Drastic plastics for fall walleye

By Gord Ellis

Late this summer, Sandro Fragale and I spent the better part of two hours trolling night crawlers and blades for walleye on a river near Thunder Bay. Conditions seemed right and we'd marked a few fish in the hole we were working, but nothing happened. Finally, we replaced our live-bait rigs with soft-plastic artificials. Almost immediately our luck changed. After Sandro hooked and released his second 5-pounder, we chatted. It went something like this:

Sandro: "Why don't more walleye anglers use artificial baits?"

Gord: "Most walleye fisherman are traditionalists and like to use live bait. Heck, they insist on it."

Sandro: "Yeah, but we both know how often we catch our biggest fish on artificials. Look what's happening today. We almost left." Somewhere around this point the conversation was interrupted as I set the hook on another large fish. After a bulldogging battle, a golden 7-pound walleye appeared on the surface and my partner scooped it up. After photos were taken and the admiring was done, I twisted the oversized white grub and jig out of the walleye's mouth and put the fish back in the water. The conversation continued.

Sandro: "That was a block buddy. She liked that big twister."

Gord: "Yep. Big walleye like drastic plastic. Now could you pass me that bag of bodies?"

Drastic plastic pretty well describes any soft-plastic bait that's a bit different from what a walleye would normally see. It could be a drastic change in colour, size, or shape - often all three. In the fall, drastic plastic is especially deadly, as walleye are bulking up before winter and are more interested in a large bait.

Soft plastics have the feel, look, and often the smell of something good for walleye to eat. They're also versatile. Depending on the situation, you can jig, rig, drift, and pitch them with excellent results. Here's a rundown on some types of plastic baits that big walleye love to hate.

Lizards

The soft-plastic approximation of a salamander or newt that's deadly for largemouth bass is equally potent for sway-bellied walleye. Whether the fish think it's a mudpuppy or other aquatic amphibian is debatable, but all the wiggle from those arms and that tail provides a lot of vibration in the water and significant profile.

The first time I saw a lizard used to catch walleye was on northwestern Ontario's Rainy River several years ago. The angler tossing the lizard was Minnesota fishing legend Al Lindner. He was using a 4-inch plastic lizard on a heavy rattle jig to attract more bites in the murky water. Sometime after that the already mentioned Mr. Fragale arrived at my doorstep. "Gord," he said, "do you have any lizards? We're killing big walleye with them and I've run out."

Sandro said that he and a buddy had been fishing reefs where the walleye were usually finicky. I dug through my collection of bass plastic lizards and gave him some - but not all - of my limited supply. Later that fall I tried lizards myself and caught several nice walleye and a few fat smallmouth on them. Since that day, lizards have found their way into my box of plastic walleye baits.

The easiest way to rig a lizard for walleye is on a 1/2- or 5/8-ounce jig head. Just thread the hook through the nose and out the top of the lizard's head. A 4-inch lizard is the best all-around size for walleye, but you can go up to a 7-incher, if you're feeling bold. On longer lizards, however, bite the head off (Ozzy Osbourne style) and just use the body, as too much rubber behind the hook will cause short strikes. You can also Texas-rig a lizard on a worm hook and peg a bullet sinker just above it. This works especially well if you're fishing in weeds.

Lizards come in a variety of colours, but for walleye, green, red shad, orange, and pumpkinseed have proven to be fish catchers. My favourite colours for walleye, however, are traditional bass shades of blue and purple.

Worms

"Rubber" worms have been around for a long, long time. In fact, I remember seeing rigged rubber night crawlers on walleye spinners when I was a kid. Although the newer soft-plastic worms are de rigueur in the bass world, they've been slow to catch on among the walleye fraternity. That might change soon, however, as at least one company is creating a plastic worm specifically for walleye. They're biodegradable and have the look, texture, and (relative) taste of live bait. While I look forward to testing the new worms, I've also had good luck catching walleye with traditional bass worms. In fact, I've caught dozens of walleye on 4-inch finesse worms while fishing for smallmouth bass. The use of plastic worms for walleye is especially effective where rock bass, perch, and sunfish repeatedly nip the back end off crawlers.

