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By Stan Fagerstrom
Part 2
The Mack’s Lure Wally Pop helps you put walleye in the boat regardless of fishing conditions.
Does that sound like promotional material you might expect to find in a Mack’s Lure catalog? Well, it’s not. It’s one of the thoughts a professional walleye angler shared with me not long ago. That man is Paul Wright, of West Point, Indiana.
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| Lake Erie is Paul Wright's favorite walleye water in the eastern part of the United States. He's pictured with a beauty he took out of that lake. |
If you read my first Tips & Tactics column about Paul, you’ll recall that this Mack’s Lure pro says the Wally Pop is his number one choice of Mack’s Lure products where catching walleyes is concerned. This time around let’s take a closer look at why he’s made that determination.
“For starters,” Wright says, “the Wally Pop can be used regardless of boat speed. You can speed up or slow down and the Wally Pop continues to function. Even if you’re just barely crawling it along a rocky bottom, the Wally Pop keeps your bait up where the fish are more likely to see it.”
Wright, also a long time breeder of English Pointer bird dogs and a recognized authority in that field, has two favorite colors in the Wally Pop. "One of my favorites is the purple color,” he says. “My second favorite is the chartreuse shade.”
As I mentioned in my earlier column, Wright prefers to use the biggest nightcrawlers he can find in the Wally Pop’s double hook ‘crawler harness. He favors giving feeding walleye a good-sized target.
This past summer the Indiana professional walleye specialist also tried another approach with the Wally Pop. “I removed the Smile Blade that comes with the lure,” he said, “and I ran my line through a ¾-ounce egg sinker. I attached the body of the Wally Pop behind 4 to 5-feet of leader. I found that the egg sinker rarely hung up. It worked better for me than weights like a bottom bouncer.”
Wright will also tell you that he often used a stop-and-go procedure with this set up. “The Wally Pop keeps the worm floating even when you’ve stopped moving,” he says. “I’d often get a hit after the lure had stopped moving and I jerked it up from along the bottom.”
I also mentioned in my last column how Wright had boated a five fish limit totaling 32-pounds, 8-ounces during the second day of last year’s FLW Walleye Tournament staged at Green Bay, Wisconsin. The likeable Indiana expert also used Wally Pops to finish 15th in that tournament.
“We had our best action at Green Bay using our Wally Pops with planer boards,” Wright says. “We ran the boards about 50-feet from the boat. We caught some of our fish in only 5-feet of water. Sometimes we fished the Wally Pops without any weight at all. We just let the weight of the worm harness take the lure down and fished at very slow boat speeds.”
Visit with a walleye sharpshooter like Paul and it soon becomes obvious how important are the many seemingly insignificant details so many newcomers to walleye angling tend to overlook. “I think probably a lack of attention to what nature is doing is the most common mistake many beginners make,” Wright says. “I’ve been a hunter all of my life. A good bit of what I learned as a hunter can be applied to fishing for walleyes.”
Wright stresses the importance of observing what the wind is doing. Determine how you might use the wind’s affect in your fishing. If you’re fishing moving water, determine as well how you can use the current to your advantage.
He also has some special thoughts when it comes to fishing cover. “Keep in mind,” he advises, “that fish may be in different spots around the cover. Don’t just fish one side and quit. Fish all around whatever the cover happens to be. Just because you didn’t find fish on the first part you fished doesn’t mean they won’t be on the other side.”
Paul Wright first got interested in walleye fishing when he started taking his family into Canada for summer vacations. They went north across the border for 15 consecutive years and he’ll tell you he fished for nothing but the elusive walleye every time out.
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| Paul Wright is one of the nation's best known breeders of English Pointer bird dogs. One of his champions is shown here. |
In recent years this interesting outdoorsman has also spent a good bit of time in North Dakota. He trained bird dogs while he was there and went after walleye when he had opportunity to do so. While he has caught his share of fish out of North Dakota’s Lake Sacajawea, and that big body of water is one of his favorites, it’s Devils Lake in the same state that he picks as one of the best walleye spots in the entire country.
“I think Devils Lake is probably now the best walleye lake in the nation,” he says. “As the lake’s water level has risen, it has created all kinds of new cover. There are spots where you can fish in 20-feet of water over and around submerged cottonwood trees. Devils Lake walleye have a tremendous amount of cover. The lake’s freshwater shrimp provide great forage for them as well.”
Paul’s favorite walleye water in the eastern United States is Lake Erie. That huge lake produced the largest walleye he has boated so far. It weighed just a hair less than
12-pounds. That one hammered a Mack’s Lure Double Whammy. “Both the Double Whammy and the Wally Pop let you make great presentations,” Wright says.
As I mentioned in the beginning, Paul Wright is well known throughout the United States and Canada where bird dogs are concerned. His Wright Kennels is one of the world’s largest such operations. He has sold bird dogs all over the United States as well as in all of the Canadian provinces.
Five years ago he became a professional walleye angler. Paul Wright doesn’t grab me as a man who does things half way. It won’t surprise me that much if one day he’s just as well known in the field of professional walleye fishing as he is already as a breeder of champion bird dogs.
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