Trolling-Open Water

Since Blogging Live from the FLW tournament on Lake Erie I have been getting a lot of questions in regards to pulling planer boards and open water trolling.  Most of the question have been in regards to the type set-ups I use from the rod and reel down to the terminal tackle as well as where to start when open water trolling.  All the questions are great and they give me ideas to blog about.  After doing this for so many years I tend to take a lot of this for granted so getting questions from readers gives me fresh ideas to write about.  Open water trolling is very basic by nature yet very complex when you have to fine tune what you are doing.  Open water trolling walleye does not require a lot of equipment but a few pieces are a must.  On my must have list would be a line-counter reel and planer boards.  After that, just about everything is optional.  Yes, some long trolling rods help and yes, rod holders make things much easier, but, in all honesty you can live without them when you are getting started.

Early in the year when the water is below 50 degrees I prefer to pull crankbaits.  Usually I start the year with deep diving crankbaits with a large profile pulled slowly.  As the water temps increase, I usually downsize the crankbait size and increase the speed.  As the water in spring warms up walleye become more aggressive and will chase baits pulled at greater speeds.  As surface temps and conditions change so does the area in the water column that fish feed.  But, no matter what when the water is cold I will be pulling larger profile cranks with a less aggressive slow wobble to them.

Now, back to my set-ups.  I run Diawa Sealine line counters for the most part and also have a few Accudepths.  Both work well for their intended purpose.  With line counter reels you want to make sure you spool all your reels with the same diameter line and you fill them all with the same amount of line.  If you have different amounts of line on each rod or different diameters of line, you will not be consistent from reel to reel when letting out line.

To determine how deep a crankbait is running you  need to know how much line you are letting out.  Almost all crankbaits have published dive curves now so that you know how deep they are running based on the amount of line you have out.  For instance, I know when I let out 100 feet of line on a Rapala Deep Husky Jerk, I know that bait is running roughly 16 feet down.  For this reason you will hear a lot of pros talk about running 45 back or 100 back and what we are talking about is how many feet back behind the planer board we are running.  It is not very often we talk about actual depth, as that is a given based on the type of crankbait once you know how far back it is running.  The only thing that changes this is if you use a very narrow diameter line like Fireline.  Crankbaits will dive deeper than the published diver curve with narrow diameter lines because there is less water resistance.

That brings me to planer boards.  Planer boards are used to spread your lines out.  Planer boards allow you to run your baits away from the boat thus not spooking the fish when fishing shallow.  In addition, planer boards allow you to run all your legal lines without having them all tangle when you get a fish, which often happens when all your lines are run out the back of the boat.  Planer boards are a very important part of open water trolling and used by almost everyone that does.

I want to thank my good friend Kooty who reminded me I forgot to cover setting multiple boards out.  While setting multiple boards on each side of the boat you want to run the shallowest baits on the very outside of your spread, thus getting them farthest from the boat.  As your boards get closer to the boat you want those baits running deeper.  This way you get to cover more area in the water column and giving your inside boards a chance to still get hit.

That brings me to the tough one, where do you start?  Well, there are a lot of factors that determine where to start trolling. But, I can tell you the first Basin area outside of  a river is a great place to start.  As post spawn fish dump out of rivers they stage over deep water to feed before heading back to there summer locations.  Immediately after spawn can be tough as they take a few days to recover, but once they decide to feed the open water bite can be a blast.  As the water warms over the summer months, many big walleye will suspend over deep water.  I use my Humminbrird 1197C to locate areas that are holding large bait like tullibee.  When you find schools of bait like this, you can be sure the large walleye are not far away.  I know this does not give all the answers but it is a long summer and there will be a lot more to come on open water trolling to come.  From pulling spinners to summer cranks, hopefully by the time the summer is over we have covered it all.