Just one

Did some painting last week and tied up a new mixed media walleye jig. Honestly have not tied anything in a while. This was a 1/8th head with a heavy hook intended for some walleye. A couple long zonker strips out the back, then cotton batting to bulk it up, finally adding some colorful craft fur to finish it off.



I took it out to get wet the next night but no takers on it. Did have a couple small walleye follow it up to shore, but no hits. I've been getting lots of variety on plastic swimbaits, I think the water temps need to cool down a little more. So far I have brought home a couple walleye, a mess of rock bass one night and i havent kept track of all the big largemouth I've caught. The catfish I thought for sure wad going to be a nice big walleye. Fishing has been good!

Holy Flying Felines!  Nice eaters and BIG bass.

Dunno, altho tying is fun pinning soft baits seems more time efficient and can't dispute the results.  Last nite best wally session of a rather poor year, 9 with best (quote from landing assistant) "at Least" 26",  5 keeper size 15"-21", 2 slightly short all C & R on the 3" Power Bait pearl color Ripple shad with the front eye portion trimmed off to better fit the orange 3/16 bead collar with #2 gold prop ball head w/ 2/0 light wire Gami hook.  Plain unpainted 1/8 1/0 2x Hooksup head seemed to work just as well previously.\

View attachment 5

Forgot to ask AF, what soft baits were producing for you ?

I've been using mainly Keitech swim baits. I think they are the 3.8 versions. I use some of the bigger ones too. The Kalins 5" lunker grubs work good too. Been using either your HooksUp heads or the 1/16 BassPro heads that have the heavy hooks. The other night (with all the rock bass) I had to slow roll the swim baits and then completely stop reeling to get bit.

What colors softies ? Power Bait pearl seems to consistently produce for me, & Jon favors Gulp chartreuse.

Early AM today Jon got 5 & 7# and me 9# wallys and we lost count of the smaller ones mostly give or take around 20". All C&R from shore.

Dang, sounds like you have the right spot. The numbers of walleye in your area must be on a good swing. My local resource hasn't been all that great on the size, but there are lots of small fish. After dark I tend to throw mostly dark color..... black, blue or purple. Some nights did well on pearl colors though.

I had to wait to pick up my daughter after a musical last night and it worked out that I could take my gear and "wait" for her to be done then pick her up at my parents. They live on Erie. [emoji16] spent several hours casting many different lures and not a bump. Water was pretty dirty from a big blow earlier thus week. Oh well. It was nice go be out and try at least.

#s of walleye didn't magically increase, but this last week provided a tekneek breakthru for me. Indeed "right spot" is the key for big wallys at nite, and for us it was a small section of shoreline where fish were packed up in close, casting elsewhere out or sideways any distance was fruitless. Critical to our success was the realization that the daytime barren shallow near bank / rocks were where the fish were holding at nite. Typical day tripper tekneek here is long casting out then lift dropping jigs or dunking minners which lately has been productive for mostly 14-16" wallys. Jon & I are EXTREMELY LUCKY to have the night resource to ourselves, for now anyway. Hopefully, meatheads won't find out, & we ain't telling ANYONE. Cept you.

May not apply to all types of habitat, but our tekneek is to walk shoreline AT NIGHT concentrating on the zone within 10' of dry bank / rocks. When one is caught, there is a good chance others are packed in the same area. Not sure if this applies to all seasons, as I only discovered this a week ago.

I`m still bagging them on the light dark underspins but interesting to read your night tactics. Probing a new bank at the moment. They cleaned the old, narrow, salty end of the canal of shore brush and made it very accessible. Some say the lunkers >30" would hold far out over the sole where the commercial fishermen can`t put nets and the large ships grind bait. Its only 20 yards away there, compared to 40 yard elsewhere, making it accessible with light jigs. Got my first ones last night, rather generic 20"-something fish that held close to the bank which is much steeper than the banks I am used to. Very accessible, very nice to fish but stronger current and a salinity that is a bit edgy for zander taste. Have to say I really enjoyed to be alone at night, the fashion is catching on, its been a while since I saw no other car ariving on what used to be my "secret" spot. 

Bucho - Those are chunky looking fish. The ones i get from my local reservoir are almost always skinny as heck but the Erie walleye really fatten up on the shad. What forage fish do the zander eat in that canal? There is definitely a nice stretch of shore you have access to and i know all to well about the steep rocks like that. The big half car size boulders used in the Lake Erie break walls have a whole different set of challenges. You have to be part mountain goat to stay dry!

