Trolling Crankbaits For Lake Erie Walleyes – Part II
By Chuck Bailey
In Part I, Captain Ken Nulph explained that when current on Lake Erie is flowing down below, it is a mistake to turn the boat around and go back in the direction you just came from without first making some major adjustments. Add wind and waves to the mix and it begins to get even more complicated.
Wind and Wave Adjustments
Captain Ken explains some of the basics effects of wind and waves, “First, it is a lot easier to navigate a boat going with the waves. It’s also easier to run a large number of rods going with the waves - because you have a much smoother ride. If I turn around and go into the waves, the boat begins bouncing around a lot, and you’ve got to pay strict attention to keeping that boat straight, so everything stays lined up behind the boat.”
“And naturally the wind and waves coming against the bow of your boat is going to slow your boat down, so you have speed up. Let's say you were catching fish going with the wind at 2.4 miles per hour. When you turn around and go into the waves and you adjust your speed to again reach 2.4 miles per hour, you have to recognize that your crankbaits are probably going to be running deeper.”
Windy days that create waves require constant adjustments. “You’re either going to have to slow down or speed up, and you have to let the fish tell you what they want.”
Ken reminds us that winds and waves affect the way walleyes position themselves. “When you have a decent wind speed out there, fish will put their noses into the wind, or into the waves. So generally we do better trolling with the wind than against the wind.”
Heading Back into the Wind and Waves
Can you catch fish by simply turning around and heading back into the wind and waves? “Oh yes. You will catch some fish going into the wind, but 9 times out of 10 it’s not as good as when you are going with the waves, because the fish are facing in a different direction now.”
Never the less, there are times when a Captain chooses to do just that - turn around and go into the wind, knowing that the crankbaits will be diving deeper because they were going into the current. So adjustments must be made – usually by controlling the boat’s speed.
“Because you are sometimes working such small pockets of fish, when you have 10 or 20 rods out it would be very hard to turn around and then have to reel in all those rods, making line length adjustments on each one. If you had to set up all over again with each turn of the boat, you would be wasting a lot of time.”
“So what you want to do is leave the lines in the water, (after all, you can’t catch fish if the lines aren’t in the water), and you try something else that can increase your chances of catching fish as you change your direction of troll. And that is usually done with speed.”
Depth, Speed, and Turns Into the Wind
It’s important to realize that manipulating the running depth of the crankbaits by simply adjusting boat speed (for instance, going slower to let the crankbait rise) means the baits may now be at the right depth, but they aren’t going at the same speed utilized on the last pass. Turning into the wind and waves creates one of those situations where you can’t have your cake (depth) and eat it too (speed).
There is an alternative, but one used only in extreme weather. “Sometimes we run back up and start again at the top of the pass, but only when the waves are really big and the wind is really howling. It can be very difficult in big waves to navigate a big boat trolling into the waves at such a slow speed. So, when the wind and the waves are pretty bad we will pick everything up and make a long run back to the beginning of the troll, spin the boat around with the wind and set back up again.”
The Trolling Rod, Reel, and Line
If you were to arrive early at the dock to watch the crew set up the equipment you would be able to observe rod and reel preparation. “When we are fishing the large planer boards, (which we do all summer long), we use 8 1/2 foot medium action rods, (we specifically like the Okuma Blue Diamond rods).”
“We match those up with line-counter reels, which are a must if you are to tell how far back your crankbait is. The preferred gear ratio is somewhere around 5.1:1. Walleyes are not intense fighters nor do they tend to charge the boat, or make huge explosive runs, so I don’t think a high gear ratio is called for.”
There is not a need for anything exceptionally exotic in terms of reels, and Ken adds, “For our planer board fishing we use Daiwa 27 LC’s, and sometimes Okuma Catalina 20’s. And we fill them with 12 pound monofilament line.”
The Proper Line for Spooky Fish and Clear Water
With all the high tech lines out on the market today, why monofilament? “It has a little bit of stretch to it,” Captain Ken explains. “I think you would tear the lure out of the fish’s face if you went with braid. (A non-stretch line). Now we do use braid with Dipsy Divers but that’s a whole other conversation. We primarily stick with mono because of the stretch.”
Another reason for using monofilament has to do with the clear water in Lake Erie. Sometimes you can see 30 feet to the bottom. Captain Ken wants his crankbaits a good distance from the boat because a 27 foot vessel is easily seen by the fish and tends to spook the walleyes. The crankbaits should be away from the boat, (hence the planer boards), or far enough behind it in order to increase the odds of walleye striking them.
