You can tell what the Walleyes are eating by looking in their stomachs when you clean them and looking at the color of their meat. You’ll also find them shallow in the summer, flooding the flats under the cover of darkness.And let’s not forget about walleye that live in skinny, featureless, weedy lakes year-round.
And because you’re quickly slipping downstream with the current, the walleye have no time to mull over your offering. If you are in a rocky area with lots of snags, don't drag the rig horizontally like you would on a flat bottom. It works wonders in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, pits and ponds.
Jigs attract and trigger walleye at dawn’s early light, high noon and twilight’s last gleaming—-not to mention when it’s raining, snowing, hailing or windy. The fish can’t believe its good fortune.
If it feels like a Walleye set the hook hard. You do not want to jig the rig way up like a normal jig or jig it aggressively. You’ll know you’re pitching perfectly when your jig sails just above the surface and lands quietly, which is important when the water is clear and the walleye are spooky.Now, don’t rush to close the bail on your reel.
If you find the rig is staying really clean because the weeds and moss are really short, you can slide the split-shot sinker up towards the rig a bit more so that the floating jig and worm stay closer to the bottom. They do go after minnows and leeches but their primary diet in many lakes is anything they can eat off the bottom. Colored beads or jig heads can add color and interest to the rig. That’s usually the trigger for a following walleye to hammer it.You need a stiff rod and the right line to properly perform this manoeuvre. You need a floating jig, a hypodermic needle, a small trailer hook on a 3-inch lead-line, a 1/4 or 1/8 oz slip sinker and a split shot. Just be sure to pause momentarily every once in a while so the lure hesitates and tumbles slightly. But nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to fishing for walleye with jigs, as these five outstanding patterns reveal.More frequently than most anglers realize, the bulk of a waterbody’s walleye population is in shallow water. I’ll swim this combo all the way back to the boat, dispensing with the pause. Trout and Whitefish wait for the Mayflies to reach the surface. One of my favorite rigs for early- and late-season walleye fishing, when the water is generally running high, fast and dirty, is the Dubuque Rig. Walleyes and shiners minnows collide in the shallows during spring for their annual spawning run and few baits can match the effectiveness of a jig and minnow during this timeframe. Indeed, if faced with the prospect of fishing for walleye for the rest of your life with just one type of lure, you had better pick jigs.So what’s the downside to fishing with jigs?
You have to match the right jig weight (1/4 to 1/2 ounce) to the depth of water you’re fishing (usually three to 15 feet) and the speed you’re trolling, which should be at least three times faster than the usually slow walleye shuffle. As a general rule, when walleye are demanding a tediously slow presentation and/or when the water is cold, clear and moving slowly or there’s no current at all, live bait is generally the ticket. Second, put the trailer hook on your floating jig hook. If you're in southern Ontario, tune your radio to Sportsnet 590 The FAN AM or visit www.fan590.com and listen live online.And keep up-to-date with Canada's fishing and hunting authority! If you don’t have a fish, continue lifting your rod tip until the jig is floating up off the bottom and gliding back toward the boat.When the walleye are fussy, slowly drop your rod tip and let the jig fall back to the bottom and rest for a second or two. You can hop, pop, shake, swim or lay it motionless on the bottom. Rather you want to drag the jig 6 to 12 inches at a time and do it very slowly. Pause for a couple of seconds and repeat the procedure.The walleye will try to rip the rod out of your hands as long as you pay attention to two key details: follow a specific depth as you troll and make sure your jig is occasionally touching bottom. The secret to snap jigging is trolling quickly.Long, 6 1/2- to 7 1/2-foot, medium-heavy-action spinning rods are perfect for this technique.
Anchoring is a lost art, yet in many situations it’s the best approach for presenting a jig and catching enormous ‘eyes.
Often times the flow is so strong in these rivers it runs from bank to bank with no visible eddies or current breaks in sight.
You will be sent an opt-in email to confirm that you would like to receive emails from us. Slip Sinker Rigs. While it works well on hard-bottomed, main-lake walleye structure, the jig-and-swim-bait combination works even better-indeed, excels-in and around weeds, especially in midsummer when everyone is lamenting the scarcity of walleye.Find a deep weedline, the edge of a grassy point or scattered weed clumps with open lanes between the clusters, then back off so that when you cast your jig it lands just inside the ragged edge of vegetation or down one of the corridors. You do not want to jig the rig way up like a normal jig or jig it aggressively.
Mille Lacs Lake guide Tony Roach shows us an effective method for hooking minnows on short-shanked jig heads and how to fish this presentation along drop-offs adjacent to spawning grounds.