Walleye Presentations: How Big Can We Go??

Ever since my trip to El Salto, I’ve been toying with “magnum baits” in particular the 6″ Storm Swimbait. I’ve been throwing it on the River for two years and its worked well for Smallmouth but as of late no success on Walleye. I took that swimbait on to Mille Lacs in late August, first cast on a reef and fish on, a very nice healthy 28″ Walleye.

I’ve also been toying with a Magnum Squarebills (3/4oz), I’ve thrown it in the past for Bass without success. Over the weekend while in NW MN I had the urge to “try”, with a half hour window and well to my surprise the results were fantastic. The results were two very healthy walleyes at 28″ and 23″.

Its proof that whatever Mr. Stange is doing, well its works! Walleyes on “magnum baits” up to 28 iches, well that’s in the books for me. Good Luck!

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nhamm wrote:

Fish porn at it’s best. Great catches

What kind of depths are you targeting with those lures nowadays?

Less than 10fow

And do you feel braid is needed for this presentation to drive those big hooks home?

Braid is a must along with a very sensitive rod to feel that paddletail swing. I utilize a Dobynns 805cb with 30lb braid.

Depths: We’ve been fishing them of late in 13′ to 15′ of water generally. Sometimes a little less in the early/late time periods. Generally, in water more than 20′ we’re switching over to Jiggng Raps.

Line: I use braid/flouro leaders, but probably not necessary. My son uses all flouro. I think the braid helps drive the hooks home better when bite happen at the end of those long casts. While I’m still working on the problem, the downside with the braid/leader system is the occasional break-offs at the knot when you swing the big hammer after a bite…and I like swinging the big hammer.

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What type of rod are you using? I’d like to buy s dedicated swimbait/jigging raps rod, that is if one rod would work for both.

Besides soft baits, a few stick baits produce too. I’ve had many larger walleye pound the live target suckers in 6″ and 8″

walleyevision wrote:

What type of rod are you using? I’d like to buy s dedicated swimbait/jigging raps rod, that is if one rod would work for both.

That’s a tough one, one rod won’t be able to do it all imo.

Dobynns 805cb for larger swimbaits/crankbaits
Gloomis MBR783 MH for #7 and #9 Jigging Rap-Short sensitive and very effective

This was a couple weeks ago while jigging for musky. This is a 9″ swimbait, so I would say BIG is just fine!

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Tim, that’s a pig. Congrats!

Starting to think, maybe we need to keep this whole big bait/big swimbait thing quiet. Just let the subject die a quiet death on the internet. lol

Pictured below is my largest from the weekend on 5.5″ Bubba Shad/Jighead combo.

One downside of throwing 1+ oz. baits on bass gear? Broken rods! My favorite big swimbait rod broke at the handle on one of my casts. :/

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Not been on in some time. Just wanted to chime in a bit. I have been using 6-10″ swimbaits for years in the fall. I love pitching them shallow in low light, and occasionally using them deep on a 1 to 1-1/2 oz jig as a dropper on a dubuque rig, often with an mid to large sized stick bait on the trailer line.

Nice to see you on here John. Now don’t be a stranger ok

Mike, I plan to retire next spring, so I will be frequenting the river and this site a lot again in the fairly near future!!!

john, Tony was telling me how you guys run those big ole swimbaits. last saturday i ran a 6″ swimbait on the dropper of a dubuque rig popped a few. was just taken back by their effectiveness.

to the topic, we go as big as we can. we love using chubs as live bait. walleye just go gonzo over them. we were using big minnows last week as big as we could get. my dad was putting a clinic in the back of the boat, hauling in eater after eater. finally i had to net one and i looked at what he was using. about a 5″ baby channel. it was huge. and i go, “where’d you get that!” he said it was in the minnow bucket. i said when did you put it on? he said when we got here! he’d caught about 8-10 keeper fish on that while me and my buddy had only thrown back a few cigars on our big fatheads.

If you would be able to describe the coloring on that baby channel youd be doing me a great service

Is it simply a smaller channel? Any coloring on the belly?

Regularly catch eyes with them in their stomache wintertime but can never see what kind of colors they have and the plastic colored baits representing bullheads had no luck with for couple years now.

it was silver and brown with a channel catfish dot on it. i didn’t see the belly. i know it wasn’t a madtom and certain it wasn’t a flathead. it could of been a bullhead. but there wasn’t any yellow.

what was funny was that my buddy had a ton of luck using motor oil and honey colored plastics that day further down the pool. sometimes you look at a plastics color people are using and think what in the hell do these fish think these are?!

btw, these are a killer bullhead shaped plastic.

