Blades & Bouncers

What could be better on a below zero day besides thinking about open water….
I ran into an issue last year on Winnie while fishing blades and bouncers and I was wondering if anyone had an a solution. We were running a 6 foot snell and crawlers. We found an active school of eyes and were picking up a few, but we could barely fish the technique because the perch were constantly picking us apart.
I thought about trying 2 things next year.

1. Fishing the same crawler harness but with plastics. Say a ringworm or something similar. I always use live crawlers. Anyone have good success on plastics when fishing blades and bouncers?

2. Maybe a shorter snell.

Any Advice

Gulp or Power Bait night crawlers. I also have had success with 5in. Gulp Leeches.

Ditto-plastics take care of the perch problem.

just seen Jason Mitchell doing this on tv this morning. using plastic worms to help keep the little nippers away. Another thing you can do is pinch off the worm right after the second hook. you might just catch a nice mess of perch to go along with the walleye

Yellow Mr twisted works also white

maybe try going to slow death hook. shorter bait.

I tried some Berkley crawlers out of a bag and never caught a fish on them. They now have Berkley Alive Spinner Crawlers I plan on trying out. They look like they are a lot limper, may have better movement in the water.

Lots of good tips here! I have had some real good luck on Winni with Berkley Power Worms & GULP worms. Havn’t tried the Berkley GULP Alive Spinner Crawlers out there yet but they should be as good or better. One thing that makes a big difference is speed. Crank it up to 1.3-1.8 MPH