MontanaWalleye.com
with pro Dale Gilbert
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Walleyes in the dog days of summer
 The heat of summer can produce nice walleyes. |
By DALE GILBERT
Montana walleye pro
The forecast is for highs of 95-100 degrees. It is mid-summer with no relief in sight. Egad, not the weather forecast most people would like when thinking about heading to the lake for the weekend - at least here in Montana. But it isn't all bad, in fact in late July and through August; I have had some great fishing at times.
At least for a good portion of the great state of Montana, evenings generally cool down, so a person can get out early in the morning when it isn't so unbearably hot, or in some cases wait until evening and get out and fish when the sun is going down. Actually, if you have a boat with a sun top, even daytime fishing is bearable - especially with a little breeze. Putting up my sun top on my Lund and sitting in the shade, is almost like turning the thermostat down, and not too bad. Ordinarily, the sun top isn't even in my boat but come later July and August, I really hate to be without it.
This time of the year can be frustrating at times, but I have seen the fishing to actually be very good. In order for that to happen, it means fishing a different presentation, or maybe in a different area, than I would have fished a month or two earlier.
For example, a couple of years ago, during the later part of August, I fished one of the local reservoirs on a flat, calm day with the temperature in the high 90's. I had a great time fishing with a good friend and caught several very, very nice walleyes up to 28" or so - pulling crankbaits over the weeds. The fish were scattered over a fairly large area, so trolling with crankbaits covered a lot of water. What was important was that the weeds were topping out about 8-10 feet under the surface, in about 17-20 feet of water. So we were able to put out enough line to get the baits to just tick the tops of the weeds once in a while and trigger the fish to come up out of the weeds and take the baits. It is important to find areas where the weeds are alive and growing. I have never done well if the weeds are dead or dying.
When you are doing this type of trolling, it is best to use a crankbait that is buoyant or neutral so it will not sink if you slow down. Otherwise when you turn, your inside line will get into the weeds and you will have to reel in and clean off the weeds. For this reason too, even though I really like to pull crankbaits with lead core line, I prefer to long line troll with a line like the Berkley 10# Fireline or Spiderwire 10# Stealth when fishing over weeds. The advantage of trolling with superlines is because they are a no-stretch line which allows me to see, by watching my rod tip, when my bait is not working like it should. You can get used to seeing the vibration of a good running crankbait and when it stops or becomes more subtle - you probably have snagged a weed. Monofilament line has some stretch in it and does not allow you to monitor how your crankbait is running - it is harder to see the vibrations on the rod. I also at times will put a very small split shot or sometimes a swivel on the line about 4 feet in front of the crankbait. Sometimes this will catch a weed and keep it from fouling on the crankbait quite as soon.
It takes a little trial and error, watching your graph to see the depth of the weeds and figuring out how much line to let out to get your crankbait to the perfect depth. This is critical or you will spend most of the day, cleaning off weeds and not catching many fish. A good place to start is one of the Precision Trolling books that have dive curves for most of the more popular crankbaits.
The dive curve will show you how many feet of line to let out to get to a depth on the chart. If a person uses 10/4# Fireline, an adjustment is needed because of the smaller diameter of the line that allows the lure to run, on average about 25% deeper than what the chart says for 10# monofilament line. So, if I want to run a lure at 10 foot depth, I would need to look at the chart to see how many feet of line I would need to let out to run about 8 feet. (8 foot plus about 25% more depth should equal about 10 foot - or about 82 feet of 10/4 Fireline for a number 5 Shad Rap) From there you adjust based on your setup and speed to fine tune it.
During this time of the year and if the fish are active, I frequently will speed up and troll faster than I would have earlier in the year. Speeding up to 2.5 mph or even up to 3.5+ mph can really trigger some fish - it is a reaction strike, since they don't have time to think about it - just remember, it is really critical to keep a fairly loose drag, since there is no stretch with the Fireline. Something has to give somewhere when a big fish hits a crankbait at 3+ mph, hopefully your drag, otherwise the hooks will pull out, the line may break or worse case the rod may break. That is one of the reasons I use a medium power, moderate to moderate fast action rod, like the 8 ½ or 10 ½ foot, St Croix Wild River Series rods. I like the length to spread my presentations out without having to use planer boards and the action of the rod gives me some margin when playing the fish - since there is no give to the line.
A line counter reel makes it a little easier to figure out and get the lures back out to the right depth. I have used Diawa and Shimano line counters in the past, and I see Abu Garcia has a 5500 LC Ambassador reel that I am going to try. They all work the same, but you need to understand it makes a big difference in how the reel is filled with line as to how accurate they really are. I put monofilament backing on my reels and then 100 yards of Fireline and do it so that the spool is basically full. The line counters have a counter set to read in feet, but it is based on the average of how many feet of line there is in one revolution of the spool - a spool not filled might say 130 feet, yet a full spooled reel might say 85 feet and it might actually be 95 feet of line out. I actually will take a yardstick and try to fill the reels to the point of when I reel in 10 feet, that is what it says. Most importantly is to just spool each reel the same, so once you have fine tuned what you need for line length out; you can put it back out with some confidence.
A person does not need to go out and buy a line counter reel, because you can count line passes off a bait casting reel, or you can measure a spot on your boat of say, 10 feet, and use it as a reference when letting out line, however, line counters do make it a lot easier.
If you don't have the weeds to fish, the other mid summer option for some good fishing is trolling deeper water using lead core line. In fact last August, during the Camp Walleye for Kids on Tiber reservoir, the biggest walleye of the weekend came on a Blue Glass Shad Rap - pulling lead core in deep water. In most systems as the water column warms, fish move deeper - it is not uncommon to find fish in the 25-30+ foot depths this time of year. On Lake Oahe, in South Dakota because of the smelt forage base, the fish can be even deeper.
So, if you get a chance to wet a line this summer, go for it - give the crankbait trolling technique a chance, it might be better than you think.
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Dale R. Gilbert
44 Foxtail Lane
Ulm, MT 59485
Phone: 406-866-3304
Cell: 406-788-3824
E-mail Dale
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