The best technique for fall walleye is to drag a plastic worm slowly along the tops of reefs and over the edges of dropoffs. Slider jig heads and worms work well in thick cover, as they can be rigged weedless. Some anglers have been using bright pink, green, and even white 6-inch worms as a replacement for night crawlers on traditional spinner rigs. When Lindy-rigging with a slip-sinker, a black, pink, or brown floating worm might be the perfect bait, as it will suspend just off the bottom.

Some days you might have to strike sooner than you would with a live crawler. That being said, I've played around a fair bit with rubber worms on walleye reefs and have had fish hold on to them for more than a minute.

If you're fishing shallow, or the walleye are being extra finicky, try rigging a 4-inch worm "whacky" style by taking a wide-gap worm hook and hooking the worm right in the centre. Cast the worm out weightless and allow it to drift slowly towards bottom. Twitch your rod tip every once in a while to achieve the whacky action. At present, the hot bait among bass anglers for this style of fishing is the 4-inch Yamamoto Senko. While it's dynamite on smallmouth, the Senko also works well on walleye.

Shads

This is a no-brainer. Three-inch plastic shads are proven spring and summer walleye baits. If you have doubts about the effectiveness of big plastic baits for fall, however, start with a 4-inch shad. Shads are the family of plastics that includes all types of soft minnow-imitating baits, even drop-shot minnows and jerk shads. The standard bearer of the family was the legendary Vibrotail and later the Sassy Shad. Both have the waggle tail and minnow-shaped body that have become the basis for almost all other shads. Then came the Power Shad, Shimmy Shad, and others. Recently, the jaw-dropping line of realistic shads from Storm have been flying off the shelves. There's no real secret to fishing a shad for walleye. In many ways they fish themselves. Hook the shad on a neutral-coloured ball-head jig of 1/4- to 3/8 ounce and drop it to the bottom. Then, pop it softly every so often as you would a jig and minnow. You can also swim a shad over reefs and windy points by slowly working it back with soft sweeps of your rod, imparting an undulating action.

The best shad colours for walleye generally run along the natural end of things. Silver, white, smoke, black, red, and browns will cover most situations. There is also an increasing number of detailed holographic shads on the market that look so real that you have to feel bad for the fish.

Grubs, tubes, and the rest

While this family covers a lot of territory, the look of all these plastics is a bit more compact than lizards and worms. Again, 3-incher twister and paddletail grubs and tubes are proven walleye baits. But, while a 4-inch worm could still be considered relatively bite-sized for a big walleye, a 4-inch twister is getting into the full-meal category. Some 4- and 5-inch specialty grubs, like those made by Yamamoto, Yum, Berkley, and Kalin, are absolutely rotund. Bump up the size of a grub or tube, however, and you weed out small walleye and attract the lunkers.

Most large grubs and tubes are best fished on a 1/2- to 5/8-ounce jig head. You can fish a lighter head, but you'll need to watch your line closely, as walleye hit slowly falling baits on the drop and you might not feel the strike. Use high-quality jig heads with ultra-sharp, long-shank hooks when you fish big, squat plastics.

Natural-coloured tubes and grubs are best for walleye. While worms and lizards seem to be trigger baits, walleye see tubes, grubs, and the like as real food. Because of this, colours like white, smoke, black, brown, and red shad are all good choices. Don't be afraid to get funky with colour, though, as a lot of trophy walleye have been caught on chartreuse, yellow, and orange twisters over the years. As long as live bait is legal in Ontario, plastics will never completely replace the real deal for walleye, but modern soft plastic baits are getting better every year. If you haven't tried them for fall walleye, make 2002 the season you break out the drastic plastic.