Dogging Down Walleyes With The Spoon Daddy
You might say Brian Warner marches to the beat of a different drummer--er, spooner. On the Michigan Walleye Tour, a team circuit, Warner fished solo, sacrificing a partner's extra lines and the assistance to net fish. He also worked jigging spoons in places known for trolling bites, going with one rod instead of the four possible had he teamed with a partner and trolled. Even so, Warner once spooned up a five-fish, 25-pound limit on Saginaw Bay.
An undoubtedly different Warner spoons wherever and whenever practicable. From his home in Charlevoix, Michigan, he sneaks out for walleyes after work on Lake Charlevoix or heads out to the St. Mary's River or Saginaw Bay. During winter with open water on neighboring Lake Michigan, Warner dredges up whitefish, lake trout, and salmon on spoons, from depths of up to 250 feet. All of Warner's spooning is done with light tackle, 8-pound line, and spoons up to one ounce--and all with a practiced snap-and-drop cultivated over the last 30 years of self-taught spoonerisms. "Spooning is not designed for the weak and lazy," says the 45-year-old Warner, surrounded in his garage by spoons and cans of Dutch Boy Instant Gold spray for doctoring lures. "If I didn't enjoy it so much, I wouldn't be doing it all the time."
Even though Warner spoons all the time, everywhere from shallow weeds to deep humps, the prime time for one of the Spoon Daddy's pet methods--"dogging down walleyes," he calls it--is in fall, when walleyes concentrate in water from 30 to 60 feet deep. There Warner chases down marks on his electronics, circles and maneuvers to keep them in the cone angle, then snaps a spoon right through them with a quick rip and a fast drop that inspires reaction strikes. "A jigging spoon is a reaction bait," Warner says. "You actually make the fish bite." If Warner's vertical approach doesn't do the trick, he backs off and bombs away, casting to bring the bait through the fish at a different angle. The differences are in the details.
DOG-EAT-DOG
When walleyes cluster in deep water, on the edges of points, drop-offs, and humps, Warner looks for them with electronics before fishing. Motoring slowly for the best picture on a liquid-crystal Lowrance unit, Warner waits until the telltale arches and hooks materialize on the screen. When a few fish appear--more than a lone mark means more dog-eat-dog competition over the spoon--Warner pops the big motor into reverse, backing up until the fish are within the cone angle. Then he drops a 3/8- to 1-ounce spoon straight down.
When the spoon hits bottom, Warner flips the bail closed and starts snapping. But not any old snapping will do. After decades of trial and error, Warner has zeroed in on the precise motion that best triggers strikes. While he snaps the jig with his wrist no more than six inches, he doesn't follow the spoon back on a semi-taut line as most manufacturers advise, but rather returns the rod tip to its starting point as quickly as possible. The reason is that he wants a fast drop--the better to short-circuit any thought process by the walleyes and get them to react to the bait with a motion Warner calls "short stroking."
Warner says this could not be done without monofilament line. "Mono has stretch," Warner says. "It's like a rubber band. It helps load up the rod, and when you're vertical jigging and dropping the rod tip back down, it gives a rubber-band action and lets the spoon snap back down to trigger the fish."
When dogging down walleyes, don't expect the fish to stay put. That's why Warner sticks with the outboard for chasing after walleyes to quickly and efficiently get them in the cone angle, and in deep water he's not concerned about motor noise. More important is the ability to chase in any given direction until the marks are back within the cone angle--time, once again, to put a spoon in their faces.
THE BOMBARDIER
Dogging down walleyes, of course, is not the only way to go. When fish seem more spread out or they won't respond to vertical jigging, it's best to back off and start casting. Now it's possible to cast to precise points or to cover water for scattered fish.
To impart the best action to the spoon and to keep from tiring, Warner keeps his right elbow tight to his body, relying on his wrist to snap the spoon. The first step is to watch the line when the spoon falls for any tick of a fish scooping it up on the drop. When the spoon hits bottom, reel up slack and snap hard with the wrist, then let the spoon tumble back to bottom. Snap again from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock. The key is a fast, quick snap to get a fast, quick drop. If you give the spoon a slow and easy sweep, you get a slow and easy drop, which is less effective from a triggering standpoint than the quick drop.
But when the spoon reaches a 45-degree angle from the boat, Warner returns vertical motion, revisiting the short-stroking maneuver. To hoodwink walleyes that have been following the spoon, Warner shortens the jigging stroke to about six inches and again abruptly returns the rod tip to its starting point to achieve the quickest drop speed possible. After 30 seconds of jigging the spoon almost in place, Warner resumes the first motion--the 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock retrieve--until the spoon is under the boat. Then he jigs it vertically to target following fish.
"Make long casts and work the spoon back all the way until it's vertical," Warner says. "You're casting out, bringing the fish to you and right into your trap, then whacking them under the boat."
Different strokes for different folks, you might say. But not many anglers have the peculiar makeup to do what Warner does--to fish solo in team tourneys, to forego trolling on big water, and to spoon all day long for the right bites. What other way, though, would one learn the differences in the details?
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