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By Stan Fagerstrom
Part 1
Get up to your eyebrows in walleye fishing in the Pacific Northwest and sooner or later you’re a cinch to run into the name of Jason Bauer.
How come? For starters Jason is responsible for bringing some “Togetherness” into the building ranks of walleye anglers in the Northwest corner of the United States.
He did that in part through the Internet. Bauer developed and still coordinates and publishes details on Pacific Northwest walleye angling at his web site www.northwestwalleye.com. Visit that site, and it’s a darn good idea if you’re interested in learning more about Western walleye fishing, and you’ll find a wealth of information on these interesting fish.
“I started the web site about three years ago,” Jason says. “Interest has steadily developed. Last month the site had more than 8,000 visitors.”
But Jason Bauer’s interest in walleye fishing isn’t restricted to his Internet activities. This likeable 33-year-old is an expert walleye angler himself. It was his intense interest in learning more about walleye that led to his Internet activities in that regard.
“I’ve been fishing walleye since I was 8-years-old,” Jason says. “I started out fishing for them with my dad and my interest just keeps growing. I guess what fascinates me most is the challenge these fish constantly present. They can be hard to find and then hard to catch even after you’ve go them pinned down.”
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| Jason Bauer knows a big walleye when he sees one. He's shown holding one of his largest. This beauty was released after it posed for the picture. |
Jason is involved in the tournaments conducted by the Washington State Walleye Circuit. You don’t get into walleye fishing as deeply as Bauer has without learning the best ways of putting them into the boat. In this and the next two columns I do for Mack’s Lure I’m going to share some of Jason’s thoughts in that regard.
Bauer says the three most effective techniques to consistently catch walleye are jigging, live bait rigging and trolling. In this first of three columns dealing with Bauer’s walleye fishing let’s take a closer look at jigging.
“Jigging is my ‘go to’ technique,” Jason says. “It’s an especially good tactic to use early in the season when the fish are inactive. A slow presentation, and you can do that with a jig, enables you to catch fish no matter what kind of a mood they may be in.”
Bauer says he typically uses round head jigs from 1/8th-ounce to 3/8th-ounce. About 90 per cent of the time he uses bait with his jigs. Nightcrawlers and leeches are his favorite baits.
So what kind of rods and reels does he employ with his jigs. I asked him. “I use G.Loomis Rods and Shimano reels,” he says. “I favor a medium action rod with a light tip. I load my Shimano spinning reels with Berkley Fireline. I use 6-pound test with my light jigs and 10-pound test for the heavier jigs.”
Bauer doesn’t use a leader with his braided line if the water he’s fishing is discolored. “I just tie the Fireline direct to my jig,” he says. “If the water is clear I attach 18 to 24 inches of leader.”
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| Pictured are the round head jigs Jason Bauer most often uses when he's jigging for walleye. |
The first thing Jason looks for anytime he’s after walleye is bottom structure. He uses both maps and his boat’s electronics to pinpoint areas of structure where walleye may be holding. The structure he’s looking for may be anything from the edge of underwater weed lines to rock piles or submerged timber.
Bauer gets serious about things once he’s got structure pinpointed. “Typically,” he says, “I’ll stay about 30 feet away from the spot I want to fish. I’ll cast to it and just leave my bail open so my jig drops straight down. Once my jig is on the bottom I try to determine what I have to do with it to get hits. This won’t always be the same. I vary my technique until I discover what they want.”
Jason says it’s constant attention to detail that separates the really successful walleye angler from the rest of the pack. Walleye are as fickle and finicky as a 2-year-old at the breakfast table. What turned them on last week might not be worth squat the next time you’re back on the water.
“I’d have to say that while hopping or bouncing a jig might work well some of the time,” Jason says, “a more consistent technique is to just slowly drag my jig along the bottom. Part of the reason for this is that the bait is in the water more of the time.”
I mentioned that Jason uses both leeches and nightcrawlers along with his jigs. You don’t see a lot of leeches being used in the Pacific Northwest because they are hard to find. Jason special orders his from a bait company in Michigan.
Talk to Jason Bauer as I have and you’ll soon discover he has no hard and fast rules that he employs in his search for walleye. He’s flexible in his approach. He constantly tries to avoid going in with his mind all made up. Instead he endeavors to let the fish tell him what they want.
Jason shared one thing he always does when he tips his jigs with a worm. “I always pinch off a little bit of the ‘crawler’s tail,” he says. “That way the worm gives off a little more scent.”