But braid is very thin in diameter, (compared to monofilament), and cuts through the water far easier and therefore delivers the crankbait to the selected depth with less line out. That places the crankbaits closer to the boat. That, according to Ken is undesirable. “In my opinion, the further away from the boat the better.”
Because monofilament is thicker in diameter (in the same pound test), the increased water resistance causes it to ride higher and therefore more line must played out before the crankbait reaches the desired depth. And in clear water filled with spooky fish, that’s just what the Captain prefers.
Attaching the Bait to the Line
Captain Ken’s approach to attaching the bait to the line is both simple and practical. “We tie directly to a snap, and then connect the snap directly to the lure – for two reasons; 1) it makes changing lures easy, and 2) it’s just like having a loop knot or Rapala knot on the lure – it gives the lure much better action.”
Setting Up the Rods
After locating fish on the sonar and positioning the boat for it’s first pass, the first mate begins by extending the large planer boards and then focuses on putting out the rods. Naturally, the mate starts with the rods whose line will be the furthest away from the boat.
Captain Ken elaborates, “And you have to pay attention to the way you put them out if you don’t want to have a big giant tangled monofilament mess. The first crankbait you put out will be the furthest out on the tow line of the planer boards. And the next rod which is the 2nd furthest out follows that. The 1st rod whose line is furthest out is positioned in the holder closest to the front of the boat. And the rods whose lines are closer to the boat (in rod order) are closer to the stern of the boat.”
When The First Strike Occurs?
“That way, when your outside rod gets hit, all you have to do is simply grab that rod and lift it up over the rods behind it and that line will clear all the rest of them. And then what you do is give a couple cranks of the reel handle to make sure the line is tight to the fish and just wait until the line comes directly behind the boat before you start bringing it in. And if you don’t, you are dragging that fish across any lines that are inside of it.
When trolling at these speeds there no need to set a hook when pulling crankbaits carrying sharp treble hooks. The Captain explains, “The towline and the movement of the boat do that for you. The walleye are already securely on.”
Line Lengths
Earlier we learned that a good length of line is released on each rod because Captain Ken wants the crankbaits a long way from the boat in clear water filled with spooky fish. We also learned that the crew can change lure depth by the amount of line released. So it might seem logical to release different lengths of line on each rod to explore all levels of the water climate. This would be a mistake.
Ken explains, “Remember how we said we run 5 rods to a side? What you want to do is have all those rods on that side, running at the same exact distance behind the boat. So for example, all 5 lures on the port side might be 80 feet back behind the tow line. If they vary in line length, one might be running deeper than the one beside it. Now that would be OK if you are going perfectly straight, but once you turn, or if you get a bite on one and the fish decides to go under another line, you are going to have a big mess. This is especially true in the turn; that’s when they really get tangled.”
So how does the Captain explore different depths on the same pass? “Remember,” says Captain Ken, “you still have another 5 rods on the other side of the boat. So you run different leads on the port side and different leads on the starboard side.”
Variety in Color
“Let’s take the port side for example; they’ll all be running at the same depth. So what we do is put out a variety of colors. We might have 5 different colors out there, all running at the same depth. Now we move over to the starboard side and we’ll have the lead farther or shorter (targeting a shallower or deeper area) and 5 different colors.”
“We might have 10 different colors of lures out there to find out what the fish want. Once we find out what colors they want, (and that’s part of my mate’s job – is keeping track of what colors are where), we will take some of the non-productive ones out and change them out with the colors that have been producing that day.”
As the day unfolds, usually a depth and color pattern begins to unfold, and the first mate continues to refining it as each strike is analyzed and added to the data already collected. But just because a depth and color pattern is established early doesn’t mean it will not change throughout the day. A host of changing conditions can alter the fish’s behavior and preferences.
Changing Light Conditions
According to Captain Ken, the greatest of these changing conditions has to do with light. “My opinion is that light conditions affect fish activity even more than a few degrees change in water temperature will. We all know that fish will turn on or off with a change of one or two degree water temperature, but they will also turn on turn off when the clouds roll in, or the wind picks up, or it starts to rain, or anything that alters the light conditions.”
