Thoughts on Plastics?

For many of the moderators of this website, and a few others, you may know that I do some writing for Outdoor News. My handle here is Whiskey as it’s the name of my dog, not so much a problem I’m in the fourth or fifth step of dealing with. My real name is Colin Williams. Anyway, I am in the process of putting together an article about using plastics for river walleyes. I would like to get a fair representation of the “river rats” out there what your go-to bait is in the spring and now into the post-spawn transition. Plastics, live-bait or something else? I can’t really promote any specific products but your opinions would be appreciated. By the way, great website here folks, I’ve already used several members for articles and pick up new article ideas all the time. Thanks in advance.

I’m not looking for secrets here guys, just some general opinions. If you are willing to share secrets however, I’m all ears! I’m not going to use any names or anything – just use someting in the piece along the lines of “the anglers on IDA preferred live-bait 2:1 over plastics” something like that.

The Mississippi River, Pools 3 & 4 early, neutral colors like Oyster shell, and Pro Blue are hard to beat for consistency in clear water. Purple/white tail and Blue/White tail ringies are great dark or low light killers! Ktails, same thing. For the Croix, between now and first ice, chartruese and oranges really shine in the tanac stained water! Just talking about it gets me all whipped up! I cannot wait! I spend very VERY little on live bait now.
Tuck

Hears a few things I like about plastics.

Varity. Not much varity in a bucket of fatheads. My bag of plastics must hold 100 different colors, shapes and sizes. Some days the fish want one. The next its anouther. Some spots its just a matter of changing what color or style of plastic you use to pull more fish out of that spot.

No cold hands in the winter putting minnows on your line.

No trying to keep your plastics alive.

Being able to catch many fish on the same plastic.

No down time compaired to rebaiting of live bait.

Plastics catch bigger fish.

Theres a little start for you. You might of just missed the biggest plastic fishing time of the year. With in the next few weeks a good part of my fishing will start to switch back over to throwing and pitching cranks. The plastics still wont be completly put away.

as far as a few styles of baits go its seems to just keep getting bigger and bigger. Ringworms and Kgrubs seem to be some of the most popular. But the varity of baits that catch walleyes seems to have grown as big as the varity of bass plastics. One of the odd baits that seem to make a appearance last fall was the Yum croaker curtail. Cant even find this bait localy due to it being made for salt water fishing.

You might have anouther good article if you do a little research on all the different areas and fish being fished for with plastics now aday. Sunfish, crappies, muskies, surf and and deep sea fishing. To me it seems to just keep growing. It might of been just a few years before my time but dont think it was to long ago that if you wanted to fish plastic you had to make it yourself.

Not much of a pattern for ya,but whenever I bring an angler new to the river to fish for bass,I always make sure they have a ring worm tied on and most the time they are very suprised that live bait is not needed to caught walleyes

When I grew up fishing with my dad it was livebait only. that was just the way it was i was not even aware of the quality of plastics out there. after moving out for college i met a guy from st cloud that preached only plastic. now i rarely buy live bait and i catch way more fish. he was using bass plastic pretty much all the time and after fishing with him alot i discovered alot of that stuff works great on other species of fish. after joining this website my interest in plastics has only increased and you can see why from the photos on the main page every day. i know i am one angler that will stick with plastics every time I go fishing.

Pitching plastics into shallow water is pretty much unbeatable in the spring time. In the dirty waters of the Mississippi River my favorite colors would be Chartruse, Orange, Or Red. And the Ringworm has been my favorite plastic followed by the twistertail or a grub.

When the water temp warms Dragging ringworm with Zone R’s put huge numbers of fish in the boat!

And when the water temp gets in the upper 50’s I will concentrate alot more on crank baits 3-way or leadcore.



I havent used a minnow in the spring in years!

I am far from an expert on plastics, but have gained tremendous confidence in them by following the sage advice of one on this site who excels with them. I took James’ advice and spent the better part of a year fishing without live bait. It is a difficult leap, but payed off big time!

No doubt in my mind that plastics out produce live bait for quality fish in cold to moderate temps.

I spend a lot of time running 3-way rigs, and have found that, when using a Dubuque rig with a jig and ringworm for the drop weight, I catch as many or more fish on the dropper as on a live bait trailer. I have experimented with plastics in place of crawlers in warm water on a spinner rig with promising success as well.

A seldom mentioned side benefit of using plastics is economical. With the price of live bait such as crawlers and leeches, plastics are around the same price, and catch multiple fish on one bait. Lastly, I do not have to deal with an odiferous mess if I forget to take my plastics out of the boat on a warm summers day!

Previously I was more of a live bait person. As time goes by after seeing and catching more fish on plastics, that is a direction that I have been moving. After seing all the larger walleyes that are taken on ringworms by James, Dustin and Bob Johnston, their effectiveness is obvious to me.
Don