My favorite tactic is pulling large live bait. 6-8″ creek chubs are my favorite. It takes some practice, but its really productive and a lot of fun. My problem is i go through creek chubs like crazy for tournaments during pre fishing that I run short come game day and by then the bait shops are sold out. This year I am trying to plan ahead and get double the creekers so I am set. BUT, I am going to experiment with large plastics that look like creek chubs in the same size. My only concern is waiting to see if I can find some bigger plastic baits that won’t spin. If they spin its game over. But if they have a paddle tail that could keep them from spinning and be lights out! And also easier on the pocket book.

Big crankbaits like Rapala F18’s equal big walleyes in SD in the fall. That’s the 7″ body for those keeping score at home.

Chris, would the storm 360 tail work for you in the biggest size? I bought a bunch this fall, but never used them cuz the jigging rap bite was too much fun

Those big 360GT baits are what I am actually going to test here late summer or this fall on my creek chub lakes.

I am curious to see if they perform as well or better than live bait.

I think the action of the 360 baits and the tail should be lights out.

I would think the addition of a scent product, or chunks of a sacrificial chub along with the big plastics would help. When they are on the feed, and it is all about reaction, the plastics should perform well, but when things start to slow and they have the time to look, I would assume scent would play a part in triggering that strike.

Fun to experiment! Game changer if it works and you don’t need to travel 100+ miles to buy bait during a two-day tournament!

Chris, some thoughts… If you plan to troll these swimbaits, you might need more speed to activate the tail vs. how you might fish a live chub?? I don’t know how the 360GT acts at slow speed ’cause I’ve never used them, but the other swimbaits we used successfully sometimes needed more speed to really activate the tail and trigger fish. Could have been the added speed triggered an instinctive ‘reaction’ bite. Don’t know for sure. They just wanted it that way. Also, more speed will allow you to cover more water than with a chub? I like the idea of trolling swimbaits, but can’t tell you how many times trollers using more traditional presentations passed thru small, confined areas we were working without stopping – while we were hammering fish literally in their bubble trail casting swimbaits. Happens all the time. Don’t be afraid to stop the boat upon catching a fish trolling and cast the area with the same swimbait. You could load the boat in a hurry that way.

My son and I are entered into our first big walleye tournament this spring. We plan to use the methods described in this thread as our main strategy. Will certainly be interesting to see how we stack-up against other anglers employing mostly traditional methods. If we win the event, can we all just keep this big swimbait presentation thing quiet?? lol

BrianF wrote:

Chris, some thoughts… If you plan to troll these swimbaits, you might need more speed to activate the tail vs. how you might fish a live chub?? I don’t know how the 360GT acts at slow speed ’cause I’ve never used them, but the other swimbaits we used successfully sometimes needed more speed to really activate the tail and trigger fish. Could have been the added speed triggered an instinctive ‘reaction’ bite. Don’t know for sure. They just wanted it that way. Also, more speed will allow you to cover more water than with a chub? I like the idea of trolling swimbaits, but can’t tell you how many times trollers using more traditional presentations passed thru small, confined areas we were working without stopping – while we were hammering fish literally in their bubble trail casting swimbaits. Happens all the time. Don’t be afraid to stop the boat upon catching a fish trolling and cast the area with the same swimbait. You could load the boat in a hurry that way.

My son and I are entered into our first big <em class=”ido-tag-em”>walleye tournament this spring. We plan to use the methods described in this thread as our main strategy. Will certainly be interesting to see how we stack-up against other anglers employing mostly traditional methods. If we win the event, can we all just keep this big swimbait presentation thing quiet?? lol

I actually messed around with the 360’s up in canada last summer. One of the big things I messed with was how slow i could pull and still get that paddle tail to move.

A lot of times I am pulling chubs at .8 to 1.2mph. I think the tail should be alright at 1mph. it was a slow thump but it worked. The one thing I can really see being a problem is the bait possibly tumbling in circles. It’s going to be a trial and error thing for sure, but I am always trying to think of new ways to do things.

I’ve made believers out of many walleye folks. I call it “finesse fishing for walleyes”.

80 pound Hi Vis braid
9/0 Super J hooks with at least a 1″ braid tag hanging out of the knot.
and a 5 to 7″ bullhead.

Most always in 6′ of water or less.
Smallest fish caught was 24″ and largest was just shy of 31″ and 11 pounds spawned out.

