in most cases wipes them out until they can get more.”

Doesn’t this kind of contradict that then. Are local tournaments really impacting kids and how they use live bait. Think that is a bit of a reach vs actually looking at the real issue of bait shortage.

Neither Gary or I ever said it would solve the live minnow issue since drought, a decline in live bait dealers and AIS issues are all contributing factors.
It may be that there isn’t a single soulution but rather many things that may need to be done to fix the problem.
Sure local bait shops love tournaments when they sell all the live minnows they have in their inventories but if there is a minnow shortage and they don’t have enough live bait for the whole season does it really help them in the long run? You tell me.

I guess I can’t speak for a bait shop owner as I am not one.
I would think they would like to supply as many minnows as possible. It appears we are the only state with the issue. We can’t be the only state that is dealing with drought and AIS.