This is just a quick report from this past Saturday…
Tyler and I invited a friend, Ernie along for a day of fishing. Ernie hadn’t fished for several years and had never caught a walleye. So, my goal was to not only get Ernie his first walleye, but I wanted him to catch a big one.
My plan was to show Ernie a couple of techniques. We started the day pulling spinners on a certain gravel flat. On the second pass we found fish and Ernie scored his first walleye. I marked the spot on the GPS and made another pass that yielded a double for Ernie and Tyler. Once the fish were released I began showing Ernie how the GPS works and why I drop icons where the fish were biting. We were on either the fourth or fifth pass when Ernie began understanding GPS and asked how far we were from the icons. I told him we were getting very close and it was not five seconds later and his rod began to double over. It was fun showing him how the program works and he was soaking it up like a sponge. We put about six fish in the boat before making the move out to the basin to fish planer boards and lead core.
We ran out to no man’s land where I explained to Ernie how we use lead core and flat lines w/planer boards in conjunction with Rapala TDD-11’s and Storm Deep Thunder Sticks. We were targeting large walleyes roaming the open water chasing bait fish. It took about five minutes of trolling and the clicker sounded from a lead core rod. Surprisingly we reeled in a 17” walleye. Once we were set back up a trolled for 20 minutes the clicker sounded from a board rod. Tyler pulled in a nice 27.5 inch fish. The action was not fast paced, but we were getting bit once about every 20-30 minutes. All fish were measuring between 22 and 27.5 inches. Towards the end of our day with Ernie up to bat, the clicker for aboard rod went off. After a good battle a 27 inch fish found the bottom of the net.
A Pink spinner w/pink and white beads was our best combination followed by a copper spinner with red beads for crawler harnesses. Later in the day trolling we had the best luck with purple TDD-11’s. We did catch on other colors, but nothing consistent.
One last comment on the open water trolling; Jump at the chance to fish with Brad Juaire if an opportunity comes up. Everything I know about it I have learned from Brad. I’ll admit that I was intimidated by this technique because I was not fishing any structure on this huge lake. With some instruction, guidance and success from Brad I have begun to gain confidence in this technique.
We’ll be back at it again this coming weekend. 
It’s great to see that you’ve been able to go back to your boat and replicate what you learned. 
That kid is a big fish magnet! 