Author: The WalleyeGuy
The very first walleye catching technique I was exposed to was trolling Shad Raps. I don’t recall the exact conditions, but I do know that it was September in Northern Minnesota, it was evening and we were fishing on a break where the water went from about 6 feet to 12 feet in a hurry. The guy that took me out just tied the lure straight on to the line, chucked it back about 50 yards and just started trolling along the break. We caught some pigs.
So, naturally, I have always had an affinity for fishing with crankbaits. In fact… I often am too dependent upon this lure and fish it despite the fact that conditions and results are telling me that doing so is hopeless. So I have gone home with nothing many nights because of my bull-headed refusal to switch to something else. So be careful.
Let’s step back a bit and review a couple of walleye fishing facts:
1. Walleye have very light sensitive eyes. They are therefore known to avoid very direct sunlight. You sometimes hear the term “walleye chop”. Fishermen often consider windy days an advantage because the wind produces a chop on the water that cuts down on the amount of sunlight, thus increasing the chances that walleyes will become active in shallower areas. For this same reason, evening fishing is an absolute prime time to catch walleyes in shallow areas. In low-light conditions walleyes can use their eyesight advantage to catch prey. Eating… a very important criteria for walleye survival 
.
2. There are almost always walleyes in shallow areas. This is a personal opinion shared by many. On the same lake that you find fishermen catching walleyes deep, you may also find fishermen catching walleyes shallow. Never neglect to look for walleyes in prime shallow areas. This should generally be an area with weed cover that holds baitfish.
3. Walleyes generally relate to some kind of structure. This is one of the basic tenets of pretty much any kind of fishing. Structure holds baitfish and therefore it holds the larger game fish. Structure means humps, points, weed beds, and even large flats.
Given these basic premises, you can formulate some options for when to pull out the crankbaits. The thing I like about pulling crankbaits is that you can cover a ton of water in search of walleyes over a relatively short period of time. I’ve speculated several nights that if we just pulled a couple of crankbaits around the perimeter of a walleye lake during the evening we would probably eventually pick up a walleye or two.
This attitude has often gotten us the one lousy fish we caught during an evening. The one likely time to avoid cranks is during calm sunny days. If you have a sunny day but some decent wind, give it a shot on the side taking the pounding from the wind. Look for spots that naturally attract fish… weed beds (cabbage is great), and sharp transitions from deeper to shallow water where baitfish can get trapped against the break.
We started at about 5:30 that evening on a lake we literally had never fished before. This was a league night, so we were feeling a little pressure. There was a decent breeze, so we gravitated toward the side of the lake taking the wind. We marked some fish in deeper water so we tied up a couple of Lindy rigs and started working the break.
There were definitely fish down there but we got no action. For some reason we both had zero patience that evening and said “to heck with it”. We clipped the rigs, tied on a couple of #5 Shad Raps and started working the shore. In about 5 minutes we came around a sharp point, worked the inside turn at about 6 feet and my son hammered our first walleye. We continued on about another 100 yards and he nailed another one.
For the next half hour we worked the same 100 yard stretch in literally 4 or 5 feet of water and managed to boat 7 very nice walleyes, including those two fat ones in the picture. We also caught a pile of northerns. The wind was perfect, the sky was overcast and we were very lucky. When we got back to the landing we weighed in and discovered that we had come in second. Guess what the other guys were doing… yeah… pulling crankbaits over a shallow gravel bar at the other end. They beat us by one big fish. Everyone else was griping about how they were marking fish deep but couldn’t get a darn thing to bite.
During the evening, walleyes often naturally move from deeper water to shallow water to take advantage of their excellent eyesight and prowl for prey. Likely fishing spots include mid-lake flats or other areas that transition from deep to shallow. The tops of these types of structure can be great at night or during windy, overcast days.
What to Use
The vast majority of my crankbait collection is comprised of Rapala Shad Raps… mostly #5, but with several #7. I mix the colors making sure I buy matching colors in both the deep and shallow running variety. The shallow-runners have a short angled lip that keeps the bait running shallow enough to avoid weeds but keeps the bait close to the fish. The deep-runners have a fat lip that pulls the bait even deeper. Which one to use depends completely upon the conditions and depths.
If I am fishing on a flat at night that gets to 10 – 12 feet, I will usually pull a deep-runner. If I can occasionally feel the bait hitting the weeds I know I’m good. When I get less than 8 feet I will go to the shallow-runner. I also keep larger baits in various configurations to get the bait even deeper if the fish are hanging off the edges. I always tie the lure directly to the line.
Some fishermen I know use “Rap-snaps” to make it easy to change between different colors and sizes. I hate to add any potential point of failure to the rig. We generally pull them anywhere between 1.5 and 2 mph… and at least 50 feet behind the boat. The farther from the noise, the better, but if you are navigating some tight turns along weedy edges it becomes difficult to control where the lure goes if you’re too far back. Wide open flats… let it go way back.
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