Walleye Follow Blues…Ideas Wanted

Here’s a brain teaser for you walleye-heads…

Lately, I’ve been finding concentrations of walleyes on flats, which I’m casting at night. Using Livescope, I can see fish following my presentation, many of them following for 70’ or more then coming right to my rod tip as I run out of string. Happens alot! I’d estimate that I get 8-10 followers for every one fish that actually bites.

Its been a real eye-opener to see how many walleyes will follow a bait inches away without striking – in near total darkness. However, as cool as it is to see these follows happen on Livescope, the behavior is driving me nuts and keeping me up at night thinking about how to turn that follow/strike ratio around.

I’m a caster that uses artificials only. My main presentations of late have been suspending jerkbaits (xraps #10 and #12), swimbaits (5.5” hollowbody), and rattlebaits (#6 Rippin Raps).

Without trying to ruin my fun by suggesting ‘troll’ or ‘use livebait’ (lol), what presentation ideas do you think might improve the poor strike ratio on all these following fish?

Brian

Very cool observations.

I’ve never had that technology, but here’s how I’ve made my observations of the same nature and usually speed is the answer.

When trolling or whatever your doing at a constant speed, in your case casting. Occasionally jerk your rod. If your finding your bites are coming on the jerk or even when introducing a pause, you have fish following your lure. You already know they’re following because you can see this. Very cool!
To combat this I don’t start jerking rods on a regular basis, i simply speed up until jerking isn’t required to get a bite.

So in your case, I’d reel faster.
But, every fish you catch look to see how you caught it. For crankbaits, you haven’t picked the right crankbait until the fish is hooked on the front treble. If you are catching fish on the back treble, you need to adjust color or speed until they “Crush” it by biting the front treble. Any fish caught on the back treble, I almost always immediately remove the lure and put on another of a slight variation until all bites are on front hooks.

Thanks for sharing!
Enjoy that bite!

FYI the “introducing action to a presentation” is something i do with each type of presentation as the water warms and cools.

Early in the year when you introduce action to a lindy rig, it is time to pull spinners. When your pulling spinners and you have to introduce action to the spinners, it is time to switch to cranks, etc etc. Within each presentation period, when you need to introduce action you speed up until you’ve reached the peak speeds for that particular presentation before switching to the next presentation.

You can also do this in reverse as the water cools and things trend the opposite way.

That 60 degree water temps IMO fish seem to really enjoy an erratic presentation.

Agree with above. Instead of concentrating on the ones that follow and don’t bite. Concentrate on the ones that do and what you were doing when they bit. Then try and make adjustments from there. Each stick bait crank bait has subtle variations in action and wobble. Different brands different sizes and many change action with more or less speed. I prefer stickbaits in the fall mostly because I am fishing shallow. Jigging raps can also be effective.

Walleye are followers more often than most people think. As others said I would speed up the bait – Try and trigger more of a reaction bite than a feeding bite. If faster doesn’t work I’d try a working the bait with long pauses followed by a real small fast twitch. Often this will trigger the fish into biting. Some days there is just nothing you will be able to do to turn these followers into biters. In that case I go someplace else and look for more active fish.

Yep – mix up the retrieve to trigger the bite. Don’t rule out a pause of 10 seconds or possibly more if you see fish following. Counting to “ten one thousand” with a suspending stick bait is easier said than done – it’s a seriously long pause!

Had that happen one fall night fishing on a rocky shoal. We were catching nothing, but when my buddy AJ flipped on his headlamp we were sitting in the middle of a school of walleyes- never seen anything like that since. We spent hours trying to catch them. They would follow any and all lures around like a dog never committing, regardless of speed, erratic twitches, lure types. Finally, after 1am in the morning, AJ caught one and we went home. One of the coolest, yet most frustrating nights of fishing ever. Hope you figure it out!

Agree, great observations thanks for sharing.

Keep switching until you find the right color or style bait.

Nighttime, unless it’s murky colored water I’d definitely be throwing original raps, or cranks with no rattles. Countdowns are better for casting distance.