In my next column I’ll detail the procedures Jason uses when he’s fishing live bait. If you hang your fishing hat in the Pacific Northwest and you’re interested in learning more about walleye fishing---do as I suggested in the beginning. Get on the Internet and visit www.northwestwalleye.com.
You’ll discover that Mid-Western sections of the United States no longer have a monopoly where interest in walleye angling is concerned. And you just might also find a tip or two that will help in your own search for these tremendously interesting sports fish.
Part 2
There are few hard and fast rules when it comes to successful walleye fishing.
That fact surfaces every time I interview walleye anglers with an established track record. In my last column I detailed some of the thoughts of Jason Bauer, of Washington State. Jason is a walleye tournament angler. He’s also the guy who developed a growing Internet web site devoted exclusively to walleye angling. You’ll find it at www.northwestwalleye.com.
If you read that first column you know that Jason named three techniques he considers a necessity for successful walleye fishing. They were jigging, bait fishing and trolling. In my last column I shared Jason’s thoughts about jigging. This time around let’s look at bait fishing.
“I use both leeches and nightcrawlers for my bait fishing,” Jason says. “I use crawlers most of the time but in recent months I’ve also been using leeches a good bit.”
One of the rigs Bauer often uses when he’s bait fishing is the Mack’s Lure Boogie Bait. “The Boogie Bait color I select depends on the bait fish on which walleye are feeding,” Bauer says. “I’ve found watermelon to be a consistently good color. I also have had good luck with a silver blade and a fire tiger body.”
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| The Mack's Lure Boogie Bait is one of Jason Bauer's favorite lures when he's bait fishing for walleye. |
Eyeball a Mack’s Lure Boogie Bait and you’ll see it comes pre-tied. It has one of those easy-turning Smile Blades up front, followed by beads and a single bait hook. “I attach the end of the Boogie Bait leader to a swivel,” Jason says. “My sliding bottom bouncer goes onto my line above the swivel.”
Bauer changes his set up a bit if the walleye are holding in shallow water. If he finds them in the shallows, he removes his bottom bouncer and slides a light slip sinker onto his line above the swivel that’s attached to his leader. He uses 10-pound test Fireline as his main line.
“I generally don’t use a full crawler if I’m baiting with a worm,” Bauer says. “Most often I run the head of the crawler all the way up on my hook. I usually pinch off the worm so I wind up with about half or three quarters of its original length.”
As I mentioned in my last column, even if Jason chooses to use a longer worm he’s still going to pinch off the tail. He does this because he’s convinced that way the worm gives off more of a fish-attracting scent as it’s pulled through the water.
“Most of the time I start out using the Boogie Bait at a very slow troll,” Bauer says. “I get on my electric motor and attempt to follow whatever structure I’m fishing or perhaps the contour of the lake or river bottom. I’ll likely start out at a speed of about ¼-mile per hour, but I’m always going to try to let the fish tell me what speed I should use. I’ll vary my speed until I start getting hits. Once that happens I’ll stick with the speed I was moving when the fish picked up.”
As this walleye specialist points out, the Mack’s Lure Boogie Bait is super set up for walleye when a slow presentation is required. Why? Because that lightweight Mylar Smile Blade up front turns at especially slow speeds. Slow way down with a heavy metal blade and your lure and its trailing bait maywind up flopping into the debris of the lake or river bottom.
Now and then when the walleye bite is especially slow Bauer eliminates a blade altogether and rigs only with beads ahead of his Number 4 bait hook. “I change bead colors,” he says, “until I get some sense of what’s going to be most productive.”
His approach is similar to that he uses when he’s trolling the Boogie Bait except he’ll switch to an even slower presentation. “If the fish are finicky,” he says, “I move really slow and try a variety of presentations. Sometimes I hop my bait up from the bottom and let it fall back. As always, I try different things until I find a presentation that gets hits.”
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| Jason Bauer says the proper presentation of the right bait catches walleye like the nice pair he displays here. |
The depth at which Jason Bauer does his bait fishing might vary every bit as much as the bait presentations he makes. “There are so many variables,” he says. “I might present my bait as shallow as 2 or 3-feet in some lakes, but it might be as deep as 70-feet someplace else.”
Finally, Bauer has a bit of advice for newcomers to walleye bait fishing where the hook set is concerned. “Don’t set the hook too fast,” he warns. “When I feel a pick up I lower my rod to give the fish 4 to 6-feet of line. Then I sweep my rod back to get a solid hook up.”
That’s about the size of it. Careful readers will note that Bauer is forever attempting to let the walleye tell him what they’ll take and how they want it presented. And that, you’ll recall, is what I mentioned in the beginning. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to putting walleye in the boat.
