walleye

[sebla]

Went out last night after work and hooked in to a nice walleye got it up to the bank and it came off DAMN. My first one ever was fishing for salmon and hooked it with green blue fox. Fishing below Wanapum dam was using barbless, because of the new rules. Does anyone have any tips or rig set ups that work good never fished for them before. Thanks

[hunt_fish]

Not sure about fishing up there but when we fish lakes like Potholes, Scooteney, and Moses we just troll cranks around rocky areas.  Then around sandy areas we'll run walleye spinner harnesses, mostly using firetiger for the blade.  We've also switched out the regular hooks or made our own then use the Mustad Slow Death hooks for the worm harness to give the worm a good spin.  I know some people use blade baits too to jig for walleye.

[HUNTINCOUPLE]

I heard of the Slow Death hooks. Could you post a pic of one? Thanks.

[Skillet]

We used to use Tru-Turn's before slow death came out.  These are light-wire hooks, so if you hook a pig on them do not try and horse the fish in.  Also, if you straighten one out on a hookset, bending it back just weakens it and it will straighten out even more on your next hookset.  I use these a lot, and I throw them out at the first sign of fatigue.  They do add something to a minimal offering, that's for certain.

[HUNTINCOUPLE]

Thanks for the pic Skillet! We ran into a walleye fisherman on Lk Roseavelt a couple weeks back and he talked of the hook like that. I will track some down for next time. We did catch some nice eaters on standard worm harnesses. But he talked of catching more on Slow Death.

[Skillet]

No problem.  Try not to put too much hardware ahead of the Slow Death hook - it will kill the action.  It'll still catch fish, but it's just a weak spinner rig at that point, IMHO.  Couple beads and a float, or couple beads and a small smile blade.  You can load up on the beads/floats/spinner blades ahead of the standard octopus hooks if you're dragging crawlers around, but the slow death hook really likes to work only with the worm.  About half the fish I've caught on it I've either just used a single bead or two ahead of it - or nothing at all.  I use it as an "active finesse" presentation for when they want bait and action, but don't want a lot of hardware.

Just my  , anyway.