You’d be surprised how tuned in to just one specific color pattern eyes can get.

Deuces wrote:

You’d be surprised how tuned in to just one specific color pattern eyes can get.

Not just the color but lure action also. We were using the same color, style, and size of a stick bait. Brand X was producing all the hits and brand Y had nothing. Both lures had the same spec but until I switched to brand X I was getting nothing.

Seeing that on the graph sounds awesome. Are you able to grab a video of this and post it?

I’d suggest you send me the name of the lake so I can experiment. Then I’ll post an opinion.

What’s odd is there seems to be no single bite trigger. Incorporating speed, erratic and frantic action, and long pauses have all produced strikes – but also a lot of follows. My current thinking is that size might matter. Going to experiment more this coming week. Maybe the dark of the moon might have them buying more instead if window shopping.

As far as grabbing a video, it could easily be done. I’ll try to do that this coming week when we get back on the water and show ya’ll firsthand what they’re doing. The video I wish I had would be the one on Saturday night where a musky showed up on livescope amongst all these walleyes. Picked up a musky rod and fired double blades over her head 3X. She never flinched. Snapping on a black pounder bulldawg, she drilled it immediately – all on Livescope. That video plays in my head alot.

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Brian, with the fish you are catching, how are they hooked? Barely by the last treb or inhaled? I’m guessing they are barely hooked like a they are more curious than hammering it. I would change size and or profile

One thing that I would try is to take a musky fishing approach to the walleyes. Directional changes with your rod while reeling in, even figure-8, especially at night. I’ve caught quite a few walleyes with just a simple “L” at the boat on the end of a retrieve, I would imagine it’s due to the directional change of the bait, but could just be dumb luck. Have also caught a number of them by just stopping the bait right at the boat and watch them eat it.

Would love to see it on video, sounds awesome! Only down side is it may hurt my pocketbook, as I’ve been pondering the livescope lately and this may be enough to push me over the edge.

Wow. Congrats! Thanks for sharing. I hope you figure the walleyes out. There probably has always been walleyes following like that, it is just you couldn’t see them as easy before. We have had good luck on the Scatter rap tail dancers. The scatter rap husky jerk might be worth a try too. Maybe the erratic action the scatter rap has would trigger them. Salmo has a wacky diver that is similar too. Marine General carries them. Oh yeah, I have plenty of crankbaits to try and would be happy to help figure them out.

If you’re night fishing, don’t rule out topwaters. I’ve gotten them to bite poppers and tail prop lures. Other lures are like Rapala Subwalks and the old Storm Fluttersticks or Yo-Zuri Edge Trembler lures. Basically subsurface walks and wobble types of lures. None of these are first choice, but they are sometimes just what the fish will bite on.

Damn it, Brian. This post might end up costing me $2k. That livescope sounds sweet! As others have mentioned, I’d love to see a video of the way these walleyes are reacting.

I know OG floaters aren’t ideal for casting, but I’d try tossing them instead of the xraps one night. Head and shoulders favorite way to fish walleyes is long lining cranks well after dark on shallow flats. I’ve pulled about every crankbait in the book but I can tell you, in my experience, F11 original floaters outfish about every other crankbait in any given night. Funny how they’d hardly touch a husky jerk or sr5-7 all while smacking the floaters. I’m absolutely convinced no walleye can turn down an OG floater in silver or orange bellied perch. Going into each night I never know which one of those two will be the hot color, but its always seems to be one of them.

Should mention this is in WI where you’re allowed 3 lines. Allows for a lot more tinkering of styles/colors/brands of crankbaits to be experimented with.

This specific lake is in WI but I’ve got buddies who grew up pulling sr5 and 7s on Leech, Gull, and a few others in MN. They absolutely swore by them. They now admit OG floaters are the first to come out of their box on any given night.

Update…

I posted this last fall and still haven’t figured out ‘the secret’.

This past weekend was especially maddening. In my original thread, I estimated 10 follows for every strike. That was the case up until this heat wave hit. I’d do anything for results like that now.

