GREAT OUTDOORS: Weight forward lures work fine for walleye

When the mayflies began their population recovery in the mid-1990s, walleye fishermen noticed that the bite slowed during the period when they emerged from the lake in June. Charter captains began experimenting with ways to entice the already full fish to bite their lures to help fill their clients' coolers. What worked best was using an egg or in-line sinker ahead of a 14-to-20-inch leader dressed with a rotating Indiana or Colorado-style spinner blade on a clevis, followed by a handful of colored beads and ending with a single bait holder hook sweetened with a mayfly-length piece of nightcrawler. As catch rates improved using these casting harnesses, known initially as "weapons," other lure makers began calling theirs "mayfly rigs" and sales soared. For many of us who fished the previous "good old days" for walleyes in the late 1980s, the lures of choice were weight forward spinners. They have a chunk of lead molded onto a piece of wire, followed with some beads, a rotating blade on a clevis and a single long-shank hook in the back that gets a gob of nightcrawler leaving a little trailing tail. The top seller, due to its effectiveness, marketing and catchy name was the Erie Dearie, but some others included Lape's Big John, Parrish Pea, Tom's Reef Runner, Tiny Teaser, Storm's Pygmy, West Sister Twister and Captain Jim Fofrich's Single Spin. A different style that grabbed a large market share then were the twin-spin Hildebrandt Gold Nugget and Silver Nugget. This one had rotating blades on dual arms ahead of the worm trailing behind the banana-shaped lead body. The silver (nickel) finish was more effective on bright days and the gold worked on both sunny and cloudy days. Weight forward lures are best casted upwind or perpendicular to the boat and then retrieved back while they transect the water column. For all of the aforementioned lures, anglers cast and allow them to sink while counting how many seconds they waited before retrieving them back to the boat. Then, they can replicate the pause time that produces the most bites. Some presume that the lure sinks at the rate of 1 foot per second, but it varies with the weight of the lead used and the speed of the drift. Sometimes, anglers choose to just allow them to drag across the lake bottom while the fishing pole is placed in a rod holder, then watch for it to bend. Others, like my father, trolled with them, especially on calm days when there was not enough wind to propel the boat fast enough to cover much territory. His favorite story was when he took a pair of neighborhood boys out in his boat. While leaving Cooley Canal, he saw many fishermen making a beeline toward West Sister Island. After wondering aloud how many walleyes they passed over to make the 10-mile run to West Sister, he cleared the mouth of Anchor Point and gave a rod to each of the brothers, equipped with Gold Nuggets baited with half a nightcrawler. Before they trolled to the Toledo Water Intake three miles away, he had already netted 18 walleyes, so he turned around and headed toward his marina. Well before reaching the canal entrance, there were 30 fish in the cooler. There is no reason, given Lake Erie's walleye density today, why these lures would not produce similar results now (except that the limit is 6 fish per day and not 10).