Hawnjigs - Unfortunately, my smallish reservoirs just don't have the numbers to catch that many from a single spot in a night. I do know very well though that they come back to the same small areas over and over again. I've figured out the best angles to approach the "spot on the spot" and make sure i always hit them. 9 times out of 10 there are fish sitting right where i know they like to sit..... just a matter of if they are in feed mode or not i guess.

AtticaFish said:

What forage fish do the zander eat in that canal? 

Click to expand...

Very differently. Mostly black mouthed gobys which are a pest here, too. Most anglers who visit from the big rivers fish way too large lures. Got my best daytime fish on less than fingerlong tip-ups. Then they eat their own fry, a sand colored zander (hence the name) pattern produces well too. Then there is hering fry, and late autumn brings adult hering in which roames the surface at night. Thats when night fishing really shines. They are generally well fed indeed. The big rivers hold much larger fish though. When I posted my recent 75cm pb on FB last autumn, I was pittied for our small canal specimen... PB of more than a meter, if not 1.20, are not unusual for seasoned fishermen at Weser or Elbe River.

Interesting to hear about the gobys, they are certainly all over Lake Erie. They are considered an invasive species, but the smallmouth bass in Erie have really taken a liking to them. The combination of gobys and another invasive species, zebra mussels, have combined to clear up the water in Erie and give a new food source for the smallmouth making Erie now one of the top spots in the Nation for BIG smallmouth. If the walleye (or zander in your case) are feeding on them, would need to change tactics a little to baits hopped along the bottom. I don't think they venture too far up off the bottom. I have caught them fishing for panfish way up into the sheltered bays of the lake too. Lake Erie is going through a downswing right now for yellow perch fishing. The state DNR says there are still good numbers and size of perch.... but people are having a really tough time catching them. There is now another invasive in Erie, the spiny water flea, that they are saying could possibly be changing what the perch are eating and how they are schooling to feed.

I really do need to throw the spinner jigs i have made more often. I get hung up on the lures that have done me good in the past and forget to try and change things up.

The amount of gobies was really concerning at first, particularly since they forage on other species`eggs and fry. Since more and more predators have developed a taste for them however the numbers have normalized now. I use mostly tip- ups and swingtails for my day fishing. Both are fairly easy to un-snag. I had 6 or 7 snags on the new steep bank today and didn`t loose one bait. I`m very fond of the brand new VMC 7236 for that purpose btw. Great hook. Not sure if I would buy one at almost 1$ in retail but it is a great hook.

Introduced non-native species that seem to over thrive always seem to get bad press. Our DNR front person was always extolling the negative impacts of gizzard shad and alewives in our reservoirs when I first started browsing the Nebraska fishing which I joined in 2011 but nowadays he sings praises of how these naturally thriving forage species maintain trophy walleye and wiper fisheries which attract MAJOR out of state $ from anglers.

Hahaha, looked up the VMC 7236 which appears to have hybridized the EWG, Sickle, and Barbarbian styles. Having used all styles of jig hooks (except the Barbarian) I'm of the opinion that certain basic key functional attributes are all thats needed - strength, sharpness, adequate point leg length, & proper line of pull penetration angle. Speaking of, Jon's mentioned est. 7# walleye dropped off being pulled up onto shore when the bronze jig hook bent out. Altho I've given him ample bulletproof jigheads he still insists on using his older inventory of off the rack painted heads with the purty colors and eyes.

Bucho, do you get more missed hooksets with swing hooks than traditional fixed hook jigheads ?

Hawnjigs said:

Bucho, do you get more missed hooksets with swing hooks than traditional fixed hook jigheads ?

Click to expand...

No.

I have noticed almost exclusively out-side-in- hooksets with very small zander which grab the head without the hookpoint which I blame on the reset hook position. I miss a couple of weak bites which I blame on that - never a strong bite. Apart from that, the new Vmc gets me the best hookup rate ever, speaking of seatrout casting spoons which it was designed for. I often try to release trout by just slacking the line - not a chance with these! They stick like glue. Almost too efficient.  I generally emphasize hooks that swing toward the fish when it sucks the lure in. I find swinging hooks more efficient - given they have the right size.

If you feel otherwise, that might be due to smaller size? The hooks I use for the swingtails are even bigger than the fixed hooks.

Nice jobs guys
Keitech are great - add research innovations in 3.5" to your arsenal too
I finally got a chance to fish again.  Been to long

View attachment 5

Can somebody PLEASE fix the oversize pic ? Looks like a beautiful fish in a likewise setting.