It’s best to never get too set on using just one approach to solving your fishing problems.
Paul Wright’s not going to do that. Paul, as I told about in my last column, is a sharpshooting walleye angler from West Point, Indiana. He’s a winning walleye tournament pro and big Lake Erie is one of he places he best likes to fish.
As I also mentioned, a Mack’s Lure Wally Pop is Paul’s favorite rig when he’s offering nightcrawlers to Lake Erie’s walleye. It was what he and his two companions caught most of their fish on when they fished that big lake not long ago.
But there was another lure had also grabbed Paul’s interest. “I had some extra time on our early October trip,” Paul says, “and it was a good opportunity for me to try the new Mack’s Lure HummBait.”
Wright did troll his HummBait but says he just didn’t have the results he’d been having with the Wally Pop. Did he just set the HummBait aside and forget about it? No way! He liked the looks of this interesting new lure and decided to use it in a fashion different than anglers normally employ.
“The HummBait has such a unique profile and flash in the water that I figured it just had to work on Lake Erie,” Wright says. “I removed the feather treble hook that came on the lure. Then I added a two hook crawler type worm harness and attached it where the treble hook had been.”
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Wright replaces the HummBait's treble hook with a worm rig like the one you see here. He says this set up caught some of his largest fish on a recent trip to Lake Erie.
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Paul began trolling the revised HummBait with its trailing nightcrawler on one of the rod he and his two companions were using. What kind of luck do you think he had? Would this new set up work? Well, I asked him.
“Stan,” Paul told me, “I was truly impressed. The worm rig I’d attached to the HummBait caught just as many fish as the Wally Pop, but the size of the fish was always bigger. This was my first experience with the new HummBait but I guarantee it won’t be my last.”
I asked Wright for some of the details regarding the HummBait he found so effective for his Lake Erie trolling. He says it was a one that weighs a half ounce and is a chartreuse color.
The way he modified the lure isn’t at all that difficult. All he did was slide the feathered treble out of the split ring to which it was attached. Then he attached a small snap to the end of his double hook worm rig. The snap was hooked into the split ring where the treble hook had been.
“The leader I used for the worm harness,” Paul told me, “was 14-pound test. My two hooks were Number 1 red colored hooks spaced approximately 3-inches apart. I attached that snap so I could easily change back to the treble hook if needed.”
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Here's a picture of the complete HummBait set up Paul Wright has used with excellent success.
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Ask Paul and he’ll tell you didn’t need to change back. That worm rig trailing along behind the flashing HummBait must have looked like steak on a platter to those Lake Erie walleye. As I mentioned, the Wally Pop continued to get hits, but so did the worms used behind the HummBait and the fish that it caught were larger.
I was curious how deep Paul was fishing his HummBait worm rig. “I assume the lure was approximately 25-feet down,” Wright says, “I thought because it was running deeper might have been why we were catching larger fish, but I had a different setup on the other side of the boat and it didn’t get the size fish as did my modified HummBait.”
And that’s why I said in the beginning that it’s wise to stay flexible whatever the lure and your method of using it. I’ve been endeavoring to do that ever since I early on had excavated my own ruts trying to use the same approach to solve this or that angling problem.
Paul Wright is a guy has hammered walleyes from the Dakotas to Lake Erie. He is just as well known in the field of bird dogs and has been involved as judge in field trials from the Canadian prairies to the deep South.He’s a recognized expert in both fields of endeavor. Keep in mind what I’ve told you about him.
I wasn’t really all that surprised at what Paul told me about the HummBait. I’ve done some experimenting with that new lure myself. If you’re getting fish with it the way it came out of the box, fine and dandy. But if you aren’t don’t just stick it off in a tackle box tray and forget about it.
Now then a change or two helps put more fish in the boat. I’ll detail some of my own experiences in this regard in my next column.
-To Be Continued-