In my next column, the last in this three part series, I’ll share some of Jason Bauer’s thoughts about trolling for walleye.
Part 3
Experienced walleye anglers use a variety of techniques to put fish in the boat. One of those techniques is trolling.
In my last two columns I’ve detailed the approach Jason Bauer, a Pacific Northwest walleye expert, uses when he’s after walleye. Bauer developed the Pacific Northwest’s most popular Internet site for walleye anglers. You’ll find it at www.northwestwalleye.com.
Bauer says his three basic techniques for successful walleye fishing are jigging, bait fishing and trolling. I’ve already shared some of his thoughts where jigging and bait fishing are concerned. This time around we’ll look at trolling.
“The technique of trolling is a broad topic,” Bauer says. “The walleye angler might be trolling something like a Mack’s Lure Double Whammy or a deep diving crankbait.”
Jason often makes up his own walleye trolling rigs. Most of the time he ties a Number 4 Gamakatsu bait hook onto 4-feet of 10-pound test leader. A couple of beads go above the hook. He slides a float, it might be a pill float or a Corky, ahead of the beads, more beads ahead of the float and a Mack’s Lure Smile Blade up front.
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Jason Bauer often builds his own walleye trolling rigs. When he does he uses Mack's Lure blades and beads like those pictured here.
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“I use the two smallest Smile Blade sizes,” Bauer says. “There are a bunch of colors in these lightweight blades that I really like. Among my favorites are the chartreuse scale, green scale and silver scale. I think these scale patterns resemble smaller bait fish.”
Bauer ties up a bunch of these rigs before he goes after walleye. The bait he uses with this set up is either a nightcrawler or a leech. “I’ve been using leeches more and more,” Bauer says. “Some Pacific Northwest fishermen are just learning that leeches can be ordered if they can’t be found locally. White’s Outdoors store in Spokane is one place where leeches are available.”
Bauer will tell you that sometimes he also uses the Mack’s Lure Wally Pop lure for his walleye trolling. His favorite color in this fine little walleye catcher is one that has a chartreuse blade and a green and yellow body.
If you’ve read my last two columns you’ll recall that Bauer has stressed the need to vary bait or lure presentations until you start getting hits when either jigging or bait fishing. He says the same thing applies when you’re trolling.
“Trolling can vary so much,” he says. “Sometimes you may need to troll a bait extremely slow, but now and then you’ll find they’re more responsive if you’re trolling along at 2-miles per hour.”
The Washington State walleye specialist says trolling is a super way to locate fish. “Trolling,” he says, “gives you a chance to put your bait or lure in front of more fish because you cover so much water. If I’m fishing on a big flat area I’ll often troll at a faster speed. Once I get hits I’ll slow down and try to stay in the area where the fish are holding.”
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| The Mack's Lure Wally Pop is one of Jason Bauer's favorite set ups when he's trolling for walleye. |
Bauer favors a 7-foot G.Loomis rod of medium action for his trolling. “These rods have a soft tip and a good backbone,” he says. “I match my G.Loomis rod with a Shimano Curado level wind reel and I fill the reel with 10-pound test Fireline.”
Jason uses a sliding bottom bouncer. “I favor the straight type bottom bouncer,” he says, “and I use a quick change clevis that lets me change weights in a hurry when I need to.”
Jason says lots of tournament anglers have cashed checks thanks to their trolling techniques. He says it’s a good approach to walleye fishing from spring on through fall.
As I’ve mentioned, there are times when experienced walleye pros like Jason turn to crankbaits to catch fish. “My favorite crankbait,” he says, “is a Number 7 Rapala Shad Rap. I like the one that is a rainbow trout color. I fish it without weight.”
While Bauer doesn’t use a weight with his crankbait, sometimes he does fish it with a lead core line. “I learned how to use a lead core line,” he says, “while fishing PWT walleye tournaments back East. I haven’t used this procedure much here in the Pacific Northwest, but it does get results when conditions are right.”
Bauer uses an outboard motor for most of his trolling. “My GPS unit tells me what speed I’m moving,” he says. “I usually start out trolling 2 to 3-miles per hour but at times I might go faster. Sometimes you have rip a crankbait to get hits and I’ll move my boat speed up to 3 ½-miles per hour if it turns out to be necessary.”
As I mentioned in the beginning, trolling is one of the basic tactics of experienced walleye anglers. Add it to the techniques of jigging and bait fishing that I’ve covered in my two previous columns and you’ll increase your chances of catching one of America’s most interesting sports fish---that elusive, unpredictable and thoroughly fascinating critter we call the walleye.
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