Here lately, using Livescope, I’d estimate 100 follows for every strike. Not joking! Many times there will be 4, 5, 6 walleyes following the lure, taking turns coming up to sniff the bait just inches away, without a bite. In certain conditions, they’d follow right to the boat and you could see them just under the surface inspecting the bait in the mid-day sun.

Big winds and prime times (dusk/dawn) helped the bite ratio, though still unacceptable given the sheer number of fish around. Stubborn me, I simply refuse to use live bait or trolling. That would be like throwing in the towel.

So far, they’ve roundly rejected suspending jerkbaits of all varieties fished in every conceivable fashion, swimbaits, crankbaits, tail spinners, jig/fluke combo, Rippin Raps and other lipless vibrating crankbaits, and Jigging raps.

Some ideas for the next trip out…in-line Mepps spinner fished a couple feet over their heads (might have to add weight), slow rolled spinnerbait with curl tail grub, sub walks, dropshot with various plastics, crappie type plastics for a downsize option, and heavy weighted swimbaits for extreme speed/reaction bite retrieves.

*Something* will work and when it does…the boat will get loaded. But what is that something? I’m all ears – except for the suggestion of trolling or live-baiting them. Yuk!

Any nutty ‘walleye professors’ out there wanna try to help crack the code?? It’s been a deepening mystery here in mid-summer as the water temps warm.

Brian

Have you tried spaying any scent on the lures?

This has been happening to me quite a bit the last few summers too. I don’t have live scope but can visually watch them during the day. I have witnessed it in 4 different lakes now all of which are deep and clear. 1-5 fish will follow literally anything I throw at them. Sometimes certain weedbeds will be so packed that it’s every cast results in a follow(s). This happens in shallow cabbage for me – 4-12’.

My best follow to bite ratio comes from shallow suspending jerkbaits and jig/fluke combos. It’s still not great considering the sheer amount of follows thats occur, but it’s the best I’ve found.

Typically later in the summer I find fewer fish up shallow and they are on adjacent breaks. Then the jigging raps come out. It really makes me believe that the same thing happens with jigging raps too. I think they follow them a lot too.

It’s pretty incredible just how close they’ll get to your bait at really high speeds and then simply turn around and slide away. It’s super frustrating but super engaging and entertaining.

Haha yeah you’d hate to start catching all those eye’s with a leech, the audacity! You have a lot of variables to start narrowing down. I’d start by changing the retrieve (sounds like you’ve done this already) then having different colors of the same bait like a husky jerk ready to go, and if none of them get bit, then switch baits. Like start w/ a husky jerk, and move to a shad rap, then run thru some different colors, and if nothing changes move to a rippin rap or plastic, run thru some colors and still if nothing changes sometimes U say they just aren’t that hungry!

Here’s that ‘one in 100’ that decided to commit…so it does happen but, my God, the follows! Never would have imagined this sort of thing had it not be for the advancements in technology. What an eye opener.

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Not sure why you are so bound and determined to catch them on presentations they don’t want to eat? I always have 3-4 options rigged up whenever I go out and switch quickly given what the fish want. I’m getting my livescope pole system mounted up this week so I’m pretty pumped to give that a go.

This last weekend there were spots where burning cranks was the ticket…..next spot was live bait (leeches). Some spots were a mix of both with the last option being a quickly jigged plastic.

At least throw some live bait out there to see how they react….if they react positively go to a plastic or same profile kind of bait? Maybe that will improve the strike ratio.

Matt, I’m bound and determined to catch them on presentations they DO want to eat – just not live bait. No disrespect intended, but I wanna fool em, not feed em. Probably a carry forward from my beginnings as a tournament bass fisherman. Thx for the suggestions!

Eelpoutguy wrote:

Have you tried spaying any scent on the lures?

X2
I’d try some sort of spray or paste. JMO

I’m getting more confident to let go of the live bait but I usually have something in the boat with me….I certainly respect what you are trying to do. I just don’t know if I have the patience!