“Walleyes have very, very good eyes. And they are highly sensitive and can be affected by any little change. If it’s nice and overcast, and then boom – the clouds open up and you have a bright sky – a lot of times the walleye will shut down. So you need to adjust your depth accordingly, because the fish might drop down deeper because the sun came out.”
“So therefore you need to drop your lures out the back further. Or you might need to change your technique altogether. You might have to go from using just mono to adding a little weight to get the crankbaits down deeper.”
From Plain Flat-lining to Adding Weight
Major changes in techniques are not daily occurrences. For example, changing from mono to say copper line, or moving from flat-lining to adding weight; these major changes usually occur as the season goes on and fish move deeper. Needless to say it would be extremely time consuming to change the line or set-up of 15 rods in the middle of a day. Major changes in technique are seasonal, not daily events.
The first seasonal change comes as fish gradually leave the shallower 20 to 30 foot range behind. “There are quite a few commercial crankbaits that will achieve the 30 foot depths when you flat-line them on mono on their own,” says Captain Ken. “But once those fish get deeper than 30 foot, the crankbaits need a little help getting down there.”
“So the first thing we will do as the fish move deeper progressively throughout the season, is start half-hitching lead weights with rubber bands to the main line. We don’t use the snap weights too much because they are expensive, and when you have 10 or 20 rods out there you have a good chance of losing them. (That will break your wallet pretty quick). So we just use rubber bands. We half-hitch the weights with the rubber bands right to the main line.”
How far ahead of the lure should the weight be added? “We usually use the 50 foot rule. We’ll put the crankbait out 50 feet, then half-hitch the weight on. And then from there, we’ll run out another 100 or 150 feet. We might run those lures back all the way to 200, even 225 feet sometimes if that’s what it takes.”
“This last summer the standard procedure was to let the lure out 50 feet, put on 5 ounces of weight, and let it out another 150 feet, so it was out there 200 feet total. And those lures are getting down 50 to 60 feet depending on boat speed.”
Dipsy Divers
Naturally, when an angler has 200 feet of line out it makes for a long fight to bring a fish in. “Yes that’s true,” laughs Ken, “but that’s your best chance of getting them once they leave the shallows. You can go in and fish the shallow water all you want, but as the season progresses, it is void of walleyes. You have to follow the fish.” Never-the-less, when fish get deeper than 50 to 60 feet, extending more line or adding more weight is not the answer.
The solution? “Generally when we get 50 feet or deeper, that’s when we tend to employ Dipsy’s. We generally run four of them, two to a side. And they are directional, that is, you can adjust the settings on them. What they do is two fold – they take the bait down and also take them away from the boat.”
“And you can adjust Dipsy Divers accordingly. To adjust the depth, you simply put out more line. We use braid because there is no stretch and it is thinner in diameter and therefore it cuts through the water better and you are able to achieve deeper depths.
Seasonal Changes in Techniques
Captain Ken summarizes the seasonal shifts in terms of 'techniques' as walleye move from shallow to deeper water; “We generally flat-line mono in the spring. Sometime in July we’ll start attaching light weights to our flat-lining. We’ll also begin to incorporate the Dipsy Divers and downriggers. It’s the same program late in the summer time but we utilize heavier weights when flat-lining from planer boards.”
“And those technique changes are all determined by the fish. Every year it changes. Generally in August we’re fishing that deep program with downriggers, Dipsys, and weighed lines on planer boards, September is the same, but once November comes the walleye are gone.”
“So basically there are two main programs that an angler uses; first, flat-lining boards in shallow water off of monofilament lines, eventually adding weights. And once those fish get 40 to 50 feet or deeper then we go to that deep water Dipsy-downrigger program.”
Determining Trolling Speed
One of the obvious advantages to being a charter boat Captain, is the ability to fish every day. After the first day of the season passes, you always have the previous day’s experience to draw upon when making important decisions like “How fast should I troll?” A visitor towing their own boast to Lake Erie however always begins with a blank slate. To those anglers Captain Ken has some advice.
“I generally start out slower and experiment towards the faster end. (That’s based on personal preference - I do know some guys that start fast and go slow). I usually set my speed at 2, 2.2, 2.3 and see how fast the fish are coming in the boat, if they are at all. If they are not, I will adjust my speed accordingly, or change my direction of troll. If that doesn’t work, I start changing baits, lead lengths, etc… but anywhere from 2 miles an hour to 3 miles an hour is a typical walleye speed on Lake Erie.”
