Shallow water trolling at night

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

I know this is more of tactic in the spring, but how do you guys go about trolling cranks in shallow water at night? I'm assuming the electric would be best because of the chance of hitting rocks with the outboard.

[Dances with Walleye]

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I know this is more of tactic in the spring, but how do you guys go about trolling cranks in shallow water at night? I'm assuming the electric would be best because of the chance of hitting rocks with the outboard.

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Well for one if you're night fishing, and you're trying to drift deep flats and bars like it was day time you're going to be in the absolute lowest percentage area.

Night fishing is shallow fishing...

When it comes to night fishing you want to look for an area of hard bottom drop off that meets weeds.

Then using a line couting bait caster, keep setting your shallow diving shad rap back until you hit the tops of the weeds... Make note of the depth...

Clear the weeds, and reset about 5 feet of line less back behind the boat.

At night the Walleyes come out of the depths to these shallow weedlines to feed on the YoY perch that are hiding in their for cover... The eyes are just cruising around looking for a bait fish that is dumb enough to come out of cover... If your lure looks like this... Chances are it will get hit.

Also if you aren't fishing with some kind of super braid on a rod with a sensative top third yet with a powerful backbone, you are essentially doing the fishing equivalent of bringing a knife to a gun fight.

As you need something with enough forgiveness to handle the intial blast-hookset... Yet has enough power to horse them out of the weed cover that they'll descend into once set.

As for Lure selection... Well that's a whole epigram in and of itself, based on light conditions.

[Team Otter]

All the information below is good. However, I like to use spinning rods quite a bit. I just pitch the crank bait behind the boat, let it tick bottom from time to time, and let that tell me where to run the lure(s).

[PerchJerker]

It's a great tactic all year long, right until ice up. Over weeds, along inside and outside weedlines, and over rocks. Even weedy flats are good if you can go over or through the weeds. I never do it with my electric motor, I use my kicker. Change baits, depths, colors, speeds etc. until you put together a pattern, the real key is being able to repeat what works. And using a superline is a must so you can tell what's going on with the bait.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

How do you keep from hitting rocks with the outboard? Oh, I see that you use a smaller kicker motor. I guess I was thinking of a lake like Mille Lacs where the rocks jump up out nowhere and I don't have a kicker. Just the outboard and bow mount trolling motor.

[PerchJerker]

I spend many days trolling on mille lacs every year, and in shallow rocky water. It's just one of those things, if that's where the fish are then you have to go in there to get them. I will admit though that I prefer to troll the weeds or the open water instead of the shallow rocks.

[cold one sd]

I guess if you are working a shallow rocky area you would do ok by using your bowmount and casting plugs. I like to troll shallow flats at a pretty fast speed.

[Dances with Walleye]

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All the information below is good. However, I like to use spinning rods quite a bit. I just pitch the crank bait behind the boat, let it tick bottom from time to time, and let that tell me where to run the lure(s).

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The problem is this only works with Rocky areas... In a weedy area, where you have to run 2 feet above the submerged weeds, you're going to run into too many fouls trying to "Guess" your depth correctly.

[Dances with Walleye]

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It's a great tactic all year long, right until ice up. Over weeds, along inside and outside weedlines, and over rocks. Even weedy flats are good if you can go over or through the weeds. I never do it with my electric motor, I use my kicker. Change baits, depths, colors, speeds etc. until you put together a pattern, the real key is being able to repeat what works. And using a superline is a must so you can tell what's going on with the bait.

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Speaking of lure selection...

It's kind of a simple equation...

Water temp will determine the shape of the bait you use...

55 degrees or cooler water temp = Stick bait

56 and warmer = Shad body

It's just a natural relation of action to temperature driven metabolism.

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Color selection is tricky...

In a New or Day moon situation (Where you're fishing in inky Blackness.) You want a Dark Lure... (Most people make the mistake of using a bright flashy lure.) The Dark Lure allows the Walleye to contrast the darkness against the abient translucency of the water.

You'll also want the lure to have rattles, and you'll want to slow down... I prefer a speed around 1.2 MPH.

In a Full Moon You want high contrast lures... Fire tiger seems to be a winning pattern.

In broken light... Metalic colors seem to excel...

As you'd imagine... The less light there is, the slower you need to go.

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As for live bait applications... I find the Mepps Spin Flex "Walleye Killer Set" to work the best... Though if you don't have some very accurate method of line counting, you're asking for snag issues.

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When looking for structure, remember... If there's no where for Bait fish to hide... The Active and aggressive Walleyes have no reason to be there looking for them.

[Team Otter]

Perhaps but generally you can get things figured out within a pass or two in any given area.

[PerchJerker]

Agree - that's a lot of good info but that doesn't mean it's the right way or the only way to go about it

[Dances with Walleye]

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Agree - that's a lot of good info but that doesn't mean it's the right way or the only way to go about it

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No but it sure is one heck of a helpful starting point.

It beats the heck out of just randomly guessing where the fish might be and hoping that a Random presentation works to get them.

What usually ends up happening is that I fish the Rap-Pattern-to-Light-Level style, and someone else expiraments, with another presentation... If one guy is catching them, and the other isn't... It's worth a switch...

But most often it's that Rap-Pattern-to-Light-Level style that has the hot bite...

I can only think of two times that it was trumped out, and both of those times were live bait.

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This weekend my buddy and I are going be out night fishing, and he's going to give some Mimic Minnow presentations a try.

[schr0563]

Here's one I got this past weekend. Just a tad over 30 inches, but only 8 pounds. I must have guessed right. Used a number 13 original floating rapala (chartuese). 8 pound mono with a medium sized split shot 24 inches ahead of the lure. Just let out a bunch of line. Trolled 8-10 feet of water over thick weeds.

And the release.

[Team Otter]

Beautiful color to that fish even though it didn't carry the weight. Nice release photo too.

[Kyle Sandberg]

Shallow water trolling is what I do every opener with my grandpa. He's been doing it for 20+ years and brings home walleyes all the time. I love to do it early in the year when the weed growth is at a minimum and the fish are up recovering from the spawn.

[Rost]

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How do you keep from hitting rocks with the outboard? Oh, I see that you use a smaller kicker motor. I guess I was thinking of a lake like Mille Lacs where the rocks jump up out nowhere and I don't have a kicker. Just the outboard and bow mount trolling motor.

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I don't do much trolling at night. I prefer to cast cranks, jigs, or bobber an area instead. However, if you are worried about hitting your motor on the rocks, try planer boards. This way you don't have to run over top of them either.

[Muddog]

Get a gps, make a trail around the shallowest areas. Then make sure you don't enter that area.