Patience and perseverance---without building generous portions of both into your approach to walleye fishing you’ll be better off chasing one of those little white balls around the countryside.
In my last column I told you how Pat Slater and his partner used both of those ingredients to cook up a recipe for winning the Montana Walleye circuit’s Big Horn Yellowtail Finale last fall on Big Horn Lake.
Pat and his team partner Mark Nuss had found fish. But just finding fish doesn’t win walleye tournaments---you’ve got to get them to hit. That’s rarely easy, especially on a lake like Big Horn where the water is loaded with forage fish.
“Once we knew we were on fish,” Pat says, ““We did our best to match the hatch. Emerald shiners appeared to be among the favorite forage the walleye were after. We tried everything.”
Eventually Pat rigged with a Mack’s Lure Cha Cha Squidder. This lure has a buoyant float that helps keep it up and snag free when it’s fished along the bottom. The fish didn’t react to that first Cha Cha Pat tried. Here again, patience and perseverance come back into the picture. Like some of the other top walleye pros I’ve had the good fortune to know, Pat kept changing colors and sizes of the lure’s Smile Blades until he found one the fish would grab.
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Here's a close up of Mack's Lure Cha Cha Kokanee Squidder rigs. These lures have proven to be effective for walleyes as well as kokanee.
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That turned out to be the answer. A combination Pat eventually came up with started putting fish in the boat. What was that exact blade size and color combination? I don’t know and Pat won’t tell---and I don’t blame him one darn bit! I wouldn’t either. He’s paid his dues as a tournament walleye angler in both sweat and cash time after time.
If he wants to hold onto a secret or two he’s earned the right to do so. You’ll recall that in my last column I told you how Pat had fished the first of the four Yellowtail Finale contests in which he has participated without putting a single fish in the boat.
I’ve got my own fishing secrets. You likely do too. I remember what I often used to say years ago when I lived on the shore of a hard fished bass lake. I’d worked out some effective tactics on this lake through experience and countless hours of plain hard work.
This was in the days before I had a hand in helping to introduce and promote catch and release bass angling around the country. In those early days we usually kept the fish we caught. When I came in with a big string of bass back then someone was sure to ask “Where did you hook those beauties?” My reply was simply “I hooked every darn one of them right in the mouth.”
But before you get your nose bent figuring you should have all the answers, consider all the major factors, things that are a cinch to help you in your own fishing that Pat has already shared with us.
I’ve repeatedly mentioned patience and perseverance. Like Pat says, you’ve got to have that for starters. Then, like he and his partner did at the Yellowtail Finale, for heaven’s sake select lures that are capable of getting down where the fish are without forever hanging up. The Mack’s Lure Cha Cha Kokanee Squidder the pair picked to do so takes a big step in that direction.
Finally, don’t stick with any one approach hour after hour. Sometimes, as Pat points out, you have to have just the right blade size and color to get the job done. You can do that just as easily as he does. If one shade Smile Blade or size doesn’t work, take it off and slide on a different one. These blades in their different sizes are just as readily available to you as they are to him.
Pat will also tell you your boat trolling speed is critical. “At the Yellowtail Finale,” he says, “we ran at speeds from .7 to no more than I mile per hour.”
Bait size and water depth are also among his other keys to catching. “We cut the nightcrawlers we used for bait down to about 2/3rd their original size.” Pat says. “We caught fish mostly in water 25 to 35-feet in depth.”
Like I said in the beginning, I’d like to one day share a boat with Pat Slater. He tells it like it is and he’s a guy you can learn from. The details he’s provided in my last two columns are the next best thing to going out with him.
I hope you’ve enjoy reading them as much as I have in sharing them with you.
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