My favorite time of the year for me on the big pond is mid June when I finally get to take out my deep water trolling gear and target those big females who are out swimming around in the middle of nowhere!
The first couple of hours were spent on cruising around searching for fish. We probably covered 4-5 miles of water stopping every ¼ of a mile checking for sign. This is typical. If you don’t see them on the graph, odds are you won’t catch them. We finally spotted what we were looking for – suspended arcs chasing schools of baitfish out in the middle of nowhere!
That’s half the battle! Now we just needed to get our crank baits down to where we spotted these arcs. Most of the arcs we spotted were feeding in the 20’ to 25’ range in 35 feet of water.
30 minutes later we got our first hit on a planer board using a deep thunder stick! We were able to get that fish within 30 feet of the boat and unfortunately it got off due to the fact that the person with me was pumping and cranking the rod. That’s exactly what you don’t want to do. Keep that rod tip still as possible and methodically crank.
About 30 minutes later, we got another hit on the same rod and we finally caught our first big female – a 28 incher! (see attached pic) We were going against the waves and actually our planer boards were jumping out of the water at 2.2 mph. I believe that sometimes when your planer board hits the waves, it causes a pause in your crank bait which triggers a bite.
We quickly switched the other rod to the same crank bait to see if we could replicate our success. One hour later and about ¼ of a mile away from the first hook up – bang – that board gets a hit and we caught a 27 incher!
One hour later – another 28 incher (with a DNR tag attached)! Two hours later – a 27.5 incher!
We ended the day landing four big females from 27” to 28” in 6 hours of fishing (while losing two other hook ups). Not fast and furious, but it never is targeting these bigger females. All fish were released for someone else to experience.
Here are some important tips that I’ve learned and copied from others…
Cover water until you find a school of fish on your depth finder with baitfish mixed in. If your arcs are on the bottom, keep searching. You want to find walleyes that are chasing baitfish suspended in the water column. Once you’ve located some suspended fish, now it’s time to figure out what they want.
Try a lot of different lures such as reef runners, rougues, deep thunder sticks, yo-zuris and #9 raps with snap weights. Mix up your colors (firetiger, flame, chrome have produced well for me lately). Now try and get your lures down to the targeted depth that you are marking those arcs. A good book to get started is called Precision Trolling “the troller’s bible”.
Vary your speed (typically 1.5 mph to 2.5 mph). Making S turns also helps (if you pick up a fish on the outside planer board while doing a S turn – means you need to speed up your other lines. The inside board – slow down). Keep on trolling through the school of fish. Sooner or later these fish will turn on and you will get one! Once you do get one, remember what you were doing such as how much line you had out, how fast were you going, was it with the waves or against it etc… Now duplicate that presentation with your other rod(s) and see if you can replicate your success.
For those of you who truly want to increase your odds of catching bigger walleyes – try deep diving crankbaits! Or hire one of these IDA guides and they can show you this method. I’ve been doing this now for 5 years and it works!
I’ll be on the big pond again tonight (Friday). Hopefully those big females are still swimming around in the middle of nowhere looking for a big easy meal…
