Im gonna finally give 3 ways a try and have a few questions. Can a guy get away with bell type weights without hanging up too much on the river?? Any size raps in particular work best? How fast is too fast when trolling? Can a guy buy rod holders where you dont have too drill into the boat? If anyone else has a helpful hint i can use when i try this next week its much appreciated!
THREE WAY CRANKS
THREE WAY CRANKS For those of you not familiar with this technique, I will try to explain it. First it is a very accurate form of trolling. By that I mean a person can very easily position their lure in the walleye-sauger strike zone, again and again. Heres how you do it. First the equipment I most often use with this technique: A bait casting or trolling rod and an Abu Garcia 6500 C3 reel, Trilene 10# XT, and 1-5 oz bell,or pencil sinker, Rapala Original floaters, or husky jerks. Attach one eye of the threeway swivel to the line coming from you rod. Then to one eye of the three way tie about a 24(about 18 inches after tieing and cutting) inch piece of line to a snap swivel and put the sinker on it. This seems to be the universal drop length. (18inches) I’ll explain why later. Then to the third and last eye of the threeway swivel attach about 45 inches of line(40 inches when tied and cut). then attach another snap swivel to this 40 inches of line and place your crank bait on it. Now drop your rig into the water with your boat going the speed you intend to be moving and in the depth you intend to use as your goal,(more about speed and depth latter). Let the line free spool backward until you see the line (sinker) hit bottom. NOW COMES THE SECRET TO BEING RIGHT WHERE YOU WANT TO BE!!!!!! AFTER THE SINKER touched the bottom it almost immediately is lifted off the bottom by hydraulics and forward momentum. You must continue letting more line out again and again until you can drop the tip of your pole backwards three times and see the sinker put slack in the line all three times.(consecutively..in a row-WITH THE BAIL CLOSED). Trust me two times is not enough. Now if you put your rod in the rod holder or hold it in your hand when you come over little bumps or over shallower depths you will see the sinker bumping the bottom. There are several reasons why I say that a 18″ drop and 40″ leader are the universal depth and lenghth. With thousands of hours using this technique I have found that the 18 inch drop and 40inch length puts the bait where the walleye will see it and it will still snag less often than a lesser drop does. My snag up over the same area on the same day seems to almost double when I drop to 12 inches or less(the distance from the threeway swivel to the sinker),even when I adjust the leader lenghth, and the 12 -16 inch lenghth seems to snag more also. Remember we have two things that can snag here. The crankbait and the sinker. Now I know somebody out there is saying why not use a bottom bouncer to avoid snags. I have found that the bulk of the bottom bouncer and it’s design snag almost as much and collect weeds,many times faster, on rivers.. One thing I should point out right now is that with a three way you actually have direct connection to the lure(bait). With a bottom bouncer you don’t. This becomes very evident when the rod is held in your hand while trolling or the second you lift the Bottom bouncer out of the water with a fish on. With regards to speed (slooooow), and depth 11-20 ft. I try to barely make any progress upstream. A football field on most days would take me 45 minutes. Although a lot of people speed up as the weather warms I don’t. Even on lakes and flowages with little current. The rare ocassion is when I’ve lost track of the herd for a while and speed up till I find the fish back. Even then I rarely move much faster than 3/4 miles per hour. When Tony and I won the Mississippi North Regional Championship on Pepin in JUNE we STILL MOVED SLOWLY. When we wanted to move faster we went to Leadcore or longlining cranks. Depth is a deep subject LOL. When I was a young squirt I remember being told that the first major drop from shore holds the most Eyes on the river. Darn it seems like it is almost always 12-18 feet. In our second place finish At the 1999 National Championship on the Rainey River,(Lake of the Woods), we rarely left the 16 -18 foot range. If we moved up off that break it was all No. Pike, and if we when out to the next drop it was all sturgeon. Sinkers are the last item I should cover here. Any day anything from 2-5 ounces will catch fish. In general the shallower you are the lighter you go. Also I usually rig the poles straight out the back of the boat one ounce lighter to get it back a little farther, from the motor. To start I would suggest you just buy 2 0z and 3 0z bell sinkers. They are my most often used weights and a bell sinker forces you to set the depth right. Until you get used to a pencil sinker you may be dragging it on its side rather that just bouncing it on it’s tip, like you need to. Yes that 3-4 inches makes a difference. Now here’s where a lot of people are gonna say WHAAAT??? Forget trying to achieve a 45 degree line angle from your rod tip to the water. It never seems to make a bit of difference with this technique or as far as I have ever been able to figure out with any technique. Still use it as a guide if you like, but don’t drive yourself buggy trying to maintain it.
Thanks Lawrence. I was looking for your article and I was unable to retreive it from my ”favorites” area for some reason. Thanks, Bill
You better check with your better half before you start running 3-ways around the river.
We ran 3 way rapala’s and turned in some numbers was really hit or miss.
Lawrence, thanks for the post, that was a wealth of information. 
yea, thanks for the post. I have finally been able to begin figuring out the three way thing with cranks. You said that you use the original rapalas. With an 18 inch lead on the sinker and almost 4 feet to the bait, doesn’t the bait dive and constantly dig into the bottom? That might not be bad, infact I catch fish doing this but I loose a lot of lures as well. I also screw up a lot of noses on the lures.
With only 4 ft of line behind the swivel, an original floating Rapala won’t dive 18″. That’s kind of the secret to 3-ways, figuring out which lure and what length lead puts you in the strike zone and not on the bottom.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
