Presentation Part 1- Hooking on to that Walleye
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 | Walleye! How do we get this great fish to bite? Well, here I am again and I will tell you about how I present the worm on the 3-way rig described in the Terminal Tackle article as a juicy morsel for those waiting walleye. I have a 14 ft. aluminium boat and a 9.9 motor and my favourite method of presentation is by back-trolling. Why back-troll? Well, there are 2 good reasons. |
| First, it gives me more control over speed and manoeuvring and it allows me to bounce my bait along the bottom at a nice slow pace. Too often I see guys trolling and dragging a line around all over the place and nothing happens. As corny as it might sound, I think that you have to become more intimate with the situation. You have to pay attention and finesse them. You will find that a walleye will often hit just as you drop your bait by moving your rod back and it hits the bottom. I often pull my line ahead and then drop it back as I troll. | |
| Of course, fishing tight to the bottom will get you snagged up more than you would like. However, patience is the key and if you don't keep “horsing” your line and you give it slack, in most cases you can go back to the snag and get it off. | |
| This method of presentation requires close attention and some effort and in a short time you will get a good feel for how to make a subtle presentation where you fish. Now this is not to suggest that you shouldn't try other depths for suspended walleye but just dragging a bait around all over the place isn't very productive. | |
 | The second reason for back-trolling is the fact that I like to fish with a partner. (I have to tell you that my best fishing partner is my wife.) When you back-troll, you can make turns around shorelines and shoals etc. without your lines getting crossed. This is not the case when trolling forward where the line of the person in the bow is constantly wrapped around the driver of the boat. |
| However, when I fish alone, I will use a combination of forward and backward trolling especially on a windier day. I will forward troll into the wind and back-troll with the wind. On a calmer day, though, back-trolling is my preferred method. | |
| If you have a larger boat (e.g. 18 ft. with a larger outboard or an I/O) you can split the difference between back and forward trolling if you have a smaller kicker motor. Obviously you can't back-troll very well, if at all, but you can troll forward with the kicker at a fairly slow rate and with the right weight attached to your line, you can get down to the depth that you want to fish. However, this gets a little tricky when you get snagged. This often results in losing the terminal tackle. Here again, if you make your own worm harness, losing them isn't as painful a financial experience as having to buy them. I have used this method but you have to be careful of water depths because you lose some control and the ability to manoeuvre. In rocky areas, especially, you have to watch for shoals and be careful how cozy you get with shorelines.
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| Until then, good fishing and good sportsmanship. | |
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