Watching a rod bend down isn’t as much fun as getting slammed on a crankbait for sure!

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New here, nice discussion. Couple things I’ll add.

A good rule of thumb with predator fish is that they prefer prey that is 25%-50% of their length; best bang for their buck. When that size is readily available to them they’ll go for it. The biggest exception is when there is a huge amount of small food easily taken like during a bug hatch or when young of the year are everywhere. That was mentioned earlier in the thread. A 20″+ fish likes to eat the prey fish that is feeding on even smaller fish.

Colors. Some of my local lakes have mostly small forage except for perch. In those lakes, especially the ones stocked with walleye, gold/gold flake etc. swimbaits really shine. I think the bigger fish are cannibalistic and devour 4″-6″ young walleye as well as perch. My .02. anyway.

Update 2018: We continue building off of last year’s experiences. Last year our big swimbait bite died during the peak water temperatures of summer. That left us scratching our heads. Today we may have cracked the code.

After a tough day on the water, we decided to call it quits. Having made a long cast with a big swimbait, I started reeling at a high rate of speed to quickly finish my cast and head in. Midway through my rapid retrieve I got hit! Making another cast in the same direction, I decided to emulate the presentation reeling the bait at nearly warp speed. I got another hit and lost the fish. On my third cast reeling frantically I connected and caught a nice walleye. Ten bites later, twice nearly having the rod ripped out of my hands, we realized this may have been a ‘eureka’ moment. The fish wanted extreme speed.

Might be worthy to note that before getting a single bite, these fish had seen a slow/med speed swimbait, a Jiggin Rap, Rippin Rap and live bait.

We’ll continue to experiment with speed depending on various water temperature to continue fine tuning the presentation.

This is great info. I’m going to be on a lake in Canada in a few weeks that has big walleyes. I’m bringing a some big plastics and even some
small Muskie baits to give it a try.

I’ve had good luck on multi species with 360 GT baits so I plan on bringing some of those and the big ketech paddle tails.

I would’ve assumed with warm water to slow down but maybe not. I’ll post a report when I get back.

Matt, from what I’ve seen, as the water temp increases so too should your retrieve speed. It was incredible to see what burning that bait did to the fish; fish that otherwise weren’t biting. I was retrieving as fast as I could turn the handle – and getting pounded. Slow down and nothing.

One other notable item: I was retrieving so fast the bait would come off the bottom too quickly. Wanting to maintain speed in the strike zone longer I removed the 3/4 oz. head and replaced it with a 1 1/2 oz. musky sized jighead with a 7/0 hook. Even with this much weight, you’ll still need to pause a few seconds during mid-retrieve to get the bait back to depth.

If you try this technique, let us know how you do. Good luck on your trip!

BrianF wrote:

Matt, from what I’ve seen, as the water temp increases so too should your retrieve speed. It was incredible to see what burning that bait did to the fish; fish that otherwise weren’t biting. I was retrieving as fast as I could turn the handle – and getting pounded. Slow down and nothing.

One other notable item: I was retrieving so fast the bait would come off the bottom too quickly. Wanting to maintain speed in the strike zone longer I removed the 3/4 oz. head and replaced it with a 1 1/2 oz. musky sized jighead with a 7/0 hook. Even with this much weight, you’ll still need to pause a few seconds during mid-retrieve to get the bait back to depth.

If you try this technique, let us know how you do. Good luck on your trip!

Great info!

Basseyes or anyone else-instead of burning a plastic would’nt you be better off burning a lure like a Rippin’ Rap that is designed to be burned? The vibration and rattle would be solid-think the advantage of the plastic is a nice thump at a low to medium speed. What do you think?

Tim, I use Rippin Raps a lot…rip, drop, rip, drop. Awesome lure and always on one of my rods. The problem is you can’t burn it at depths greater than a few feet. We’re generally fishing in depth ranges of 13 to 17 feet – well within reach of these head heavy-headed swimmers. Plus, besides Doug Stange, I’ve not seen anyone using these plastics; atleast where I’m fishing. It’s definitely something different for the fish.

The size could also be factor. These swimmers are massive compared to traditional walleye tactics, fully 5X the mass of the #6 Rippin Rap shown below. Sometimes size matters. Btw, we catch plenty of 2lbers on these, so they aren’t that intimidating to the fish.

I’m not trying to sell you anything – I’m a banker – just think it’s a fun tactic to try. They definitely work, the strikes are bone jarring, and they select for big fish IMO.

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