Adjusting the Direction of Troll
One of the adjustments Captain Ken just mentioned was ‘direction of troll’. “D.O.T. means direction of troll,” explains Ken. “That is north, east, south or west – in conjunction with which way the current or the waves are coming. But remember, most of the time the fish like their food coming with the waves. So generally, when I start in the morning, I position the boat to go with the waves, we get set up, and we go from there.”
“Now sometimes the walleye don’t want either/or, (with or against the wind and waves). Occasionally they want the direction of the troll in the trough – meaning running parallel to the waves. So you are trolling in between waves in the tough, so to speak. You are not going directly into the waves, and you are not going directly with them. You are going perpendicular to the waves and sometimes that can make the difference.”
Why would that make a difference? “My personal theory has to do with the way the fish are positioned. Sometimes they are moving. Admittedly, most of the time the walleye have their noses pointed into the waves. But occasionally they might be moving to deeper water or they might be migrating to the east or the west, and you just need to find out which way they are facing.”
“The fish-finder will tell you a lot. If they are sitting still you will mark good solid hooks on your fish finder. But if they are moving you will just mark half-hooks, or partial hooks on your screen. That means they are moving around down there a little bit and it’s up to you to change the direction of troll to find out which way they are facing.”
Don’t Forget The Impact of Underwater Current!
Then the captain reminds us, “And don’t forget, your baits action can be affected by those under currents too. Just because the boat is moving at 2.5 miles an hour on the surface does not mean the current is moving 2.5 miles per hour down 60 feet.”
Ken stresses again and again that the flow of incoming tributaries and the waves create current below the water that acts very differently from what is happening on the surface. And he gives an example to make his point. “If you look at many types of moving water – take a river for instance – generally the surface speed is moving 10 times more than it is on the bottom. And there is no difference if that water is a foot deep or a hundred feet deep. If it is moving at 5 knots on the surface, it is more than likely only moving half a knot on the bottom.”
Once the seasonal pattern takes anglers out into deeper water, Ken re-emphasizes the need to put his downrigger probe down to measure the actual speed. Why? “Because there’s a greater chance of the current being different in deeper water than in shallow water. So generally we use the probe in summer or late summer more often than in the spring.”
The Need To Replace Hooks
“Most of the crankbaits we fish for walleye use a thinner wire hook. They don’t hold an edge real well. But the biggest impact on our hooks occurs because they often become bent when they get tangled in the net, or when the fish is flopping and rolling around.” Ken cautions anglers, “The more you try to straighten a hook out, the more they tend towards breaking. So it’s easier just to put a new hook on than trying to straighten it out or sharpen it.”
Making a Turn or S-Curve
If you want to eliminate line entanglements when 15 to 20 rods are out, it becomes important to make a pretty wide turn when a change in direction is required or desired. “Remember,” says Ken, “you have those planer boards out a hundred feet (sometimes over a hundred feet on each side), so you have to make a long slow turn. The trick is to keep those lines tight; especially keeping the tension on your inside lines when you are making a turn. That’s the trick to avoiding tangles.”
Most anglers have heard about traveling in an s-curve when trolling. Not only does it help cut a wider swath through the water but it causes the outside baits to speed up and the inside baits to slow down. This can be used to help discover the optimum speed desired by the fish. At first, this s-curve approach may appear very impractical on a big boat.
“No, actually it is not,” explains Ken. “We commonly do that. If I make a turn to the left, and the rods to my outside start firing, that means the lures are speeding up and maybe that tells me I am going too slow. So I will adjust my speed accordingly when I am going straight, and maybe that will trigger all those rods to start going off.”
<to be continued>
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In Part III - Captain Ken shares with us his favorite crankbaits, discusses the importance of Crankbait profiles, and shares detailed instructions for fine tuning trolling baits. We'll explore color selection, the importance of confidence, when to downsize, and the effects of various weather conditions on fish activity. Our guide will discuss the effects of moon, wind, and light conditions on walleye fishing, and give some solid advice to those desiring to visit Lake Erie to fish for walleye on their own.
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Captain Ken Nulph fishes professionally on the PA waters of Lake Erie. He operates a charter boat for Buckets Charters out of Presque Isle Bay, Erie, PA for walleye, steelhead, smallmouth and perch. His career has also taken him to the salmon and trout-rich state of Alaska where he guided for the Alagnak Lodge. He is also a representative for Renosky Lures.
Feel free to contact him at: captken_renosky@verizon.net
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