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.
THREE WAY LIVE BAIT
Almost all my Wisconsin River customers, got to try out rigging/jigging, this year. Three way swivel with 1/4-1/2 ounce hairjig,(almost any jig will do), 12-18 inches down , and 30-40 inches back a bright colored premium bare hook. Dubuque rig with lighter jig on, wolf river rig with jig in the place of sinker, or just a three-way rig. (You choose what to call it). Regardless unless an unbelievably snaggy bottom exists it is ,a no brainer to offer a jig-bottom, and a finesse bare hook up off the bottom as your presentations both at the same time. Unfortunately although the fish almost always show a preference for one or the other, the slower part of the rig still catches fish. More importantly the fishes preference changes from day to day. Although this rig is very easy to use anchored, it lends it self best to very slow movement up stream just inside the current edge. For those folks that just can’t seem to feel the difference between jigging on and just off the bottom vs. dragging the jig on the bottom, the bottom jig is at best only effective about 1/2 the time, because it will snag and pick up refuse when dragged(to much line out). Just like most three-way rigs it is best used with pretty much a close to constant depth and speed.(flats or on long breaklines.) Believe it or not most of my customers when asked felt we had caught 3-5 times more walleye than those around us. On days when we reported 35 walleye, most folks around us were catching 3-7. The movement,(very slow trolling motor trolling), obviously plays a part in the picture, too since you are putting it in front of more fish in the same amount of time. Still even when anchored or tied to a tree the two presentations at once were at least twice as effective as anything else being used around us. I’m just guessing, but I bet a large number of the folks that are reading this here use this type of rig at least ocassionally already.
Here is a pic James created a while back on a thread called 3-ways and cranks…Try out the search too and type in 3-ways and see all the posts you get…There has been a lot of talk about that here.. 
.On second thought,I’m going to print it out,laminate it and take it in the boat with me.Thanks a million,Mike 
All kidding aside there are only a few better river rats out there than MR. Ecklor,if that is possible!! Listen to what he says. Print it out and go get some fish. 
John Mannerino